Additional Materials

Transcription

A Collection of
Conceptual Conversations:
Our Engagement with Israel
Conceptual Conversation:
Engaging with Israel
through Culture
Additional Readings
January 2005 ‫טבת תשס"ה‬
PILOT VERSION – FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY
1
We need a melting Pot- but this time let it
be Jewish one / Assaf Inbari
published Maariv, Rosh Ha'Shana, 15th of September 2004
Excerpt from the last chapter: 'The pond and the river'
"A living legacy of a people cannot be reduced to a list of principals of faith or into a Shulchan
Aruch. When discussing legacy or Morasha - it is not important to differentiate between religious
and secular- a definition which causes damage and division - instead let us use the distinction
between those who nurture and nourish and those who neglect.
Those who nourish are those people, both religious and secular, who grasp the present as a
continuum, as a living bridge to the past. To them the present is a river and not a pond. They row
in the river and enjoy its circles and loops. Those who nourish Judaism are not interested in still
water, which becomes foul or dirty very fast. They have an interest in getting forward, in the act of
rowing, in striving, in challenging, even in the occasionally dangerous stormy parts of the Jewish
river. These rowers include people like Chaim Nachman Bialik and Berl Kazanelson, Rav
Avraham Kook, Yeshayahu Leibovich in his early years, Martin Buber and others.
The personal and working relationship between Bialik, Brener and Agnon (described beautifully by
Haim Be'er in his book “Their love and their Hatred”) exemplify the cultural strength of the Jews
who rowed, each in his own kayak on the same river and with the same streams of the current.
The three of them received a similar Talmudic education from the Yeshiva and all three have left
the Yeshiva World. Brener ran away from that world, he rebelled against his father s house and
criticized it. Bialik who lost his father when he was seven years old, turned secular but with no
oedipal anger, contrary to Brener, he acted out of longing to the father and the warm house he
has lost: a longing that fed most of his poetry and writings, the Book of Legends and his work of
the “Kinus”. Agnon- admired his Rabbi father. When he was 40 years old he wrote of him “From
him I have received most of the little Torah I do have and he inspired me with the spirit of poetry.”
His father was his private teacher and taught him Talmud, Rambam, and European literature.
Agnon- did not rebel against his a father nor did he become secular in order to write secular
modern literature. He aspired all his life to bring his father Nachas even after his death.
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There you have it: a rebellious secular person, a secular talmudic person and an autonomic
religious person- who tried to create together a national culture. They have argued among them,
whilst rowing, but never argued over the importance of rowing not thought to experience other
rivers. They have developed three forms of rowing along the river and there is no asking who
rowed better. They have designed together a multi dimensional culture - not secular and
detached, not religious and fixed. They strove for unity but not for uniformity.
Those who neglect remain in the mud of a one-dimensional puddle, whether it be a religious or a
secular puddle. In the secular puddle one finds the Israelis who has a state based civil local
identity. In the religious or ultra religious puddle one finds those who don’t dare to deviate from the
path set by their Rabbis. Those who live in a present detached from the past and those who live in
past detached from present. They both live their lives in a two direction mud throwing taken from
the bottom of the puddle.
This summer we bid goodbye to (the Hebrew writers) Naomi Shemer, Nathan Yonatan and Moshe
Shamir. We bid goodbye to an era. The era of the Secular-Ashkenazi Ben-Gurion inspired melting
pot, that all three of them contributed to, was superficial and rooted, inviting or rejecting, touching
our souls or disturbing them - depending on who you ask. In either case it wasn’t a national pot
because there is no such thing as an Israeli nation. There is however a Jewish nation.
Now we stand, the seventy years after Bialik’s death, sixty years after the death of Berl
Kazenelson, ten years after the death of Yeshayahu Leibovich. Their spiritual legacy is laid before
us."
Assaf Inbari grew up in Israel. He is a lecturer, writer and publicist, who has
published articles and short stories in many newspapers and magazines since 1998.
3
Rachel / Rachel
In Voices Within the Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets, Edited By: Howard Shwartz and Anthony
Rudolph. Avon Books, New York, 1980
For her blood runs in my blood
and her voice sings in me.
