There is a certain simplicity in Ra’hel’s poetry that can strike an emotional chord for readers, and in her poem, “אשתו,” the simplicity really does just that. As she does in other poems, Ra’hel takes on the complex topic of unrequited love by presenting it with a simple, yet effective language. She shows the pain of forbidden love in contrast to the comfort of an established love by expressing her emotions as imprisoning.

In the first stanza, the narrator focuses on the voice. Interestingly, we can compare the narrator’s situation to the author’s. Ra’hel’s uses her voice as a medium to express her emotion, even though her narrator is unable to, or afraid to, use her own voice. In the second line, we see the wife calls to her husband, “וקולה כתדיר,” implying a regular, calm voice that she uses frequently—it is natural for the wife to use her voice to address her husband and expect a response. On the other hand, the narrator says that, “בקולי לא אבטח/פן יסגיר.” She  states that she does not trust her own voice, because it can “יסגיר”, which is an interesting word. It usually refers to prisoners, extraditing them. The narrator is a prisoner of her voice and her emotions; she is unable to express herself because her voice would reveal her love for the husband.

In the second stanza, we see the wife with the husband, exposed to the world without consequence.  They are, “קבל עם, קבל אור.” For the narrator, they seem to be in front of the whole world and in the light, which then contrasts to the “בחשכת ערבים” that the narrator finds herself. In the last two lines of the stanza, there is no verb present. Like a prisoner, the narrator is in the dark (like a cell) and has no say over her situation. In addition, she is “במסתור”—a hiding place, or refuge, just like a prisoner.

I found the third stanza most striking, as it was very beautifully visual and relates nicely to the idea of the unrequited love as a device of imprisonment. In the third stanza, both women are bound to the man. Yet, the wife’s object of binding, her gold ring, is worn in “שלוה.” It is accompanied by peacefulness and security. The narrator’s object of binding is much more sinister as chains, again, like a prisoner. These are iron chains, seven times more strong than the ring. In order words, the chains bind the narrator to the man more than the ring could ever bind the wife to the husband.

The stylistic and form of the poem is also demonstrative of the imprisonment of the narrator. The rhythmic pattern is obvious in the second and third lines of each stanza of the poem. Like the narrator, the rhyme is entangled between the two other lines. Although it is not always proper to connect the narrator to the author, it really does seem like Ra’hel is reflecting on a part of her own life and her feeling of a prisoner and someone who is stuck facing an unrequited love.

Lea Goldberg’s poem “גן” – which is part of the “ילדות” series, appears to be fairly simple at first glance.  In fact, though, a closer reading of the poem reveals that it is actually much more complex than its surface level shows.

After first seeing the poem, a reader might think it’s a sweet and innocent poem about a quaint and small private garden in someone’s backyard.  The rhyme scheme is more or less clear-cut, featuring an ABAB CDCD structure.  The A rhyme leans slightly more toward off rhyme, but that’s about as daring as this element seems to get.  The title “גן” is short and simple – just one syllable, two letters.  It doesn’t imply any certain unusual state of the garden, or anything being done to the garden.  Instead, a reader might expect to just hear about any typical garden, perhaps one that is idealized or belongs in a fairytale.  Like the title, the poem’s length is short, which also leads a reader to expectations of simplicity and even innocence as well.

From the very first line, the punctuation signals the poem’s complexity.   The initial line, “שרף-דבדבן – הוא מתוק ושקוף” would flow smoothly into the second line, “לקלף מן הגזע, לקחת” without a period separating them.  In that case, the second line would modify the first line.  With that punctuated finality to the first line, however, the subject of the second line becomes ambiguous, and it becomes unclear what is being stripped from the trunk, what is being taken.

Throughout the poem, the author provides absolutely no information about the speaker.  So too, that mysterious narrator describes certain qualities of natural landscapes, but doesn’t locate those in any specific place.  Moreover, the scope of what is described reaches far beyond what a reader would expect from a poem called “גן.”  Instead of the quiet, well-contained private garden in someone’s backyard, this poem presents vast imagery that goes beyond the normal scope of a garden and suggests an almost chaotic quality to the landscape.

