Over the Rooftops of Time: Jewish Stories, Essays, Poems

Learning the Language

Learning the Language For many years I have tried to learn Hebrew. I have studied conversational Hebrew (Habet Ushma), Hebrew for travelers, total immersion Hebrew, Hebrew for schoolchildren, Hebrew for beginners, Hebrew for beginning adults, painless Hebrew, painful Hebrew, prayer Hebrew, Hebrew in the marketplace, Hebrew and the holidays, Hebrew for Israelis. In addition, I have often needed to clarify some point or other in the Bible, but my knowledge of the Bible was insufficient . I could never find exactly what I was looking for with any haste. I was put in touch with a fellow, an Israeli, who was principal of a religious school. Noach, I would say, quick tell me, what does Job say to his friends when they come to advise him. He would answer immediately. He knew the Bible by heart. One day I said, Noach, I need a teacher. I want to learn Hebrew. Let me think about it, he said. Call me tomorrow. I waited the long day and called the next. I have just the person for you, Noach told me. Good, I say. Who is it? My wife, he replied. My teacher’s name was Bracha—blessing. She would be my guide, my Virgil in the ascent from the darkness of ignorance to the celestial heights of the Hebrew root to which I would 1 0 LEARNING THE LANGUAGE 1 1 attach prefixes and suffixes. I would embellish the language of my people. Soon there would be sentences, entire paragraphs and, who knows, maybe someday beautiful poems, piyutim fit for the synagogue. The grandmothers and great-grandmothers who had flown above us during my son’s bar mitzvah would be pleased that I had finally learned the language. In the afterlife they would already be making room on the shelves of the great library for the poetry I would translate, the books of Genesis and Exodus, the poetry of Ibn Gabirol, and Yehuda Halevi and Shmuel HaNagid, the commentaries of the rabbis. It was my plan to begin my study of Hebrew by reading the poetry of contemporary Israelis, some of whom I had met and corresponded with. I could not forget the first time I heard Hebrew spoken not for purposes of prayer in the synagogue but in the recitation of modern poetry by the Israeli writer Yehuda Amichai. At first I thought he must be praying , but then I realized he was reciting a poem and that it contained words that belonged to contemporary life, words like automobile, bomb, God with a small g. I said to my teacher, Now I will read the poetry of my Israeli friend in his language. Now, I said. This day. Sure, she said. Okay, she said. But first we will begin with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac. I had meant my friend Amichai, and Moshe Dor and Carmi and Kovner. She understood perfectly: Genesis. So for all of one summer I trudged along imperfectly behind Abraham as he walked hand in hand with his son Isaac toward Mount Moriah. I observed how the father did not raise his eyes from the ground. I listened as he answered the son’s question, partway on the journey: “And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father and said, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son”—just as Abraham had responded when God spoke to him. And he said, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt offering , my son. So they went both of them together”—words that gain increasing poignancy as the passage continues. Here we witness that most supreme test of faith, the offering up by Abraham of his most precious possession, his child, and we witness the beginning of the end of human sacrifice. Later, the themes set forth in this biblical passage will serve poets of our own age, yet the meaning changes; the new poem based on the binding of Isaac will have to include the Holocaust, as in “Isaac,” by the Israeli poet Amir Gilboa: At dawn, the sun strolled in the forest together with me and father and my right hand was in his left. Like lightning a knife flashed among the trees. And I am so afraid of my eyes’ terror faced by blood on the leaves. Father, father, quickly save Isaac so...