Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem
Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem
by Yehuda Amichai
THE LITRARY WORK
A cycle of 39 poems set in Israel in 1974; published in Hebrew (as Shire Erets Tsiyon, Yerushalayim) in 1974, in English (as Patriotic Songs) in 1978.
SYNOPSIS
The cycle begins with poems relating to the Yom Kippur War in Israel, then reflects on aspects of Israeli history and culminates with a contemplation of the city of Jerusalem.
Events in History at the Time of the Poems
Yehuda Amichai was born in 1924 in Würzburg, Bavaria, to a family of Orthodox Jews and was educated at Orthodox schools. As a result of the rise to power of the Nazis, the family migrated to Palestine in 1935, settling first in Petach Tikva and then in Jerusalem, where Amichai continued his religious education. During World War II, Amichai joined the Jewish Brigade of the British Army and served in Egypt. Later, as part of the Palmah, the elite force of the pre-state army, he smuggled arms and Jewish immigrants into Palestine. During his adolescence Amichai abandoned formal religious practice, but he would continue to draw on biblical and liturgical texts in his poetry. Amichai’s first book of poems, Akhshav uva-yamim ha-aherim (Now and in Other Days), appeared in 1955. It was followed in 1958 by Be-merhak shete tikvot (Two Hopes Apart), which introduced the themes that would characterize the remainder of Amichai’s work: love, war (he served in the War of Independence and the Six-Day War), time, memory, his father, and his own sense of guilt. Proving his skill as a prose writer as well, in 1961 Amichai published the short-story collection Ba-ruah ha-nora’ah ha-zot (In This Terrible Wind), and in 1963 both the novel ho me-akhshav, lo mi-kan (Not of This Time, Not of This Place) and the radio play Pa’amonim ve-rakavot (Bells and Trains). He published another eight volumes of poetry as well, culminating with Patuah sagur patuah (Open Closed, Open) in 1998, a collection of long poems and cycles that suggest he was re-evaluating the religion he had abandoned in his youth. He died in September 2000, leaving behind poetry that discusses with particular sensitivity all aspects of human life and response to events. The experience of nation and individual involved in almost constant warfare is one of Amichai’s dominant themes. His poetry on war is generally regarded as the most profound and moving in all of modern Hebrew literature.
Events in History at the Time of the Poems
Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel
Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem was published soon after the October War in Israel (known also as the Yom Kippur War). Fought in 1973, the conflict was the climax of several key events associated with the Zionist impulse. It was the ideology of modern Zionism that had led to the establishment of the State of Israel just 25 years before the war. Zionism held that it was the right of the Jewish people to end their dispersal in the diaspora and re-establish a national homeland in Palestine. Formally launched in the 1890s, Zionism had by the time of the First World War become a major political force, despite serious divisions within the Zionist movement and with Jews who did not support it. The British government, which was granted mandatory control of Palestine by the League of Nations in 1920, had earlier proclaimed sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish national home in the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. This declaration won the endorsement of the European powers and the United States but met with ferocious Arab opposition, as the Arabs were fiercely against a Jewish state’s being established in Palestine. Later, in the interwar 1930s, Jewish immigration continued to be the central issue. The decade brought in more than 200,000 Jewish newcomers, despite the introduction of severe restrictions by the British after the Arab Rebellion of 1936–39. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, freedom of immigration became crucial for Jewish survival, and Article 6 of the Mandate actually obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine under suitable circumstances. But, given the persistent violent opposition of the Arabs in the Middle East, the British restrictions continued. Immigration was at times severely limited or stopped altogether.
Eventually the British government referred the problem to the United Nations (U.N.), which, in November 1947, recommended the division of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states. Jerusalem was to be “internationalized,” that is, run by the United Nations itself, but the plan never went into effect. It was scotched by subsequent events. The British withdrew from Palestine at the termination of the Mandate on May 15, 1948, and war broke out the next day. Five Arab armies, supported by the Arab states, simultaneously invaded the Jewish settlement in Palestine (called the yishuv). This led to the War of Independence, during which Jerusalem would be divided between Israel (controlled West Jerusalem, the new city) and Jordan (controlled East Jerusalem, including the walled Old City). In the end, the war secured the Jewish state for the Jews, but at an enormous cost given the scale of human casualties on both sides. About 750,000 Arabs fled or were driven from their homes to settle as best they could in refugee camps in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. A small proportion of Palestinian Arabs remained in Israel, becoming citizens of the state. In 1949 Israel signed cease-fire agreements with the Arab states.
