Jewish Ideas Weekly www.jewishideasdaily.com November 12-19, 2010

Friday, November 12 ist Left finds itself bereft of arguments. conscripts and reservists to dodge military Carlo Strenger of Tel Aviv University, a col- service over the Green Line. The European- What’s Left? umnist for Haaretz, has complained that the funded Geneva Initiative, spearheaded by By Elliot Jager Left gets no credit for having been the first Oslo architect , offers a fanciful to support the establishment of a Palestinian platform intended somehow to reconcile Usually, when Israelis speak of Left and state, an idea now accepted by all; but he also Israel’s security needs with the uncompro- Right, they are differentiating mainly be- worries that his fellow leftists, by refusing to mising Arab Peace Initiative. tween security hawks and peace-camp admit that they were “partially wrong” about champions a Palestinian state in the territo- doves—not between liberals and conserva- the Palestinians, have created an impres- ries “occupied as a result of the 1967 war,” tives in general, or in the American or Eu- sion of having broken faith with the Israeli with no reference to settlement blocs that by ropean sense. By this definition, Israel’s left mainstream. It is more than an impression: common consensus will remain Israeli un- wing is in a sorry state. most Israelis do ac- der any conceivable agreement. From Israel’s found- cept the idea of a Consensus is the relevant word: the plain ing in 1948 until Li- Palestinian state, but fact is that the country has shifted to a con- kud’s upset victory in with trepidation; the sensus position on security issues. The new 1977, every govern- Left does so with en- viable “Left” is Kadima and the new viable ment was headed by thusiasm—and, un- “Right” is Likud, and the two are not at all Labor, which once like the mainstream, far apart. In tone, Kadima is positioned soft- had its own hawkish tends to believe that a er, Likud is positioned tougher; but no pro- wing. Not until Likud’s peace deal will satisfy found issues of principle divide defeat in 1992 did a Palestinian aspira- and Benjamin Netanyahu. Left coalition return tions once and for all. So is the Labor- Left not only dead to power, with the La- . More honestly than but buried? Certainly, any uptick in Arab bor and Meretz parties garnering 56 out of Strenger, the journalist Gershom Gorenberg terror will send Israelis further into the arms 120 parliamentary mandates; this comeback has acknowledged that Israel’s mainstream of the Right. But specific events at home— paved the way for the ill-fated Oslo accords. simply does not trust the peace camp to do a recent examples include the move to legis- Since then, the Left has succeeded in elect- proper job of protecting the country’s inter- late loyalty oaths for Palestinian Arabs seek- ing only one government, which, under ests at the negotiating table. ing to marry Arab citizens of Israel, or the the brief, calamitous, stewardship of Ehud Beyond policy issues, the Zionist Left has eviction of Palestinian families from their Barak, culminated in the second intifada. also been poorly led. Ehud Barak, the current dwellings in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah Were elections to be held now, every sur- head of Labor, is widely detested, and his par- neighborhood—have the potential, at least vey shows that Israel’s left wing would gain no ty is gearing up for a bruising leadership con- temporarily, to galvanize left-wing forces. further ground, and that Labor and Meretz test. Meretz leader Haim Oron has been un- The Labor party could also be resuscitated would struggle even to hold onto their cur- able to fill the shoes of his predecessor Yossi by a new leader like Shelly Yachimovich, rent sixteen seats in the . Nor would Sarid. Nor are the Left’s prospects brightened who has carved out a populist niche for her- the center-left Kadima party, which is run- by the initiatives being pursued by extra-par- self in the Knesset by downplaying the peace ning neck and neck with center-right Likud, liamentary left-wing groups patently out of camp’s discredited security positions while be able to form a coalition government. step with the national consensus. focusing instead on social and economic The political historian Colin Shindler has The Gush Shalom movement, for in- inequities. traced the beginnings of the Zionist Left’s grad- stance, has made a hero of the nuclear spy And then there is this: the parliamentary ual fragmentation and decrepitude all the way Mordechai Vanunu, is in the forefront of Left may be down and out, but the Left that back to Hamas’s suicide-bombing campaign in the campaign to boycott products produced dominates the Israeli judiciary, the media the spring of 1994, within scant months of the over the Green Line, and supports the Pales- and the arts, the educational system and Rabin-Arafat peace ceremony on the White tinian “right of return” to Israel proper (by, other large parts of the bureaucracy—that House lawn. Today, as the ideological assault to be sure, “mutual agreement”). Yesh Gvul Left is another matter, and another story. against Israel mounts internationally, the Zion- and Courage to Refuse have urged army