In the third line we read about “הרום” – the heights – which already remove the poem from the imagined backyard and instead use a broader, and perhaps more dangerous, backdrop.  The last line of the first stanza describes the blooming as “סופה לבנה של תפרחת” – a storm!  This description dispels the reader’s notion of a tranquil, quiet garden, and instead replaces it with a phonetically swirling sequence of rhymes (סופה – לבנה – תפרחת) to add intensity to the storm metaphor.  The next line – “לעלות על גבעה ולצעוק: “אחים” – furthers the issue of scope.  Not only are there hills included in this landscape, there are also people congregating.  Next, “!הביטו בצחור הצמרת” … treetops?  At this point it seems relatively clear that what is being described is simply not a garden at all.  But what is it?

Finally, the last line confuses the poem yet one step further.  “הם הולכים אל ילדות אחרת” is unclear both because the reader is unsure as to the subject of this line and about what it means to depart toward another childhood.  The subject could be the אביבים mentioned in the previous line, but given that line is part of an exclamation out loud and the last line reverts to the narrator’s voice, it certainly could be something else.  As for the ילדות אחרת, it seems to be some sort of alternate reality.  The entire poem functions under different assumptions than the one the reader makes initially; perhaps the poem itself is representative of that alternate reality.

As someone who has a self-diagnosed “Peter Pan complex” (growing up and dealing with transitions are not things that I tend to embrace), I was immediately drawn into Leah Goldberg’s poem המסע הקצר ביותר, The Shortest Journey, which takes the reader on a short journey as the speaker considers her relationship to the passage of time.

The first thing I noticed about this poem was the rhyme scheme. Each stanza has only A and B lines, but they do not follow a uniform pattern. In the first stanza (each has 5 lines) the scheme is ABABA, in the second it is ABBAB. I think the change in the second stanza is noteworthy. The second line speaks of boats embracing (סירות חבוקות) and the next line, which one would expect to be an A line, rhymes instead, with the words העלו אבוקות (children on the hilltop raising up torches). It is almost as if these lines are embracing, mirroring the activity of these two boats on the cold sea.

This poem did not have to rhyme. Goldberg is talented enough with her words not to need rhyme as a constant in her toolkit, and I sometimes think that a rhyme scheme can cheapen a poem or lighten the tone unnecessarily. However, it seems to work here. With two word ending sounds per stanza, the reader is constantly going back and forth between those two sounds, anticipating which of those sounds will come next, and almost hearing both of them at once. The last three lines of the first stanza read:

והנה הם עומדים זה עם זה כשכנים

לילי של עכשיו, יומי של אז

מה אמרו: משתנים, מזדקנים?

The speaker of this poem feels a pull, a conversation between these two “neighbors” of hers, the nights of today, and the days of the past. And as we, the reader, get pulled into the sound of the rhyme scheme, we too are going back and forth between these two voices, that of today and that of the past. The journey does seem short, the distance between the past and the present tiny, when both are engaged in conversation at once.

Another striking aspect of this poem are the repeated phrases. Both stanzas begin with the phrase “the shortest journey is…” with a slightly different ending.

המסע הקצר ביותר הוא על פני השנים

המסע הקצר ביותר הוא לתוך העבר

These opening phrases give the poem a framing, a reminder that this journey through time is truly the shortest journey. Just five lines after beginning with this idea, the reader encounters it again, as if having just returned from one such very short trip. Interestingly, the first stanza, which begins with the idea that the shortest journey is through the years, includes imagery of being in a familiar place after much time has passed. The reader can wonder alongside the speaker- has this truly been a quick journey? Looking at a dulled house, with a wall that has been moved, we are at once transported back to that place as if no time has passed at all, and also wonder at how much has changed over the years. The second verse, in which the shortest journey is one into the past, contains a childhood memory of looking out at the cold sea, of children lighting torches. Rather than considering the passage of time by looking at mementos, here the reader is transported back in time into a memory. While both of these matching phrases evoke similar ideas, the content of the stanzas do reflect that subtle difference between על פני השנים and לתוך העבר.