The Six-Day War, Jerusalem reunified
Securing the state did not secure peace. Arab attacks continued, with Israeli retaliation. Egyptian forces moved into the Sinai Peninsula, secured the withdrawal of United Nations forces there, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Seeing this as a cause of war, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt on June 5, 1967, and the so-called Six-Day War began in earnest. Within a few days Syria and Jordan had entered the fray, to little avail. All three Arab states were quickly and overwhelmingly defeated, and a much larger Israel emerged. The Israelis gained control over Jordanian territory on the western bank of the Jordan River (the “West Bank”), including East Jerusalem. Also they gained the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula (both of which had been ruled by Egypt) and the Golan Heights (conquered from Syria). As a result, Jerusalem was unified under Israeli control. Israel subsequently offered to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, and did return the Sinai to Egypt. But divisiveness among the Israelis, as well as Arab intransigence, led Israel to harden its position—there would be no return to pre-war borders. Indeed, to prevent this, Israel began to establish Jewish settlements in the newly won Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza, even though these last two areas were already densely populated with Palestinian Arabs.
Along with the territories, Israel acquired their angry residents. About a million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military rule, further stimulating the growth of Palestinian nationalism, which had been unmitigatedly hostile to Israel from the start. As intimated, the Arabs as a whole had for years refused to accept Israel’s it facto existence or recognize the right of Jews to a state of their own. Positions hardened as a result of the Six-Day War, a turning point in Arab-Israeli relations, first because Israel conquered territories in which the Palestinians lived and second because the Arab nations saw Israel as a permanent threat to their existence. Their foreign policy became directed towards war against Israel, which prompted it to wage war each time the new state perceived a real or potential threat to its existence.
Victory in the Six-Day War bolstered Israeli esteem and brought great self-assurance, but led also to problems. While Zionism’s aim had been to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, after 1967 the state found itself in the role of the conqueror and ruler of a large non-Jewish population. Another concern was the rise of militant Jewish religious-nationalist groups, whose members settled in the disputed territories. In the eyes of these militants, and various others, the areas that had been gained in the 1967 war were the inalienable possession of the Jewish people, not to be ceded back to the Palestinians; settlement, legal or illegal, ought to occur in the areas to restore for the nation the entire Land of Israel (Erets Yisrael, “Greater Israel”), in accordance with such biblical promises as, “unto thy seed I give the land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). The whole situation ultimately reinforced the growth of a Palestinian national consciousness. Advocating the right to reclaim the territories in which they had once lived, the Palestinians resolved to divest themselves of Israeli rule as well as the humiliation of living under the occupation.
The October War
This was the status of Arab-Israeli relations at the outbreak of the next major Arab-Israeli confrontation—the October or Yom Kippur War (called the Ramadan War by the Arabs). Fought in 1973 between Egypt and Syria on one side and Israel on the other, the war broke out for various reasons. Both Israel and the international community had underestimated the sense of humiliation among the Arabs after their rapid defeat in the Six-Day War, and it was only aggravated by Israel’s own postwar euphoria. Also the territorial dispute had not been resolved. Israel refused to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines; in its view, relinquishing conquered territory would not bring lasting peace and the new territories offered security by creating buffer zones in the north, south, and west. Moreover, Israel did not take Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, seriously when he threatened war.
The surprise attack by the Arabs occurred on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. Syria attacked in the north, on the Golan front, while Egypt struck across the Suez Canal. The Soviet Union and the United States joined the battle, with the Soviet Union assisting the Arabs and the United States supporting Israel, both through airlifts of arms and supplies. The situation was potentially so dangerous that Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state, traveled to the Soviet Union to negotiate a cease-fire. By war’s end, Israeli forces had rallied and held the strategic heights of Mount Hermon, which dominated the entire region between the battlefield and the Syrian capital, Damascus. They also held positions further east, which placed the outskirts of Damascus within range of Israel’s artillery. On the Egyptian front, Israeli forces mounted a successful counterattack by land and air. Eventually the Israelis secured military victory on both fronts, but the Arabs managed to cause high casualties and to do serious damage to the Israeli army before the fighting stopped.