Rachel, who pastured the flocks of Laban,
Rachel, the mother of the mother.
And that is why the house is narrow for me,
and the city foreign,
for her veil used to flutter
in the desert wind.
And that is why I hold to my way
with such certainty,
for memories are preserved in my feet
ever since, ever since.
Rachel (Bluwstein) was born in Viatka, Russia, in 1980. After studying art in Kiev, she
traveled to Palestine in 1909. Although she later went to France and Russia, she returned
to Palestine for good. Many of her lyrics have been put to music. She died in 1931.
4
My Brother was Silent / Gilboa Amir,
Translated by A.C. Jacobs
In Voices Within the Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets, Edited By: Howard Shwartz and Anthony
My brother came back from the field
In gray clothing.
And I was afraid my dream would be false
And began at once to count his wounds.
And my brother was silent.
And I undid his bundle
And took out his things, memory after memory.
Hurray, my brother, my heroic brother,
Look, I’ve found your symbols!
Hurray, my brother, my heroic brother,
I’ll shout your praises!
And his blood cried out of the ground.
Amir Gilboa (1917 - 1984; b. the Ukraine) studied at a Hebrew school and immigrated to
Palestine illegally in 1937. He worked intermittently in kibbutzim, stone quarries and British
Army camps. He eventually joined the British Army's Jewish Brigade and Towards the end
of World War II he participated in the illegal transfer of Jews to Italian ports from where
they were taken to Palestine. Gilboa also fought in Israel's War of Independence, and his
military experience figures heavily in his early poems. Gilboa received numerous prizes for
his work, including the prestigious Israel Prize. Consistently one of the most original and
experimental of Hebrew poets, Gilboa's work combines the traditional with the current, and
the personal with the national, in what is a conscious break with the poetic trends which
ruled at the beginning of his career.
5
Issac / Haim Guri
Translated by Naomi Tauber and Howard Schwartz
in Voices Within the Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets, Edited By: Howard Shwartz and Anthony
The ram came last.
And Abraham did not know
that it answered the question
that had come first
in the sunset of his life.
When he raised his white head
he saw he was not dreaming;
when he saw the angel
the knife dropped from his hand.
The boy who was unbound
saw the back of his father.
Isaac, it is told, was not sacrificed.
He had a good life, a long life,
until his eyes went dark.
But that hour
he bequeathed to his descendants
still to be born
a knife
in the heart.
Haim Guri was born in Tel Aviv in 1926. He studied at Hebrew University and the Sorbonne.
While his early poems (1949) reflect the poignant passion of the war generation, his later
poems are laced with a sense of estrangement and disillusion. Guri has published six
books of poetry to date.
6
Siren / Etgar Keret
Translated by Anthony Berris
In The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories. The Toby Press, England, 2004
On Holocaust Remembrance Day there was an assembly in the auditorium. A makeshift
stage had been put up, and on the wall behind it they had stuck up sheets of black cartridge paper
with the names of concentration camps and pictures of barbed-wire fences. As we filed in, Shelley
asked me to keep her a seat, so I grabbed two. She sat down next to me and it was a little
crowded on the bench. I put my elbow of my knee and the back of my hand brushed against her
jeans. They were thin and nice to touch, and I felt as if I’d touched her body.
“Where’s Mikey?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him today.” My voice was a little shaky.
“He’s doing the naval commando tests,” Shelley replied proudly. “He’s already passed
almost all the stages, he just has one more interview to do.”
At the other side of the hall I saw Ron coming towards us down the aisle. Shelley went on.
“Did you hear that he’s going to get the Outstanding Student Award at the graduation party? The
principal has already announced it.”
“Shelley,” called Ron, who came up to us, “what are you doing here? These benches
aren’t comfortable. Come on, I saved you a seat at the back.”
“OK,” Shelley said, giving me an apologetic smile and getting up. “It’s really crowded
here.”
She went to sit with Ron at the back. Ron was Mikey’s best friend, they played together
on the school basketball team. I looked at the stage and took a deep breath. My hand was still
sweating. Some of the ninth-graders got up on the stage and the ceremony began.
