| Each
time an Israeli reads the Bible, its heroes, who speak Hebrew and live in
the ancient Land of Israel, come alive and reinforce the assumption of Israeli
culture that the Bible has been revived in Israel. In the poem by contemporary
Israeli poet and writer Moshe Dor[1]
"Does David Still Play Before You?"[2]
the speaker questions this underlying cultural assumption by wondering whether
the characters of David, Solomon, Elijah and Ezekiel are truly alive in
any sense for the contemporary Israeli: |
|
Does
David still Play before You?
Does
David still play before you
on the golden harp?
And Solomon
does he still invent, in your hearing,
his fox fables.
And from which field does Elijah take off
in a chariot of fire and with horses of fire?
And Ezekiel
what being hammers him, with what creature
does he struggle in the stormy, shining substance?
|
|
In these first
two stanzas the speaker focuses on creations of the human imagination in the
Bible - David's music[3]
and Solomon's fables[4]
— and on interactions between humanity and the divine
— Elijah's ascent to heaven[5]
and Ezekiel's heavenly vision.[6]
In raising the question of whether these experiences still exist the speaker
suggests that they may not, and that any attempt to bring them alive today by
rereading the Bible may fail, for the reality of the Bible is too far removed
from our own.
In the third
stanza the speaker raises questions about the viability of the New Testament
image of Jesus' crucifixion:
Among
curls of incense,
does still to forgive and love
plead the face, paler than a cloud,
of Jesus, with the Yellow Star? |
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Wearing the yellow
star of the Holocaust, Jesus represents the six million Jewish victims
of the Nazis. In the New Testament and subsequent Church traditions Jesus'
suffering was given theological and moral meaning. In particular, Jesus'
willingness to forgive his enemies has been seen by Christian tradition
as a model for humanity to follow. Because it is unusual for Jesus to
appear in an Israeli poem, the image of him reacting to his suffering
in such an extreme manner of forgiveness and love sharpens the question
of whether there is any moral meaning to be discerned in the deaths of
the victims of the Holocaust.
The questions raised
by the viability of Jesus' response to his suffering also represent questions
directed at the Hebrew Bible and subsequent Jewish tradition that sought
to find theological and moral meaning in the suffering of the Jews. The
speaker connects these questions with the Bible by using terms such as
qetoret (incense) and timmoret (here translated as "cloud"
but actually more literally "pillar," suggesting the the expression
timrot 'ashan, "pillar of smoke," Joel 3:3).
Both terms ironically
connect the smoke of the crematoria in the death camps to biblical images
of God interacting meaningfully with humanity: the incense of the sacrificial
cult of the Temple and the columns of smoke of the prophet Joel's vision
of God's wonders at the time of the final redemption of Israel. The juxtaposition
of Holocaust and biblical images of God interacting meaningfully with
the people of Israel is an ironic one; it is clear that for the speaker,
the deaths of Holocaust victims are far removed from religiously meaningful
acts of sacrifice and that the Holocaust mocks traditional faith in the
ultimate redemption by the hand of God.
At this point in the
poem the speaker's rhetorical questions reveal that he seriously doubts
the Bible's relevance for the modern Israeli; he questions whether a meaningful
cultural context for aesthetic expressions and for interaction with the
divine can be revived. Furthermore, he finds that the Holocaust, more
than anything else, challenges traditional faith and the viability of
the Bible. This speaker, however, is driven to "rewrite" the
Bible in a way more radical and shocking than in other Israeli poems,
where an attempt is made to "confuse" or "filter"
the Bible:
And
from out which savage Bible
of erupting, extinguished suns
do your hands, hardened
in the arteries, grope regretfully to tear
up disappointed promises? |
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Jews in the
post-Holocaust world have a very different relationship with God than did the
writers of the Bible. Having let the Jews down by not protecting them in the
Holocaust, God can no longer expect either the creative outpouring of human
beings before Him or the intense interaction between people and Himself that
characterized the biblical era. Furthermore, God must realize that humanity's
disappointment with Him discourages people from living by the divine principles
of love and forgiveness. In the post-Holocaust world, the Bible [becomes] a
"savage Bible" (tanakh parua'), with images of decline and meaningless
violence, represented by "erupting, extinguished suns." The only viable
human response, the speaker suggests, is to complete the transformation of the
biblical text by removing from it all references to God's promises that are
no longer trustworthy.
Dor's repeated use of the
question words ha'od ("does [he] still") and 'ezeh ("which")
in "Ha'od David menagen lefanekha" emphasize the need for a
rereading or a rewriting of the Bible for contemporary Israeli discourse and
culture.
|
[1]
for more about Moshe Dor, see:
http://home.luna.nl/~poetry/part/27/ [back]
[2] Moshe Dor, Sirpad Umatekhet (Ramat Gan:
Massada, 1965). The translation by Denis Johnson is from Moshe Dor,
Crossing the River:Selected Poems (Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1989).
[back]
[3] I Samuel 16:23 [back]
[4] I Kings 5:12 [back]
[5] II Kings 2:11 [back]
[6] Ezekiel 1 [back] |
|
 From:
Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible,
David C. Jacobson. © Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Reprinted by permission of WSUP. |
HAIR
Table of Contents
KING
DAVID Table of Contents
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