The Yom Kippur War differed from the other wars in that the attack took the Israelis by surprise. It emerged after the war that Israel’s commanders were unprepared for the October attack because they misinterpreted the build-up of armed forces and new Egyptian fortifications along the Suez Canal as military exercises instead of preparation for war. A postwar Israeli judicial inquiry indicted many leading officers for their failure to provide adequate command. Confidence in the political leadership, particularly in Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, was seriously eroded. There had been a refusal in Israel to take intelligence reports seriously enough to prepare for war. Behind this refusal were mistaken beliefs that Israel’s devastating victory in 1967 and its control of vast stretches of Arab territory intimidated the Arabs, and that the Arab armies were in no condition to conduct an attack. Egypt and Syria had set out to regain their lost territories and do damage to the strength of the Israel Defense Forces. In this second aim, they had met with some success.
The episode brought confidence and optimism to Egypt and Syria, and dealt a serious blow to Israel’s self-confidence.
The cost to Israel in lives was greater than in any conflict since 1948—close to 2,300 dead and 5,500 wounded (Morris, p. 431). Israelis emerged from the war shocked by their casualties and frightened by their early military setbacks, despite their army’s quick recovery of the upper hand. The Yom Kippur War reawakened society to the possibility of the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people. In the eyes of most Israelis, the Arabs’ goal was to destroy Israel rather than merely to regain the territories lost in 1967. A profound lack of confidence replaced their post-1967 pride, or perhaps even hubris. Aside from the physical cost, the war took a heavy moral toll. Continued occupation of the territories undermined Israel’s international image (and perception of itself) as a valiant small power confronting large massed armies, David fighting Goliath. Furthermore, it did damage to the society’s definition of itself as a democracy and heralded the onset of serious internal dissension. A poll shortly after the war found that three-quarters of urban Israelis were prepared to give up all or nearly all the land occupied in both wars in exchange for peace. They realized, as one bereaved father told a Newsweek reporter, “we have been living in a fool’s paradise since the Six-Day War. We couldn’t afford all that boasting and self-confidence. If we have to give up some occupied territory, and then come to our senses in other ways, some good may yet come of all this” (Insight Team, p. 234). The consensus on the means to national survival disintegrated, and there arose a profound division in society about the shape of Israel’s future. The internal friction, combined with the blow to national morale and the realization of its vulnerability, led Israel into a national trauma. An integral part of this trauma was what some regarded as the transformation of Zionism, a liberal nationalist movement, into a militant vision of control over the entire Land of Israel. Along with a relatively small group of religious extremists, some Labor Party members and secular intellectuals were devoted to securing this control.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem has been inhabited since 1800 b.c.e. and is one of the principal holy places of the three major monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Jewish presence in the city began with King David’s conquest (c. 1000 b.c.e.) of Jerusalem and its transformation into the capital of a united Israelite kingdom under his rule. For Jews, the city has been the focus of Jewish nationhood since their ancient dispersal from the Land of Israel. For Christians, Jerusalem is the location of the ministry and sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion. For Muslims, the city contains the site from which the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven.
After the War of Independence, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan by a cease-fire border, which ran roughly from the north to the south of the city. A modern road carrying traffic from north Jerusalem to the center of the city followed the line that served as a no-man’s-land between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem. On both sides, the border was guarded. Israel, as noted, controlled West Jerusalem, which became the country’s capital in 1950. The Jordanians controlled East Jerusalem, which contained the Old City, center of Jewish as well as other holy sites. Among the Jewish sites were the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall, remnant of the ancient Second Temple), an ancient cemetery on Mount of Olives, and the Tomb of King David. These sites remained inaccessible to the Jews for 19 years (1948–67), until the Six-Day War.
In early June 1967, Israeli forces broke through the Lions’ Gate to the Old City and captured it. The two parts of the city were officially united under Israeli control on June 28, 1967. For the first time in nearly two decades, inhabitants from one side could visit the other side. After 1967, Jews, Christians, and Muslims would reside both outside the Old City’s walls, in modern Jerusalem, and within the Old City itself. But despite religious freedom under Israeli rule, Jerusalem continues to be a city of tensions, primarily between Arabs and Jews, but also between Christian sects, with many incidents of violence.