When all of the students had finished rattling off the usual texts, an old-looking man in a
maroon sweater came onto the stage and told us about Auschwitz. He was the father of one of
the kids. He didn’t speak long, just fifteen minutes or so. Afterwards we went back to class. As we
went out I saw Sholem, our janitor, sitting in the steps by the nurse’s room, crying.
“Hey, Sholem, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“That man in the hall,” he said, “I know him, I was in the Sonderkommando too.”
“You were in the commandos? When?” I asked. I couldn’t picture our skinny old Sholem
in any kind of commando unit, but you never know.
7
Sholem wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and stood up. “Never mind,” he said.
“Go, go back to class, It doesn’t matter.”
I went down to the shopping center in the afternoon. At the falafel stall I met Benny and
Josh. “Guess what,” Josh said, with his mouth full of falafel, “Mikey passed the interview today,
then he’ll have one little orientation course and he’s in the naval commandos. You know what it
means? They’re handpicked…”
Benny began swearing. His pita split open and all the tahina and the juices from the salad
were dripping over his hands. “We just saw him on the basketball court. Ron and him were
celebrating, with beer and everything.”
Josh giggled and choked, and bits of tomato and pita went flying out of his mouth. “You
should have seen them joyriding on Sholem’s bike, like little kids. Mikey was so stoked at passing
the interview. My brother said the interview is where they eliminate most candidates.”
I walked over to the school but there was no one there. Sholem’s bike, which was always
chained to the railing by the nurse’s office, was gone. On the steps there was a chain and
padlock. When I got to school the next morning the bike still wasn’t there, I waited for everyone to
go into class and then I went to tell the principal. He told me I’d done the right thing and that no
one would know about our talk, and he asked the secretary to give me a late pass. Nothing
happened that day or the day after, but on Thursday the principal came into our classroom with a
cop in uniform and asked Mikey and Ron to step outside.
The police didn’t do anything to them, just cautioned them. They couldn’t give back the
bike because they’d dumped it somewhere, but Mikey’s father came to school specially and
brought Sholem a new mountain bike. At first, Sholem didn’t want to accept it. “Walking is
healthier,” he said to Mikey’s dad. But Mikey’s dad insisted, and in the end Sholem took the bike.
It was funny seeing Sholem riding a mountain bike, and I knew that the principal was right and I’d
done the right thing. No one suspected that I’d told on them, at least that’s what I thought at the
time. The next two days went by as usual, but when I came to school on Monday, Shelley was
waiting for me in the yard. “Listen, Eli,” she said, “Mikey found out you were the one that snitched
about the bike; you better get out of here before he and Ron get hold of you.”
I tried to hide my fear; I didn’t want Shelley to see I was scared.
“Quick, beat it,” she said.
I started to walk away.
8
“No, not through there,” she said, pulling my arm. The touch of her hand was cool and
pleasant. “They’ll be coming through the gate, so you’d better go through the hole in the fence
behind the sheds.”
Even more than I was scared, I was glad that Shelley was that worried for me.
Mikey was waiting for me behind the sheds. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, “you
haven’t got a chance.”
I turned around. Ron was standing behind me.
“I always knew you were a worm,” said Mikey, “but I never thought you were a rat.”
“Why did you squeal on us, you piece of shit?” Ron said, and gave me a strong shove. I
stumbled into Mikey and he pushed me away.
“I’ll tell you why he squealed,” Mikey said. “Because our Eli is jealous as hell. He looks at
me and sees that I’m a better student than him, a better athlete, and I’ve got a girlfriend who’s the
prettiest girl in school, while he’s still a poor virgin, and it eats him up.”
Mikey took off his leather jacket and handed it to Ron. “OK, Eli, you did it, you screwed
me,” he said, unfastening the strap of his diver’s watch and putting it in his pocket. “My dad thinks
I’m a thief, the police almost charged me. I won’t get the Outstanding Student award. Are you
happy now?”
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t that, it was because of Sholem who was also in the
commando unit, because he cried like a baby on Holocaust Day. Instead I said, “You shouldn’t
have stolen his bike, it didn’t make sense. You have no honor.” My voice shook as I spoke.
“You hear that, Ron, this whining rat is telling us about honor. Honor is not snitching on
your friends, you shit,” he said, balling his fist. “Now Ron and me are going to teach you all about
honor, the hard way.”
