A Poem by Yehuda Amichai - All the Generations before Me

Students of biblical Hebrew benefit from reading poetry by Yehuda Amichai. The Hebrew of the poem presented below will be intelligible to anyone with an elementary grasp of classical (biblical + rabbinic) Hebrew and at least a smattering of modern Hebrew. Amichai's  language is rich in biblical and rabbinic allusions. The translation I offer is indebted to that of Harold Schimmel, but goes its own way on several occasions.

כל הדורות שלפני תרמו אותי

קמעה קמעה כדי שאוקם כאן בירושלים

בבת אחת, כמו בית תפילה או מוסד צדקה

זה מחייב. שמי הוא שם תורמי

זה מחייב.

All the generations before me donated me
bit by bit so I might be erected here in Jerusalem
all at once, like a house of prayer or a foundation for charity.
It binds. My name is my donors’ name.
It binds.

אני מתקרב לגיל מות אבי.

צואתי מטלאת בהרבה טלאים,

אני צריך לשנות את חיי ואת מותי

יום יום כדי לקים את כל הנבואות

שניבאו אותי שלא יהיו שקר.

זה מחייב.

I am approaching the age when my father died.
My will is patched with a surfeit of patches,
I must change my life and my death
day by day and so fulfill all the prophecies
they prophesied about me. So they do not become a lie.
It binds.

עברתי את שנת הארבעים. יש

משרות שבהן לא יקבלו אותי

בשל כך. אלו הייתי באושויץ,

לא היו שולחים אותי לעבד,

היו שורפים אותי מיד.

זה מחייב.

I’ve passed the age of forty. There are
jobs for which they will not take me
on that account. If I were in Auschwitz,
they would not have sent me out to labor,
they would have instantly fed me to the flames.
It binds.

יהודה עמיחי

Yehuda Amichai

The West runs the risk of becoming a “cut-flower” civilization. Its flower is the patient growth of the soil in which the plant was rooted for more than two millennia, yet violent forces have well-nigh succeeded in uprooting the plant and placing it in a vase filled with water spiked with a chemical to maintain a false freshness. The apparent elixir of youth works like magic. Yet it lasts but a day. Then the flower will die.

Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher, spoke of the forces of cultural self-hatred, and the intellectual stance that cheers them on, as Trahison de l'Occident “betrayal of the West.” On the other side, it is undeniable that apologists of tradition have given tradition a bad name. The result is the following: today the one who claims that the cultural edifice on which the West was built, from Socrates to Seneca, from Moses to Moses, from Genesis to Revelation, from Homer to Dante, from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, from Philo to Kant, is like solid rock, in comparison to which all other ground is shifting sand, seems like a voice crying in the wilderness.

Western tradition is forward-looking by nature; biblical tradition in particular has an eschatological focus. In the Bible, Zion is over and over again the locus of fulfillment of the most exalted promises. For good reason, one passage, Isaiah 2:2-4, rings a bell with almost every literate person. Others, like Isa 35:1-11 and 40:1-11, describe a return to Zion, have impressed themselves on the consciousness of generations of believers, and led eventually to the re-establishment of the Jewish people in that very place. Psalms 46 and 48 are among the most beloved celebrations of a place of cult in all of world literature.

The contrast, then, between Jerusalem as we know it and Jerusalem as we wish it sears the heart like a hot iron. The fundamental structure of this experience, sometimes referred to as cognitive dissonance, is typical of life and of religious life in particular. It is not just about ideas. It is about people who brought us to where we are. The poem by Yehuda Amichai presented above is comprehensible to Jews and Christians alike – for that matter, by all human beings – and connected without difficulty to like examples of cognitive dissonance at the intersection of history and individual experience.

Vocalized Text

כָּל־הַדּוֹרוֹת שֶׁלְּפַָנַי תָּרְמוּ אוֹתִי

קִמְעָה קִמְעָה כְּדֵי שֶׁאוּקַם כָּאן בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם

בְּבַת אַחַת, כְּמוֹ בֵּית תְּפִלָּה אוֹ מוּסַד צְדָקָה

זֶה מְחַיֵּב. שְׁמִי הוּא שֵׁם תּוֹרְמַי.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

All the generations before me donated me
bit by bit so I might be erected here in Jerusalem
all at once, like a house of prayer or a foundation for charity.
It binds. My name is my donors’ name.
It binds.

אֲנִי מִתְקָרֵב לְגִיל מוֹת אָבִי.

צַוָּאתִי מֻטְלֵאת בְּהַרְבֵּה טְלָאִים,

אֲנִי צָרִיךְ לְשַׁנּוֹת אֶת־חַיַּי וְאֶת מוֹתִי

יוֹם יוֹם כְּדֵי לְקַיֵּם אֶת־כָּל־הַנְּבוּאוֹת

שֶׁנִּבְּאוּ אוֹתִי שֶׁלֹּא יִהְיוּ שֶׁקֶר.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

I am approaching the age when my father died.
My will is patched with a surfeit of patches,
I must change my life and my death
day by day and so fulfill all the prophecies
they prophesied about me. So they do not become a lie.
It binds.

עָבַרְתִּי אֶת־שְׁנַת הָאַרְבָּעִים. יֵשׁ

מִשְׂרוֹת שֶׁבָּהֶן לֹא יְקַבְּלוּ אוֹתִי

בְּשֶׁל כָּךְ. אִלּוּ הָיִיתִי בְּאוֹשְׁוִיץ,

לֹא הָיוּ שׁוֹלְחִים אוֹתִי לַעֲבֹד,

הָיוּ שׂוֹרְפִים אוֹתִי מִיָּד.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

I’ve passed the age of forty. There are
jobs for which they will not take me
on that account. If I were in Auschwitz,
they would not have sent me out to labor,
they would have instantly fed me to the flames.
It binds.

יְהוּדָה עַמִּיחַי

For other poems by Amichai in Hebrew and in translation, see Yehuda Amichai, Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems, A Bilingual Edition (Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Press, 1992). Harold Schimmel’s translation of the poem above is on p. 3.

NOTE: per Soren's observation in the comments, I changed my original translation, "the anniversary of my father's death," to "the age my father died."

Comments

[Søren Holst]

Beautiful poem.
In verse 2, doesn't "ani mitqarev legil mot avi" simply mean "I'm close to being the age my father was when he died" - rather than close to the anniversary of his death?

[JohnFH]

Soren,

You are probably right. The phrase for anniversary is typically yom ha-shanah. Still, I thought I've seen gil meaning the same thing, or something similar. It would fit pretty well in context.

But I'll change it to the obvious meaning.

[JohnFH]

BTW, Soren, you have a beautiful blog. I wish my Danish was better.

[Søren Holst]

Thank you so much. :-) I'm afraid except for living here or studying Kierkegaard, there are few obvious reasons to most people for learning Danish. After all, there are so many other languages of tackle.

The word for anniverary (of someone's death) I've heard most often in Israel, I think, is the Yiddish loanword "yohrzeit", but of course that's very much equivalent to yom ha-shanah.

[sumathi]

i study this poem as a part of my curriculum. an interpretation of some sort will help.
thank u
:)

[radhika]

I teach this poem in my classes...an indepth commentary would be of great use.Thanks.

[JohnFH]

It would be fun to track down and situate example of metalepsis in this poem. No time now, perhaps later.

[Patrick]

Sorry I am not sure: I thought it was ZeH at the end of the strophes, but is it Zu?

[Cindy Voormeij]

Love it!