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Jewish Ideas Weekly, published by Jewish Ideas Daily, is a project of Bee.Ideas. To contact us, please email [email protected]. Monday, November 15 olution against traditional Judaism had run static ups and downs of Bratslav Hasidism. its course, new circles, small at first, inaugu- Throughout, Sheleg distinguishes be- A Jewish Renaissance? rated a revolution of their own: a return not tween the cultural and the spiritual dimen- By Yehudah Mirsky so much to tradition as to Judaism’s cultural sions of this Jewish renaissance—between, In recent years Israel has become a vast treasures on new terms. in his words, “those searching for Judaism open-air laboratory for experiments in Juda- The backbone was study. The late 1980s and those searching for God.” The former ism, re-fashioning rituals, reading old texts saw the founding of two pioneering study cohort is more Ashkenazi, more middle- through new lenses, scrambling and frac- centers (batei midrash): Midreshet Ora- class, and more attuned to the country’s turing familiar dichotomies between secular nim, affiliated with the kibbutz movement, cultural elites. Among the latter, one finds and religious. Secular yeshivot, mainstream more Sephardim, more Russians, and, in- performers singing medieval Hebrew terestingly, more of the newly rich. Perhaps hymns, non-denominational “prayer com- paradoxically, or perhaps not, those in the munities” in hip Tel Aviv, kabbalistic ther- first group seek to influence their society apy movements, Judaism festivals on once- and the world around them, while those in socialist kibbutzim—something is going on the second are chiefly concerned with their here, but what? own spiritual fulfillment. Another paradox: Yair Sheleg, a long-time contributor to the cultural quest is a more local drama, a Haaretz and a fellow of the Israel Democ- search for a lost center with no easy or obvi- racy Institute, has for years been training ous road back, while the spiritual quest is in a journalist’s eye and insider’s knowledge many ways part of a global trend. on Israeli religious life. An earlier book, What will the future hold? Materially, the The New Orthodox (Hebrew, 2000), docu- cultural movement is still very dependent on mented the ways in which both mainstream and Elul in Jerusalem. In both, religious and American philanthropists, while the spiritu- religious Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox secular joined together to read classical and al movement is a tempting moneymaker for were adapting to secular Israeli life and cul- modern texts in yeshiva style but without a shysters. Morally, Sheleg sees large potential ture. Now, in From Old Hebrew to New Jew: yeshiva’s claim to traditional authority. In- pitfalls for each, with the cultural renais- The Jewish Renaissance in Israeli Society, a terestingly, they made a point of studying sance at risk of devolving into an ethereal, follow-up Hebrew volume, Sheleg deftly Talmud, trying to reach for wider Jewish elitist aestheticism, and the spiritual revival explores the other side of the ledger: the horizons than those embraced by classical at risk of winding up in religious dogma- not easily classifiable groups and individu- Zionism, with its leapfrogging of Diaspora tism, hucksterism, and atavistic politics. als vigorously exploring Judaism outside the history in favor of the Bible. The Zionist Signs of degeneration are already visible. structure of the religious establishment and thinkers with whom they engaged—H.N. But, in the meantime, what about the its institutions. Bialik, A.D. Gordon, H. Brenner, B. Katznel- greater Israeli public? Can either of these The political hegemony of Labor Zionism son, A.I. Kook—were searchers themselves, currents affect it, and for the better? Both are has been in dreary decline since the 1970s. swinging on the hinge of exile and revolu- up against the deadening forces of the mass No less consequential, and perhaps more tion, despair and redemption. media, cultural weariness, the inert catego- so, is the steady dissolution of the social and By now there are dozens of alternative ries of “religious” and “secular,” and a calci- cultural ethos with which Labor built the study centers, and their style has been ad- fied religious establishment. But Sheleg also state’s society and culture. That ethos—stat- opted by a number of other institutions sees hopeful possibilities, should the Jewish ist, collectivist, secularist (with a place set from yeshivot to paramilitary colleges. renaissance succeed in presenting genuine aside for domesticated religious Zionism), Meanwhile, as Sheleg details, large numbers and compelling alternatives to the pallid, and unmistakably Ashkenazi—registered of Israelis have also been swept up by non- dispiriting brew on offer in mainstream cul- extraordinary accomplishments, but ulti- institutional forms of spirituality: popular ture. This may be wishful thinking. Still, the mately proved no match for privatization, magic and serious study of kabbalah, New 19th and 20th centuries saw several Jewish globalization, the emergence of identity Age Judaism, Judaic psychology, Carle- revolutions, for worse but also for better. Is politics, and the enduring human need for bach-inflected music, Chabad messianism, it too much to hope for another, revivifying, transcendence. Sensing that the Zionist rev- “HinJew” and “BuJu” syncretism, the ec- one in the 21st?