An additional repeated phrase are the two questions משתנים, מזדקנים? (Do we change, do we age? Or perhaps, we change, we age?) These words are reversed in the second stanza. The fact that these words are posed as a question further serves the notion that the passage of time can feel so short- sometimes we are not even sure if we have aged or changed, and must ask ourselves the question to truly determine how we have been affected by time.

Kadya Molodowsky’s “Efnt dem toyer” (“Open the Gate”) was published in Warsaw in 1931 as part of a collection entitled “Mayselekh” (“Tales”).

Kathryn Hellerstein explains that this collection grew out of Molodowsky’s experiences teaching impoverished Jewish children in Warsaw. (Hellerstein. Paper Bridges. p26)

As Molodowsky writes, “My tales and poems for children…saved me from dejection. I wrote one poem about how a poor family passed a coat from one child to the next. Theirs was the ultimate poverty. When I read that tale to the children in my class, they enjoyed it very much and clapped their little hands […] Without intending to, the children taught me something that made sense […] The children taught me how to survive in difficult times […] They managed to squeeze a drop of joy out of life […] (Trans. Hellerstein. Ibid. p26)

These poems seem to have been a sort of gift to her students, and indeed to herself. A way to give them, and herself, a poetic “drop of joy.”

In the poem “Efnt dem toyer,” it seems that Molodowsky was attempting to give her students, and us, much more than just a drop of joy.

Indeed, this apparently simple poem for children is rich with Hebrew/Yiddish intertextual symbolism.

But most importantly, as Hellerstein points out, “The poem […] celebrates the golden chain of Jewish tradition and ends with a image of delicacies […] as though the poem were intended to to provide the food that its child readers actually lacked.” [My emphasis]. (Ibid. p28)

Molodowsky was gifting her students with artistic and spiritual nourishment, in an attempt to replace that which was so sorely lacking in their lives.

What were some of the intertextual sources of the gifts offered in this deep and moving poem?

Anyone familiar with the Psalms, or with the Hallel liturgy, will be reminded of Psalm 118, verses 19 and 20: 

“Piskhu li shaarey tsedek, avo vam odeh Yah. Zeh hashaar l’Adonai, tsadikim yavo-u vo.”

“Open for me the gates of righteousness, I will enter them and thank God. This is the gate of Hashem; the righteous shall enter through it.” (Trans. by Scherman, Rabbi Nosson.The Complete Artscroll Siddur. Mesorah Publications, Ltd. Brooklyn, NY. 2004. p641.)

And perhaps Molodowsky also had a particular trilingual (Russian/Yiddish/Loshn-Koydesh) religious song in mind. Here’s an excerpt:

“Efnt mir di tirn fun ganeydn! Dunay, dunay, dunay! 
Kh’vil dem beyre Hashem leybn! Dunay, dunay, dunay!”

“Open for me the gates of the Garden of Eden! I want to praise the Creator, Hashem.” (Trans. Warschauer)

I’ve only heard this song sung in Litvish-yidish, which was undoubtedly Molodovsky’s dialect. It seems quite possible that she knew the song.

(Note that Dunay is the Russian word for the Danube, but here it’s almost certainly functioning as a pair of nonsense syllables, similar to “ay, ay.”).

This song is in itself intertextual, in that it translates and interprets several passages from the Psalm.

But who are the righteous in the Psalm, in the song, and in Molodowsky’s poem?

In the Psalm, and in the religious song, one would assume that “righteous” signifies those who are considered worthy, in the traditional Jewish religious sense.

I would propose that in “Efnt dem toyer,” Molodowsky is making a radical point, and perhaps injecting a note of social commentary.

She’s opening up the definition of “righteous” to include the impoverished children in her care, along with their families.

Were these children from traditional religious families? Did their parents and relatives immerse themselves in Torah study and mitzvot?

My guess is that Molodowsky considered those qualities irrelevant for the purposes of this poem.

By broadening the definition of “righteous,” by throwing the gate “wide open” (“…efnt im breyt…“) Molodowsky is giving these children and their families a great gift:

The gift of inclusion. Inclusion in the “goldene keyt” (the “golden chain”) of tradition. Inclusion among the righteous. A deep sense of worth and belonging.