I wanted to get away from there, to run, to raise my hands and protect my face, but the
fear paralyzed me. The suddenly, out of nowhere, there came the wail of the memorial siren. I’d
completely forgotten that it was Remembrance Day for the fallen soldiers. Mikey and Ron came to
attention. I looked at them standing there like shop-window mannequins and suddently I wasn’t
afraid anymore. Ron, standing rigidly to attention, eyes closed, holding Mikey’s jacket, looked like
an oversized coat hanger. And Mikey, with his murderous look and clenched fists, suddenly
looked like a little boy imitating a pose he’d seen in an action movie. I walked to the hole in the
fence and passed through it, slowly and quietly, while behind me I heard Mikey hiss, “We’re still
going to fuck you,” but he didn’t budge. I walked on home through the streets with the frozen
people looking like wax dummies. The sound of the siren protected me with an invisible shield.
9
Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967. He is undoubtedly the most popular writer among
Israeli youth, who feel he expresses their world, and his unique style has been widely
imitated. Critic Nissim Calderon writes that Keter is “the Amos Oz of his generation,” and
the daily Yedioth Ahronoth chose his book Missing Kissinger as one of the fifty most
important Israeli books of all time.
Keret’s books have all been bestsellers and each of them was awarded the Book
Publisher’s Association Platinum Book Prize for selling more than 40,000 copies. He
received the Prime Minister’s Prize for literature and the Ministry of Culture Cinema prize.
His books in translation have received critical acclaim around the world.
Keret lectures at Tel Aviv University Film School. His movie, Skin Deep, won the Israeli
Oscar as well as first prize at several international film festivals. About 50 short films based
on his stories have been produced, and one received the 1998 American MTV Prize for the
best animated film.
10
Excerpt from Someone To Run With
David Grossman
Translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2000
"She went down to the market Jerusalemites call Hakhatulot Square and passed between
the booths, lit with spotlights, secretly caressing the heavy hangers of harem pants and Indian
shirts. She loved the square, even though Idan and Adi had deemed it nothing more than a ‘poor
man’s Picadilly’. Her hips would begin to sway in a different, elaborate rhythm when she walked
through the booths with the hookahs and exotic oils and colorful stones. She tried on t he
Bukharan caps, and the fat vendor teased her about her pointy, Ashkenazi head; one boy, a
world-class expert (so he said), offered to write her name on a grain of rice, and she said her
name was Brunhild. A beautiful young man in shorts with a turban on his head sat on the ground,
holding the smooth leg of a girl in his hand, gently painting on it a henna tattoo. Tamar stood and
watched, a little envious. She pulled herself together and walked away, passed once, and twice,
through the booths, inhaling the thin smell of incense and the clouds of weed that billowed up here
and there. She pretended to be deeply interested in the candle booth, in all the shapes and colors,
hoping that the slight shiver she’d been feeling in her back for the past few seconds was telling
her that someone was inspecting her, but when she turned around, no one was there.
One street over, on Yoel Moshe Salomon, a performance was in progress: a girl, about
her age, whose golden curls peeked out from her colorful knit cap, held two ropes in her hands.
Burning wicks were attached to the ends of each rope, and she danced with them, crossing and
sliding them against each other in long, round motions; another girl sat behind her, staring,
leaning against the wall of a store, keeping a monotonous tempo going with the tambourine.
The girl was completely intent on the motion of the ropes, and Tamar couldn’t keep
walking, charmed by the girl’s absolute concentration, which she understood so well. She also
wanted to know what it looked like, what they see in you from the outside when you are entirely
absorbed in yourself. What of yourself do you abandon to their eyes? The girl’s eyes were blue
and beautiful, and mulishly following the two little flames; her eyebrows quivered up and down
with childish wonder, and Tamar thought they were similar in that way, she and the girl, because
Tamar also ‘sang with her eyebrows’. The two little flames crossed the night skies; there was
11
something touching about them, so daring, so precarious. Tamar then remembered where she
was and why; without moving, she cautiously and systematically glanced to the sides. She didn’t
know exactly whom she was looking for. She thought she was looking for a man, that was as
much as she had been able to gather over the last month; it’s a group of young men, very toughone of them was supposed to approach her on the street and ask her to come with him, on the
condition, of course, that she could first walk over the coals, meaning, prove she could capture an
audience. Tamar knew she had passed that test. It was her only great achievement to
date………….