Tuesday, November 16 peace initiative. Among hopeful partisans ter the GOP sweep in 1994. of the administration’s efforts, the favored Here, for instance, is Newsweek’s take on Obama and Israel: What Now? position is that little is likely to change. the matter: By Benjamin Kerstein They point out that the executive branch, [E]xperience has shown that the com- not the legislature, makes foreign poli- position of Congress does not necessar- Since the Obama administration’s major cy, and that the party holding Congress, ily determine Washington’s approach to defeat in the American midterm elections, whether Republican or Democratic, tends the Middle East. The most relevant ex- commentators have been wondering how to have little say in such matters. In support ample would be President Clinton’s deal- the new constellation of forces in Washing- of this point, they cite the lessons of history, ings with Israel during his second term. ton will affect the president’s Middle East especially the experience of Bill Clinton af- Though Republicans had a majority in

Jewish Ideas Weekly November 12-19, 2010 2 both the House and the Senate, Clinton and trusted Clinton—and still do—in a way for Israel displayed by the international managed to force a recalcitrant Israeli that they do not and probably never will love community throughout the upheavals of the leader into withdrawing from parts of the or trust Obama. Large numbers consider the past decade have fundamentally changed West Bank under an interim deal with the current president to be openly hostile to Is- the country’s domestic consensus. However Palestinians. That leader’s name: Benja- rael, and even those who feel otherwise have Israelis may feel about specific issues like min Netanyahu. expressed little affection for the man or ad- settlements and borders, the overwhelming And here, in a similar vein, is the Israeli miration for his abilities. Moreover, while majority are unwilling to take the same risks pundit Akiva Eldar: Clinton worked hard to win the confidence they took in 1994, or for that matter in 1996. During Netanyahu’s first term as prime of the Israeli people, Obama has made little Moreover, they feel they should not be asked minister, the tense relations between the effort to do so; quite the to do so. liberal U.S. president and the conservative opposite, in fact. As long as Netanyahu Congress did not help [the Israeli leader] Equally significant is the keeps himself in sync with push his agenda. After Netanyahu autho- difference between the Isra- this consensus, and does rized the controversial opening of a tunnel el dealt with by Clinton and not swing too far to the near the Western Wall . . . Clinton dragged the Israel that Obama faces Left or the Right, he is like- him to Washington for a sulha, or recon- now. In 1994, a left-wing ly to be relatively safe from ciliation meeting, with Yasir Arafat. government was in power American attempts at tri- Both Newsweek’s writer and Eldar con- in Jerusalem, and large sec- angulation. Indeed, he may clude that, as the former puts it, “when the tors of the Israeli populace be in a position to indulge dust clears, [Netanyahu] can expect renewed and establishment were in a little triangulation of pressure to resume the settlement freeze in committed, both politically his own, pleasing the cen- the West Bank and get serious in talks with and emotionally, to the ter-Right in Israel and the the Palestinians.” Oslo peace process. Even U.S. by reacting sharply to The latest news headlines, heralding a after Netanyahu won of- Obama’s criticism of build- possible new settlement freeze, would seem fice in 1996, Oslo was too ing in Jerusalem (“Jeru- to confirm this analysis, which is hardly entrenched to be openly repudiated. If any- salem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the without merit. When it comes to foreign thing, it had been sanctified by the recent capital of the State of Israel”) while pleasing policy, the leeway enjoyed by an American martyrdom of Yitzhak Rabin. In addition, the center-Left by acquiescing in another president is indeed considerable. And there the pro-Oslo camp was more or less united temporary settlement freeze. are, of course, limits to how much Israel can behind Ehud Barak, a figure of considerable Barring unforeseen events, then, it is afford to alienate any administration. But credibility on the security front. Opposition highly questionable that Obama will be able the argument also misses several significant to Oslo from the Israeli Right, although it may to match Clinton’s effectiveness in pushing differences between 1994 and today, differ- have struck a sympathetic chord with some in his dream of a breakthrough agreement in ences that make any medium- or long-term Washington, could be easily triangulated, es- the Middle East on a skeptical Israeli pub- predictions problematic at best. pecially by a politician of Clinton’s talent. lic, or for that matter on an American public The most important difference is also The reality in Israel is now completely dif- whose sympathies are running strongly in the most obvious: Barack Obama is not Bill ferent. Arafat’s betrayal of Clinton at Camp Israel’s direction. Again barring unforeseen Clinton. Indeed, where Israel is concerned, David in 2000, the collapse of Oslo in the events, Obama may find himself wishing for the contrast between the two men could not carnage of the second intifada, and the all the kind of congressional support that Clin- be more striking. Put simply, Israelis loved but total lack of sympathy with or support ton never needed.