A few more points:

Notice how that cast of characters opens and opens, widening the circle of inclusion. From ”..der tate, di mame, der bruder, di shvester, khosn-kale in mitn…”  through “…der zeyde, di bobe, der feter, di mume, di eyniklekh in mitn…”

And notice also all the golden images. ”…a goldene keyt […] a goldenem shlitn”

One can surmise that the pear and maybe even the apple are golden. The honey and thelekakh are golden. And all are presented “…af a goldenem teler,” on a golden plate.

What a golden fantasy of abundance Molodowsky is giving her students!

And what a golden gift Molodowsky gave to us and to the world.

(With thanks to Michael Alpert and Peggy H. Davis, who taught me the trilingual song.)

Rachel Bluwstein’s Poem “כבסת הרש” is a poem that critiques society’s socio-economic design, giving power and agency to the rich while simultaneously damning the poor to a sorrowful fate.  Basing its critical edge in the biblical story of a rich man taking advantage of his poor neighbor’s sheep in Samuel 2, Rachel uses this appropriation to help her wrestle through her feelings for another, herself and the way in which society’s favoring of the rich affects both and her life.  Through a comparison of her feelings “for you” to the immense love and care the poor man has for his sheep, Rachel makes clear loss of the “you” in the poem to the rich would equally send her into a spiral of despair.

In Samuel 2 chapter 12 Nathan comes to King David and tells him a story about a rich man taking advantage of the rich man’s poor neighbor.  Nathan explained the rich man had many lambs, but the poor man had “but one little ewe lamb…[that] was like a daughter to him” (2Sa 12:3).  The poor man cared for his lamb so much that the lamb came to be likened to his children, feeding on the same food and drink as the poor man and his family.  A traveller came to visit the rich man, who was unwilling to use one of his sheeps to treat the traveller with proper hospitality.  Thus, taking advantage of the poor man, the rich man forcefully took the sheep to feed his guest, leaving the poor man with no sheep at all.  While there can be many crimes to charge the rich man with, David and seemingly also Rachel focus on the cruel aspect of taking the sheep from the poor man.  The sheep was not just livestock for the poor man, but was also his companion, family member, and as Rachel describes a source that “יחם לבב קופא,לבב חלכה,לבב לאה כל כך” (Bluwstein 52).  Therefore, the worse crime of the rich man’s actions was the cruelty and despair he would have caused the poor man by taking one his most emotionally valued relationships.

Rachel adds a further level of importance and significance to the relationship the poor man has to his sheep and that she allegorically has to the “you” in the poem.  In the first line of the second stanza of the poem Rachel writes “אין זולתה”, which the editor translated as “My ewe is all I have.” (Bluwstein 52 and 53).  However, the Hebrew does not literally mean “My ewe is all I have,” but rather means “there is no other.”  Thus, this line also hearkens to biblical texts that use that phrase mostly in the context of stating there is “no other like God.”  For example, in Samuel 2 chapter 7 it says “א׳ן אלוהים זולתך,” or  “there is no God besides you” (2Sa 7:22).  Rachel therefore uses this phrase to elevate the sheep and the “you” in the poem to the position of God, placing the ultimate amount of importance the “you” in the poem has to Rachel.

For my close reading assignment, I have chosen to examine Leah Goldberg’s “הסתכלות בדבורה”. The poem follows a three section structure, entitled א, ב, and ג . Visually, the sections get shorter in length as they progress, a feeling that is repeated in the use of more frantic and compressed language towards the end of the poem.

Sections א and ב use third-person language when addressing the bee, referring to the bee as a separate object from the reader (דבורה). Section ג changes to address the bee directly rather than addressing a third party like in the earlier stanzas. In the previous two stanzas, the voice of the poem addresses an unknown reader, forming a collective “we” between the poem’s voice and the reader  (“אך נכתי”). This second-person address adds a striking moment of intimacy in the poem as the poem asks of the bee, מדבשך? מי יזכר את דבשך? (Your honey? Who will remember your honey?). Goldberg juxtaposes this question with a description of the bee herself, ֿ

“כלך עקץ, שנאה  אין-אונים עלובה ועורת”/”All of you stinger, hatred that is helpless, miserable and blind”. The bee produces honey that is sweet and pleasing, yet her body itself is abrasive and terrifying. More broadly, perhaps we can read this as a questioning of the relationship between product and creator. Will the attributes of the creator, with all of her flaws, overshadow the legacy of that which she produced?