Up the street, Tziyyon Square was also crowded and full of life. Boys were skateboarding
in the plaza below the bank. There was no chance of singing there, because the Breslevs showed
up with huge speakers thundering Hasidic tunes from the roof of their car. Tamar sat in a corner
by the bank and curled up, all eyes, hugging Dinka closer to her. Dozens of boys and girls were
running around; some kind of unpleasant fuss and buzz emanated from them, a mechanical hum
as they were zooming along invisible rails. They went, they came back-they were looking for
something urgently. Some of them stood by the railings, talking tersely to a bearded guy. She saw
the dwarf with the thick hips and the cheerful woolen cap, almost hidden by a group that
surrounded him: hands touched pockets, concealing fingers closed over something……….
She closed her eyes hard and opened them, and the square was still there. The Breslev
Hasidim were dancing in the center of it: seven grown man with long hair and flying beards, in
snow-white clothes and big white yarmulkes. She already knew from the previous nights here that
they would dance like that until midnight, with continuous leaps of madness and heated passion.
Two voluptuous young women in scanty T-shirts passed by her, their arms linked, and stopped to
watch. ‘Look at them,’ one of the girls said. ‘And they’re like that without Ecstasy-they’re on faith.’
Dinka pushed closer to her."
Grossman’s most popular work to date, a bestseller hailed by the Israeli press for its
mixture of fairy-tale magic, emotional sensitivity, and gritty realism, 'Someone to Run With'
explores the life of Israeli street kids and the anxieties of family life in a society racked by
self-doubt. DAVID GROSSMAN is the author of six novels and two works of journalism. He
lives in Jerusalem.
12
Excerpt from In the Land of Israel / Amos Oz
Translated by Maurie Goldberg-Bartura
Fontana Paperbacks, London, 1983, p. 238-241
"Hulda, March 1, 1983
Now we will read the ending of the book’s last chapter. It begins with a quote from a letter by N.S.
from Haifa who shares her thoughts in a letter to the author, continuing with the author’s own,
ending words.
Look. For us, history is interwoven with biography. And not just from this morning. One
can almost say that history is biography. Private life is virtually not private here. A woman might
say, for example, “Our oldest son was born while Joel was in the bunkers, during the War of
Attrition.” Or, “ We moved into this apartment exactly one week before the Six-Day War.” Or, “He
came back from the States during Sadat’s visit.”
How can one fix boundaries between areas here?
Our dear teachers once used to divide Bialik’s poems between “poems of private agony”
and “poems of public agony.” But Bialik wrote “public” poems in the first person singular. “On the
Slaughter,” for instance, is a poem that was apparently written in an outburst of fury, masochism,
and despair, and in it the poet turns to the murderer with the “axe in hand” shouting, “O hangmantake my neck, up and slay, /scalp me like a dog, my blood is forfeit.” And in the same breath he
continues and threaten the murderer, “And on your blouse/ shall spring the blood of the suckling
babe/ and of the sage,/ never to be erased, for eternity.” In other words, chop my own neck and
you shall be defiled by the blood of all Jews, “suckling babe and sage.” I-us. Us-I. And so in
Brenner and so in Alterman. The habit of the poet-emporer. (“I,” once said the Russian czar to the
German Kaiser, “suffer from the highest infant-mortality rate in Europe. But, on the other hand, I
multiply at the fastest rate in Europe!”)
The hardest question is how to distance oneself a bit, how to preserve a measure of
internal detachment.
No. The genuine question is, What is the meaning of distancing oneself? It is possible?
And if it is possible-is it right?
13
The man from Ashdod said, We’ll talk something else. “This country can really get right
into your bones. There are other things in life, no?”
Of course there are. If there aren’t, the state turns into a monster and history becomes a
merciless tyrant.
Perhaps we must compromise a little?
The insult and the fury of Bet Shemesh are a result of the magnitude of the promise this
land proffered to all who sought it, a promise that was not fulfilled, and could not be fulfilled: not
merely a land of refuge for emigrants, not just a house and yard and a living and entertainment,
but the realization of all hope. A community of brothers. “A life of purity. A life of liberty,” as the
popular Zionist song goes.