Wednesday, November 17 the Kadima party as a political workaround. tinued to attract political candidates away After Sharon became incapacitated by a from Likud, Labor, and beyond; its current Kadima in the Wings stroke, Kadima under Ehud Olmert won its Knesset lineup includes a West Bank settler By Elliot Jager 2006 election bid by campaigning for a sec- and a Peace Now proponent. ond unilateral separation, this time from the The party’s reputation for pragmatism— Whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu ac- Palestinians in the West Bank. in the New York Times, it has been variously cedes to American pressure for a renewal of Subsequent aggression from both Gaza and described as “center-Right” and “center- the construction freeze in West Bank settle- Lebanon—where, in 2000, Israel had unilat- Left”—no doubt accounts for its foreign ments, the prospect has created roiling dis- erally withdrawn from its security zone—un- appeal as well. It is widely understood that sension within the prime minister’s Likud dermined the attraction of unilateralism to the President Barack Obama would have pre- party and raised the possibility of a split— point where the policy was silently discarded. ferred Israel’s 2009 elections to have yielded or, to be more accurate, another split. And yet, despite having lost not only its char- a Kadima-led government, with Tzipi Livni, The previous Likud schism occurred in ismatic founder in Sharon but also its philo- formerly of Likud, at the helm. Washington November 2005 when Likud members re- sophical underpinning, Kadima succeeded is reportedly now pressing Netanyahu to jet- jected ’s plan for a unilateral Is- in consolidating itself as a viable “third-way” tison his right-wing coalition partners (Yis- raeli pullout from Gaza and Sharon founded alignment of pragmatists. As such, it has con- rael Beitenu and Habayit Hayehudi) and

Jewish Ideas Weekly November 12-19, 2010 3 replace them with Kadima. Presumably, finance minister, went to prison for corrup- place unilateralism, Kadima continues to run the purpose is to make Israel’s negotiating tion; and in the latest incident, Tzahi Haneg- neck and neck with Likud in public-opinion stance more malleable—though the previ- bi, a party powerbroker, was forced to quit the surveys. Unlike other third-way parties that ous Kadima government, led by Olmert Knesset on morals charges. have come and gone, it has demonstrated re- and Livni, failed conspicu- Nor is that the end of the markable staying power. Partly, no doubt, this ously to close a deal with party’s leadership problems. is because its arrival on the scene coincided Mahmoud Abbas, who Livni, though photogenic, with the evolution of a post-intifada domestic pronounced its unprec- has not emerged as a strong consensus that ending the conflict with the edented territorial conces- presence in her role of op- Palestinian Arabs was a vital national inter- sions to be still insufficient. position leader, furthering est even if it resulted in the establishment of Other contradictions a long-established reputa- a “Palestine” alongside Israel. Partly it is also may be noted. For one tion for indecisiveness. Last because its leaders are no political novices. thing, Kadima is hardly a year, even though Kadima Mostly, however, Kadima’s success reflects bastion of good-govern- won one more Knesset seat the diminished expectations Israelis have of ment reformists. Although than Likud, she failed to their elected officials. Ideological consistency, Livni’s personal integrity form a government. Livni adherence to solemn campaign pledges, up- is not at issue, Sharon was is now being challenged by standing ethical behavior, even leadership ex- investigated for wrongdo- Shaul Mofaz, a former top cellence is no longer paramount. What seems Tzipi Livni. ing on multiple occasions; general, whom she barely de- to matter most is what Kadima purports to Olmert is now on trial for corruption; pol- feated for the party leadership in 2008. offer: “pragmatism,” whatever that may mean icy chairman was convicted In spite of all this, and in spite of its fail- to any particular bloc of disgruntled voters at of indecent behavior; Avraham Hirchson, a ure to articulate a coherent platform to re- any particular time.