Particularly since the start of the first Intifada (Palestinian Arab uprising) in 1987, the city has been divided almost as severely as before 1967, with little social contact between Jews and Arabs. The Arab population lives primarily in East Jerusalem while the majority of Jews reside in the western parts of the city. In 1980 the Knesset (Israeli parliament) declared that “reunited” Jerusalem is the official capital of Israel, which stirred considerable international controversy, particularly in the context of discussion about Jerusalem’s possibly becoming an international city or a city divided between Arabs and Jews. Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital was withheld by numerous countries. In the following years, the encroachment of Jewish housing on traditionally Arab areas would remain a point of international contention; nevertheless, beyond the Old City, Jerusalem would become a thriving modern city with many new commercial and residential developments—sports facilities, cafes, hotels, discos, concert halls, a large shopping mall, and galleries. Meanwhile, within its walls, the Old City has continued to exude spirituality through its Jewish, Christian, and Arab Quarters, and its synagogues, churches, and mosques.
The Poem in Focus
Contents overview
The first 16 poems of the cycle (the poems are all numbered) deal with the Yom Kippur War and aspects of Israel’s early history. Although the poems do not give the military or political details of the war, some are set in October, identifying it to be this war. In Poem 2 the speaker tell us that “The war broke out in the autumn” (Amichai, Poem 2, Shire Erets Tsiyon Yerushalayim, p. 7; trans. G. Abramson). This first part of the cycle is not so much about the progress of the war itself, though Amichai refers to soldiers and death on the battlefield, but rather about Israel, the Israelis, and the immediate postwar mood. The poetic cycle clearly reflects the confusion and the substantive questions that emerged in the society after the war. Its poems do not enlighten readers about the progress of historical events; they reflect on the results of these events within a society deeply affected by them. In the second section of the cycle (Poems 17–39), the speaker reflects on Jerusalem after 1967. There is no obvious link in the cycle between the war and Jerusalem other than the city’s strong association with Zion, the locus of spiritual longing. In fact, it is the title of the cycle, Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem, that makes the direct connection between the two entities. Clearly the poet sees Jerusalem as a component of, or symbolic focus for, the territorial wars fought by the state from the beginning of its existence.
Section 1: War and Zionism
The poems in Section 1 (Poems 1–16) are related in subject matter, though each can stand alone. Two central topics bind the poems together: the war and the ideology of Zionism. Whether or not the poet refers explicitly to Zionism, it is central to his discussion of the war, the establishment of the Jewish homeland, and his response to it.
The cycle begins with the statement that the war broke out just as the speaker’s child was being weaned (Poem 1). This means the end of innocence, the fundamental connection of the child with the mother. Certainly the October War signaled the end of Israel’s political innocence as that autumn young soldiers, with their heavy army kits, left their families behind but carried a memory of their loved ones in their knapsacks (Poem 2). The short distance between adulthood in war and childhood innocence is conveyed in a moving image: “A soldier fills sandbags with soft sand / He once played in,” from which the poem moves to “The October sun warms our dead,/Sadness is a heavy wooden board,/And
A GENERATION’S MAPMAKER
In accordance with Amichai’s view of himself as a symbol of the fate of his society, his own imagined “map” is that of any Israeli of his generation: a map of birth in the diaspora, immigration to Israel, service in the army and in battle, and Jack of any single identity in peacetime, After the October War, many Israelis began to examine their personal “maps,” looking for solutions within their own histories as welt as Jewish history. In keeping with how widespread a phenomenon such introspection was at the time, one scholar describes Poem 11 in Amichai’s cycle as “the biography of a generation” (Gila Ramras-Rauch, Masa, 29 November 1974, Kressel Archives; trans. G. Abramson).
tears are the nails” (Poem 3, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 8; trans. G. Abramson). These last images allude to sacrifice when they liken sadness to a wooden board whose nails are made of tears. The word “board” may refer either to the board placed above Jesus’ head (which was nailed to the cross) or to the lid of a coffin. In October the sun, which is not strong, warms the dead and this in itself is the sadness: the weak October sun is unable to revive them (Poem 3).
From the start, Zionism was conceived of as an ideology in which the collective transcended and expressed the individual. Consistent with this ideology, the poems in the cycle intertwine the personal and the national so that each becomes a symbol of the other, undivided and indivisible. In the sixth poem this idea is joined to the main topics of war and Zionism: the conception of the mystic unity of the individual and the land emerges clearly in an image of a bullet wounding the soil after passing through a soldier’s body. In a collective, ideological society such as Israel’s, the pain of war is felt both by the wounded soldier and the land. Amichai writes that when the question is asked, “Where was he wounded?” one doesn’t know whether this means a place on the soldier’s body or on the earth. In a similar vein, the speaker comments wryly that because there is no peace in his heart, there is war outside (Poem 9).
