Abraham Regelson and the Apotheosis of Hebrew

Ḥaquqot otiyotayikh (Engraved Are Thy Letters) is an epic hymn to the Hebrew language composed by the American Hebrew poet Abraham Regelson at the end of World War II. The passionate commitment to Hebrew on display in the poem is infused with erotic and religious elements and helps us understand the often unspoken assumptions that undergirded the Hebraist movement in America. The gendered relationship of the male speaker to Hebrew, figured as a woman, is explored in its relationship to the jouissance of textuality. The plasticity of Hebrew that is enabled by the tri-consonantal verb stem in turn authorizes in the poet a seemingly infinite scope for invention and play. In Regelson’s pantheistic conception, Hebrew is also the vehicle through which divinity is made manifest to the world.