Thursday, November 18 long war of attrition being waged by Poland Inzikhistn demanded instead a literature at- on its Jewish citizens, Glatstein was setting tuned to the universal themes and language Summoned Home out to confront not only his personal grief of modernism and prepared thereby to gain but the national anguish of his people. The an equal footing with all other world writing. By Allan Nadler latter he had determinedly avoided in his In the ensuing years, this hope would In June 1934, the celebrated American Yid- early poetry—even as he had increasingly meet, unsurprisingly, with constant frus- dish poet Jacob Glatstein (a/k/a Yankev been forced to deal with it in his journalistic tration on all fronts. A bizarre anecdote re- Glatshteyn, 1896-1971) received an urgent work for the Yiddish daily Morgen Journal. corded by Glatstein with bitter humor in the summons to return to his native Lublin, Po- No wonder, then, that upon embarking on July 1923 issue of the group’s journal, In Zikh land, where his mother lay at death’s door. a British ship filled with Gentile passengers, (“Inside the Self”), captures their frustration: After almost two decades in the United his initial feelings were of a great liberation: That Yiddish literature is still an un- States, during which he had earned acclaim Only one and a half days out to sea, and known and almost outlandish thing for the linguistic virtuosity of his modernist already I feel released from obligations to among the Gentiles is well known. . . . verse—verse notably devoid of almost any family, society, even from the political cre- Recently, [t]he American journal, Poetry, hint of nostalgia—Glatstein found himself dos with which I had found it necessary got hold of an issue of In Zikh. And here is on an unanticipated and almost certainly to stock my brain. . . . I feel aboard this what its editors wrote us: “Unfortunately unwanted return home, at the precise mo- ship as Jonah must have felt in that first we cannot read your journal. We would ment when so many Jews were desperately moment when he thought he had escaped however like to know what language it is trying to make the reverse journey. God’s wrath. Maybe here I will be able to printed in. Is it Chinese?” His record of that transformational trip, scrape off the scabby crust of what has ac- Poetry is published in Chicago. Several in the form of a fictional travelogue by the crued to me as a writer for hire, a Jew in daily Yiddish newspapers are printed in eponymous Yash (a nickname for Yankev), a bloody world that—pace Shakespeare— Chicago. Yiddish periodicals, collections, was published in two volumes, Venn Yash only demands my pound of flesh. books are published there. There are cer- iz Geforn (literally, “When Yash Set Out,” This same sense of liberation had attended tainly also Chinese laundries in Chicago, 1937) and Venn Yash iz Gekumen (“When Glatstein’s beginnings as a passionate young and the lady-editors of Poetry have prob- Yash Arrived,” 1940). In English translations American Yiddish poet. In 1920, he was ably seen more than one Chinese laundry skillfully edited by Ruth R. Wisse of Har- among the founders of a daring group, the ticket in their lives. And after all that . . . to vard, the two have now been re-issued in a Inzikhistn (Introspectivists), whose manifes- ask whether a Yiddish journal is Chinese! single volume as The Glatstein Chronicles. to proclaimed their independence from vir- Alas, not only were the universal hopes Their appearance recalls one of modern Yid- tually every aspect of prior Yiddish writing. harbored by Glatstein and his Introspectiv- dish literature’s richest and most original Rejecting the idea that Yiddish had to limit ist colleagues never realized; in the end, they voices, whose work is today almost entirely itself to parochial Jewish concerns or themes, were literally reduced to ashes. Although unknown. to the traditional cadences of Jewish writing, literary scholars debate the extent of the Fully aware of the terrible situation of Ger- or even to the use of Hebrew orthography for transformation wrought in him by his voy- many’s Jews under Hitler, and of the decade- words borrowed from the sacred tongue, the age home, there can be little doubt that he