The negative language surrounding the bee in this stanza (עקץ, פחד, שנאה, אונים, עלובה) differs greatly from the early, almost laudatory language in stanza א, where we poem asks “אך נכתיר אותה בדברי שירה״”/”How can we crown her with songs of praise?” (a line that presumably hails from biblical or liturgical origins, also resembling Song of Songs) and refers to the bee as מלכה. The poem seems to follow a circular pattern: we begin by seeing the bee, spatially placed on the ” רבוע חלון מואר על שמשה”, described as both elegant, as a מלכה, and as having ‘ugly threat’, באיום מכוער. It is a poem of opposites. The idea of the bee as a high-flying, sweet-honey-producing, “golden leaf”, Queen Bee clashes starkly with what is visually described; perhaps the bee once was elegant and pleasant, as described in the past tense in section ב, but the bee’s body in the present moment is described with harsh, undesirable language. The poem ends in a similar way, placing the bee yet again in the present moment on the window pane (שמשה מאורה), but this time using no language of beauty. The bee’s body is ugly, her honey forgotten, and is advised to protect her soul from the fear that her body causes in others. How powerless the bee, once called a Queen, seems here!

The meter is comfortable (albeit varied), following an expected pace and breaking the lines in ways that do not necessarily distract from the reading. We see only in section ב any sort of rhyme: the words at the end of the 1st, 2nd and 4th lines rhyme in each stanza, while the 3rd lines of stanzas 1 and 2 in section ב rhyme with their plural endings. Significantly, section ב of the poem is the only section that refers to the bee in a past time; the structure and rhyme of these lines add a sense of clarity and order, perhaps even peace, to the memory of the bee as she once was. This contrasts nicely with the disorder and lack of structure in א and ג, stanzas that detail the present moment, where the lines break in the middle of sentences and the flow, albeit managable, lacks the sense of order we find in ג.

In regard to structure, the final two lines of the poem stand in stark contrast to the rest of the poem. Goldberg writes,

” הפחד הורג. השמרי לנפשך”

There is a grand statement here (“fear kills”) followed by a direct statement of advice, perhaps even warning: “protect your soul”. The lines here are short, direct and visually separated and staggered on the page/ The poem began with a visual description of a bee outside of a window, continued by entering the reader into a relationship with the bee by creating a collective “we” (as referenced above), and ending in direct conversation with the bee herself. The poem draws the reader further in, transitioning from the analysis of a being outside of the self and ending with a relationship between the creature and the reader that encourages some sort of introspection. The way the final line is written, “השמרי לנפשך “protect your soul”, blurs the lines between the bee and the reader. Is the poem warning the bee? The reader? To whom does the נפש belong? If we read the line as addressing the reader, what have we created that could be considered our ‘honey’? “הסתכלות בדבורה” is a complex poem that asks us to consider creator and product, vulnerability and supremacy, beauty and ugly and divulges new interpretations after each reading.

My sister, eight years my junior, used to start sentences with the word ‘actually’ before she really had a handle on language. I’m reminded of Eliana’s old speech patterns when looking at the way Goldberg’s “Laila” begins. I was immediately drawn to this poem because of its use of אבלat the very beginning of the poem. This word piqued my curiosity as it is usually used in the middle of a sentence. As a reader, I felt as if I was jumping right in the middle of the speaker’s thought.

The three stanzas of this poem have different structures, though the first two are more similar each with 3 lines. However, the second stanza appears identical in structure until we reach the third line which cuts off with a dash. We witness an incomplete thought. The rhyme scheme for these two stanzas follows ABC even including the broken 6th line of the poem (אנשים/רועשים,אמהות/תמהותה). The last stanza of the poem features an ABAB structure, with מברך/הכרך rhyming (noticing that Goldberg could have used the word עיר instead of הכרך), and חכם and הים. The rhyme scheme of the poem is so simple and in so ways innocent- to my ear it parallels the innocence of the poem in recalling childhood.