Perhaps it was a lunatic promise: to turn, in the space of two or three generation, masses
of Jews, persecuted, frightened, full of love-hate toward their countries of origin, into a nation that
would be an example for the Arab community, a model of salvation for the entire world. Perhaps
we bit off too much. Perhaps there was, on all sides, a latent messianism. A messiah complex.
Perhaps we should have aimed for less. Perhaps there was a wild pretension here, beyond our
capabilities-beyond human capabilities. Perhaps we must limit ourselves and forgo the rainbow of
messianic dreams, whether they be called “the resurrection of the kingdom of David and Solomon”
or “the building of a model society, a Light unto the Nations,” “fulfillment of the vision of the
Prophets,” or “to become the heart of the world.” Perhaps we should take smaller bites, relinquish
the totality of the Land for the sake of internal and external peace. Concede heavenly Jerusalem
for the sake of the Jerusalem of the slums, waive messianic salvation for the sake of small,
gradual reforms, forgo messianic fervor for the sake of prosaic sobriety. And perhaps the entirety
of our story is not a story of blood and fire or of salvations and consolations but, rather, a story of
halting attempt to recover from a severe illness.
Perhaps there is no shortcut.
What, then, does one find in the autumn on 1982 and in the hard winter of 1983? Not “the
land of our forefathers’ glory” and not “days or yore” but simply the State of Israel. With the
territories it occupies, which are-ironically enough-Biblical regions arousing longings and
aspirations. And with almost half of the territory of Lebanon, where crime and punishment have
become one.
Not “the land of the hart” and not “the divine city reunited,” as the clichés would have it,
but simply the State of Israel. Not the “Maccabeans reborn” that Herzl talked of, but a warmhearted, hot-tempered Mediterranean people that is gradually learning, through great suffering
14
and in a tumult of sound and fury, to find release both from the bloodcurdling nightmares of the
past and from delusions of grandeur, both ancient and modern; gradually learning to cling to what
it has managed to build here over the course of one hundred difficult years, despite the “sand and
enemies,” as the man from Ashdod put it. Gradually learning to hold on by its fingernails to what
there is.
Are we gradually learning, or perhaps not? But we should learn.
And what is, at best, is the city of Ashdod.
A pretty city and to my mind a good one, this Ashdod. And she is all we have that is our
own. Even in culture and in literature: Ashdod. All those who secretly long for the charms of Paris
or Vienna, for the Jewish shtetl, or for heavenly Jerusalem: do not cut loose from those longingsfor what are we without our longings?-but let’s remember that Ashdod is what there is. And she is
not quite the grandiose fulfillment of the vision of the Prophets and of the dream of generations;
not quite a world premiere, but simply a city on a human scale. If only we try to look at her with a
calm eye, we will surely not be shamed or disappointed.
Ashdod is a city on a human scale on the Mediterranean coast. And from her we shall see
what will flower when peace and a little repose finally come.
Patience, I say. There is no shortcut."
Author’s Note
The journey that resulted in these articles took place in October and November 1982. None
of the conversations presented here were taped. None of them are presented in full,
because they were long. I usually wrote things down as they were said; in one of two
instances I wrote things down immediately after the conversation. All of the speakers were
alive and well, both those who are mentioned by name and those who are not.
All of the articles, except for the last one, were published serially in the Davar
weekend supplement in November and December 1982, and January 1983.
I do not consider these articles to be a “representative picture” or a typical “crosssection” of Israel at this time; I do not believe in representative pictures of typical corsssections. Each place is an entire world and each man is a world in himself, and I reached
only a few places and a few people, and even then I was able to see and to hear only a little
of so much.