Jewish Ideas Weekly November 12-19, 2010 4 returned a changed man. In the Chronicles, had a poem made such a powerful impact My tired brother dreams the dream of my Yash undergoes scores of disillusioning, of- upon the Jewish public or engendered such people. ten brutal, encounters with both Gentiles heated political discussions. In the Jewish pe- He dwindles, grows small as a baby, and Jews. riodical press, hundreds of essays appeared And I rock him into the dream of my Aboard ship, the initial sense of liberation on this stunning work. But where Bialik’s people. lasts barely twenty-four hours. response to the Kishinev po- Sleep, my god, my wander-brother, By the second morning, af- grom of 1903 had served as a Sleep into the dream of my people. ter receiving news of Hitler’s Zionist wake-up call, a mani- (Translated by Barbara & Benjamin Harshav) consolidation of power in festo for Jewish national em- Germany in the “Night of the powerment and autonomy, But if, for Glatstein, the Jewish God in- Long Knives,” and discovering Glatstein’s response to the eluctably shrank to powerlessness and ulti- the utter indifference to this events of 1938 was its antithe- mate non-existence—terminally asleep, in news on the part of his Gentile sis. Remaining true to his sub- his wicked poetic subversion of the Psalmist’s shipmates, Yash finds himself jective, introspective mode, it “The Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor in search of fellow Jews. From called for no political awaken- sleeps”—and if the formerly broad universe that point on, while he still ing, no national uprising, but, devolved into an ever diminishing, eventually consorts amiably with others, to the contrary, a resigned but suffocating space, his inner voice never lost these are the voices he listens Jacob Glatstein. fiercely proud return to the an iota of its pride and dignity; nor was his to most closely. The persona of constraints of the Jewish world, undying love for Yiddish ever compromised: Yash himself almost disappears—except for the world of shtetls and ghettos. the ears that hear and the pen that records Later, after the Holocaust, Glatstein also My Tent his impressions first of the outbound trav- began for the first time to engage in theo- Embrace me with choking devotion, elers and then, in the second volume of the logical musings, recording—still in the intro- language mine, like a jealous wife; Chronicles, of the guests at an unnamed Pol- spective voice that he never abandoned—his confine me to my tent. ish Jewish resort where he goes to rest after anguished struggle to maintain some rem- . . . . grieving for his mother and in preparation nant of faith in a God who had so totally and Let no one coax me from your arms for his return to America. cruelly abandoned His “chosen people.” In Take my word, I don’t want to be “universal.” The two Yash volumes were published in these late poems, God is often portrayed as When I take my leave, 1937 and 1940. In between, in April 1938, a powerless child or, even more strikingly, as I will become a pillar of cloud, Glatstein composed what was to become his a dissipating pillar of smoke: a radically di- A gleam of light, most famous poem, “Good Night World.” minished, pathetic former deity. Above our tiny Sanctuary. Responding to increasing anti-Jewish vio- (Translated by Richard Fine) lence in Poland, this powerful work pos- My Wander Brother sesses all the defiant boldness of the 1920 I love my sad God, Heart-wrenching but stubbornly defiant manifesto of the Inzikhistn but moves in My wander brother words. To the end, this faithful, unbroken precisely the opposite ideological direction. I like to sit with him on a stone husband of a language that choked the breath The Glatstein who in 1920 was dreaming of a And silence him to all my words. from his own life’s work and consigned it to fresh and entirely subjective American Yid- . . . . obscurity, never compromised his inner- dish poetry equaling if not surpassing that of The God of my unbelief is beautiful most, Yiddish self, insisting on its dignity Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and How nice is my feeble God and integrity no less after the Holocaust than the rest here angrily slams the door on Gen- Now, when he is human and unjust. during the heady days of his youthful rebel- tiles themselves and every aspect of a merci- How graceful is he in his proud downfall, lion. As Ruth Wisse pithily observes in her less Gentile culture. When the smallest child revolts introduction to the Chronicles, “Glatstein Not since Haim Nahman Bialik’s turn-of- Against his command. . . . came to understand that his fate as a Yiddish the-century “In the City of Slaughter,” pub- . . . . poet, in a Jewish language, was indivisible lished in both Yiddish and Hebrew versions, My God sleeps and I watch over him from that of its speakers.”