The childhood that Goldberg recalls is one not just of innocence but also of protection. This song of cradling that many mothers sing invokes a beautiful image and makes me wonder what kind of song it was that its melody alone brought on that sense of comfort to the child. The use of the word אמהות, for me as a reader, automatically brings my thoughts to our Biblical ancestors, the אמהות that are often forgotten in contrast to the אבות. In this poem, these mothers are the ones that bring comfort. While this implies that there must be something which is imposing discomfort, we aren’t privy to that as readers.

In the second stanza, the image Goldberg articulates is fascinating as it multisensory. There’s a brightness of the noisy waves (can you see brightness from noise?) and tales, which are either read or heard, like amazed eyes. The blending of senses actually brings me to a place of a child, as if there’s so much going around me but I don’t have the sophistication to articulate exactly what is happening. Is it the brightness? Is it the noise? Regardless, something amazes me. The image at the end of the poem of seashells on the beach automatically makes me think of children running around to collect these treasures.

The first line of both the first and fourth line of the poem repeat, with the words אבל מי שזכה בירח לבן שכזה

The third and sixth words within this line are so similar that it really forces the reader to focus. It’s just the switch of the ז and כ that create a different word. This repetition of the line adds to the simplicity of the poem in an endearing way.

Upon further reflection, it strikes me that this night-time is merited and it is blessed, it is wise and childlike. The nighttime is usually scary and full of the unknown. Yet Goldberg changes our expectation of what the night-time and what the moon can be.

I was drawn in and perplexed by the triptych “למי שלא מאמין,” and would like to do a close reading of the first poem. This poem has two characters: מי שלא מאמין (the אתה) and אני (the speaker).  Throughout the poem the speaker seems to try to navigate her own faith and faithlessness, her own waking life and her sleeping life.

The first stanza of the poem is begins and ends with two lines that are addressed to the אתה, but I would like to address the middle three lines first. These three lines, which each have the same meter and rhyme with each other, call to mind the 9th part of the weekday amidah, ברכת השנה, literally the blessing of the year. Even though it is called a blessing, it is technically a בקשה, or request – the word whose root appears three times in this short stanza. In ברכת השנה, the pray-er requests that God bless the year and all the crops with sufficient water so that all may be satisfied. Conversely, the speaker says, “קשה לחיות השנה,” (that is, this year is not satisfying her) and it is the fields and the water that make the בקשות. Of course, their requests are for blessing and faith, so perhaps it creates a reflexive pattern of requesting the request. It is the very land, the very year, who asks for blessing rather than God. All of this sets us up for the final line of the stanza which jarringly breaks both meter and rhyme. The fields and the sea are praying, but “אתה אינך מבקש דבר. “ The metrical break is intentional: the אתה is redundant, and without it, the meter would have remained intact. The extra subject seems emphatic and even accusatory of the אתה who does not request, who does not pray, who does not believe.

The second stanza focuses on the אני of the poem, and her sleep life. It seems that the word sleep is a play on the above word for year, which is particularly evident in the speaker’s heart’s “שנתו,” which in another context could mean “his year.” This stanza too ends some of its lines with the rhyme of the first paragraph, but these are interspersed with other endings, and the meter also seems to weave in and out. In the speaker’s dream, “her” dead are walking in her sleep – or her year, the year in which it is hard to live. This may, again, be a tangential allusion to the תחית המתים prayer of the amidah, but at the same time, it may simply be the subconscious’s normal expression of response to loss. The burden of silence on her dream goes back to our old motif of the muteness experienced by many of the writers we have studied, but to me, strongly recalls a sense of intertextuality with her earlier poem, “On Nightmares’ Trail,” in which the אתה says her dreams are mute and her experience illusory. In this poem, she perceives the heavy silence, even as her dead re-animate.

Perhaps, she too is among the mute walking dead. In the final stanza, she asks how she can awake from her slumber/year, when she has no faith.  The possibility that without faith, she cannot join the waking is chilling, but she implies that faith and prayer are a characteristic of the wakeful living alone. Her repetition of “ואתה אינך מבקש דבר,” as the final line seems to blur the divide between אני and אתה. It seems that neither has the words to pray, and neither may fully live.