15
Close My Eyes / Matisyahu
In the album Shake off the Dust….Arise
www.hasidicreggae.org
No matter where I am bless me with all your light,
I'm on the train brain vexed connect and the I feel blessed
Whether day or night I'm on the street midtown New York City
Let me stop praise your name I need room to breath
I want to feel your peace; I got to feel your ease
Screaming' down on my, because my insides bleed
My hearts on fire witnessed all the vampires
Yes I came hear on a to inspire
Chorus:
Close my eyes and take a ride inside
Feel the breeze blow by yo I'm getting' you high
Bob Nesta said it best everything will be all right
Introspect connect the sect's and let this music make you fly
I listened' to the wind whistle in a channel of sound
my ear like a vacuum begin to boom
glisten like the sun heats a drum,
cursing' all of them doomed rising' up from the ground
growing full like the moon
Said I'm planting like a seed yes sir
them get up and get up and grow and I'm firm like a tree,
well I know that's all I know,
that some their colors wonderful like it was a rainbow
Let me tell you one time if you didn't know
Chorus
16
Moonlight enlighten my way at twilight
from the heights of my roof I send praise then poof
I'm looking up at the night
and ask for help to get up and get up and get up and get up and get it right
Jerusalem you take me high make me fly like arrow in the sky
Born as Matthew Miller in West Chester, Pennsylvania on 1979. At the 11th grade he had an
eye-opening realization at the Rocky Mountains: There is a G-d. Influenced by both
Judaism and reggae, he began creating his own music, combining the sounds of Bob
Marley and Shlomo Carlebach.
17
Additional readings that might interest you:
Moshe Halbertal – Boundaries of the Sacred, 2001,
“Jewish Artistic Presentation is that which ‘displays one portion but concealing the larger part’ in
which you have hints and references but no exposure and no demeaning (chiul).”
Uriel Simon – ‘Alpayim’ 13, 1996
The values that define Jewish art are the promotion of wisdom over cleverness, the moral over the
aesthetic, restraint over permissiveness, the profound joy over the superficial happiness. It is all
about the commitment to invest with meaning, an optimist faith and spiritual aspirations.
Michael Sagan Cohen – (Israeli painter and teacher at Betzalel)
Israeli art should mirror the greatest forces from which Israeli society is being molded; the collision
between west and east, between modernity and tradition, between Judaism and Hebrewism and
between the individual and society
18
Bibliography
Achad Ha'am. "The Agnostic Rabbi; The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem" (1897) in
Arthur Herzog, The Zionist Idea, New York: 1959, p. 267
Amichai, Yehuda. "Jerusalem, Port City" in Voices Within the Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets,
Howard Shwartz and Anthony Rudolph, editors. New York: Avon Books, 1980.
Amir, Gilboa. "My Brother was Silent," translated by A.C. Jacobs in Voices Within the Ark-The
Modern Jewish Poets, Howard Shwartz and Anthony Rudolph, editors. New York: Avon Books,
1980. [in 'Additional Materials' file]
Diamant, Anita The Red Tent. St. Martins Press, New York, 1997, p. 1-3
Englander, Nathan. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Vintage Books, New York, 1999
Galron, Nurit. “After Us the Flood," translated by Michael Wegier, in her album Apres Nous Le
Deluge ‫ אחרינו המבול‬, NMC Records, 1989.
Gordis, Daniel Home to Stay: One American Family’s Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in
Contemporary Israel. Three Rivers Press, New York, 2003.
Grossman, David. Someone To Run With, translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz.
Bloomsbury, 2003 . [in 'Additional Materials' file]
Guri, Haim. "Isaac," translated by Naomi Tauber and Howard Schwartz in Voices Within the
Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets, Howard Shwartz and Anthony Rudolph, editors. New York: Avon
Books, 1980. [in 'Additional Materials' file]
Inbari, Assaf. "We Need a Melting Pot, But this Time Let It be a Jewish One,” in Ma’ariv,
September 15, 2004.
Keret, Etgar. "Shoes," translated by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman, in The Bus Driver Who
Wanted to be God & Other Stories. London: The Toby Press, 2004
Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel, translated by Maurice Goldberg-Bartura . Fontana, 1984. [in
'Additional Materials' file]
Rachel. "Rachel," in Voices Within the Ark-The Modern Jewish Poets, Howard Shwartz and
Anthony Rudolph, editors. New York: Avon Books, 1980. [in 'Additional Materials' file]
Sabato, Haim. Adjusting Sights, translated by Hillel Halkin (excerpts from Chapter One). Toby
Press, 2003.
19

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