THE WEEKLY PORTION week’s Torah portion affords a good oppor- family and retinue, Jacob is still fearful of tunity to look at some of what we may be the upcoming encounter with his estranged missing through the veil of translation. brother. He adopts a three-part strategy: Vayishlah: Face to Face The story: Jacob and Esau are reunited af- gifts for Esau, prayers to God, and, in a Genesis 32:8–36:43 ter an interval that is approximated at fully worst-case scenario, a plan to split his forces 22 years in the Torah (further expanded by and cut his losses: “If Esau should come and By Moshe Sokolow the Midrash to 36 years so as to allow an destroy one camp, the remaining camp can The Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon is said to additional 14-year interval for study). Al- escape” (32:8). have compared reading a text in transla- though he has grown in number and stature Dispatching his gifts, Jacob reveals his ra- tion to kissing a bride through her veil. This and is now accompanied by an extended tionale to his servants (Genesis 32:21). Here

Jewish Ideas Weekly November 12-19, 2010 5 is the Jewish Publication Society translation and Bible commentator Martin Buber called can be made for identical. Thus, when his (1962): a “leitwort,” German for a leading or themat- mother Rebecca suggests to Jacob that he I shall propitiate him with presents in ad- ic word. In their own German translation of impersonate his brother in order to wrest vance, and then face him; perhaps he will the Torah, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig took from Isaac the blessing (Hebrew: berakhah) show me favor. pains to conserve such “leading words,” and owed to the elder son, Jacob worries aloud: The three italicized words, although accu- their example was followed in the English “My brother Esau is a hairy man while I am rately conveying the meaning of the original, translation by Everett Fox (Schocken, 1983): smooth-skinned” (27:11). If this is the only obscure the fact that in each case the Torah I will wipe [the anger from] his face with physical difference that occurs to him, could uses a form of the Hebrew word panim, face. the gift that goes ahead of my face; after- it be that no other existed between the two This is an instance of what the philosopher ward, when I see his face, perhaps he will boys? If so, one might speculate that Jacob’s lift up myface ! struggle that night (which according to Mai- The appearance of the same word four monides transpired only in a prophetic vi- times in a single verse is provocative enough, sion) was not with his identical twin Esau but that is not the end of it; panim reverber- but with his own guilty conscience—as he So ... what am I ates throughout the entire reading. The very himself would come finally to recognize the thinking? next verse (32:22) tells us that “The gift went next day in his dramatic and long-postponed on ahead” (literally: ahead of his face), “and “faceoff” with his brother. he spent the night in camp.” During that In that faceoff, Jacob suddenly utters what, night, Jacob wrestles with “a man” (32:25) to all appearances, amounts to a Freudian and, in the morning, coins the name of Pen- slip, albeit one that is undistinguishable in iel (literally: face of God) for the site of their translation. Thus far, his gifts to Esau have struggle, declaring: “For I have seen God, face been referred to five different times as a to face, and my life has been spared” (32:30). minhah (an offering); but now a significant Later that same day, he is reunited with Esau. change occurs, with the gifts becoming “my They embrace, kiss, and weep. Esau initially berakhah that has been brought to you” declines Jacob’s presents, prompting Jacob to (33:11). Here, surely, the repressed voice of respond: “If I have found favor in your eyes, scruple is speaking. It is tantamount to Jacob then take this present from my hand, for, af- declaring: “If you still harbor any grudge to- ter all, I have seen your face as one sees the ward me on account of the blessing procured face of God, and you have been gracious to by chicanery—then, by all means, it is yours, me” (33:10). take it back.” So the face of Jacob’s nocturnal opponent Having struggled with cunning Esau at

Hannah Arendt is a “face of God,” and Esau’s is likewise “a birth, with his treacherous uncle Laban in face of God.” What does this mean? That the Haran, and, lastly, with his own demons, JEWISH DAILY otherwise anonymous opponent could have Jacob may at last be ready to assume the IDEAS been Esau? The Midrash indeed identifies burden of the name he had won scant hours Jacob’s opponent as Esau’s angelic patron. But earlier from his dream-adversary. No longer The best of Jewish thought. perhaps there is an alternative explanation. is he Yaakov the crooked but Yisrael the up- www.jewishideasdaily.com Jacob and Esau were twins—most likely right wrestler with God—the name borne by fraternal although a compelling argument his people ever since.

Jewish Ideas Weekly November 12-19, 2010 6