There is another kind of fusion in this part of the cycle: as in many of Amichai’s poems, the experience of the individual reflects certain aspects of Jewish history. The speaker recalls all the places identified with his past that have been wiped out by wars (Poem 11). The city of his birth was destroyed in the Second World War. The same war sank the ship on which he immigrated to Israel, and subsequent wars erased every other landmark of his life. Amichai’s speaker imagines that there is a map of his life that has been destroyed, which, in fact, is the map of his memory. All that stands between him and nothingness is memory, for he is the only creator of himself and his past. Nothing objective remains. He is, he says, with a note of whimsy, not reliable as a lover or a son or as a lodger or neighbor, implying that he is reliable only as a poet, because in his poetry, his “map,” or memory, is preserved.
Israel’s pioneers, who were generally not Orthodox Jews, saw the land, rather than the Messiah, as the fulfillment of the ancient dream of redemption for the Jewish people. The speaker first seems to uphold but then questions this form of messianism, which proposes the unity of individual and land. Again he takes the Zionist idea of pioneering and joins it to war. The land will fulfill messianic expectations only through the massive sacrifice of young people in war. In Israel those who die in war are like the precious metals deep in the ground that constitute a country’s natural wealth. Instead of referring to the country’s material wealth, the speaker refers to the spiritual wealth stored in the earth: “This is a country whose dead are in the earth / In place of coal and gold and iron / They are the fuel for the coming of messiahs” (Poem 12, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 12; trans. G. Abramson). This would be an idealistic conclusion, and a comforting one in the face of almost perpetual warfare, but for the word “messiahs.” Amichai gives no idea of who these messiahs are, whether the plural indicates an ironic reference to modern leadership, or whether the messiahs will redeem Israel or be as false as some of the “messiahs” in Jewish history. This twelfth poem is one of the most powerful of the cycle in its questioning of the very purpose of sacrifice for the nation:
Like bumble bees in crazy buds
We built the new homeland
On Trumpeldor’s last words,
“It is good to die for our country.”
Even if these were not the words
Or he didn’t say them, or
They were said and then vanished,
Their space remains,
Arched like a cave. Concrete
Became harder than stone.
(Poem 12, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 12; trans. G. Abramson)
Poem 13 is directly linked to the cycle’s title even though it departs from the topic of the war. The poem begins with a reference to Naftali Hertz Imber, the poet responsible for the lyric of the Zionist and later Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah” (set to music by Samuel Cohen). The title of Amichai’s cycle borrows a phrase from “Hatikva”: “To be a free people in our land, the land of Zion, Jerusalem.” Poem 13 is a love poem, suggesting the separation of lovers and the regret, even despair, it occasions on the part of the reader. He has thoughts of acting in a violent way to stop the separation, of blowing up an airport, for example, but then realizes the futility of this—there would always be another way for his lover to leave. The poem moves away from war in theme only, not in language. Words such as “the last battle,” “destroy,” and “severely wounded” still point to battle—only this time it is the battle of love. The poem uses Imber and his lyric as a metaphor for the loss of hope in love. Through many untranslatable puns and plays on the title “Hatikvah” (“the hope”), Amichai explores the idea of hope and hopelessness in love. At the same time, the strong link between Imber (who, the speaker tells us, “died without hope”) and the cycle’s title brings the reader back to the overall topics linked together in the cycle: nation, Zionism, and war. Within the context of a cycle on war, even a love poem must use the terminology of war, so that war can never be far from the reader’s mind.
Amichai takes the idealistic imagery of pioneering out of its historical context (as an outcome of Zionist ideology) and applies this imagery metaphorically to his speaker. “My holding back the tears / hardened the foundations. And my feet treading / in despairing joy were like ploughs / and pavers of roads” (Poem 14, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 13; trans. G. Abramson). He personalizes the national endeavour by using the locations and activities of the halutzim, or pioneers, as symbols of himself, imagining that his own deeply felt emotions provide the power for strengthening or building the foundations of the country. He laments that he was too late for draining the marshes or for A. D. Gordon, a Zionist ideologue, but the poet contributes in other ways: his sadness serves to harden the country’s foundations and his tempered joy ploughs the fields (Poem 14).
Thoughts about the war continue throughout Section 1 of the cycle, which ends with the
PIONEERS
A first contingent of Jewish immigrants came to Palestine in the early 1880s after a wave of pogroms in Russia. Later, after 1897, in response to the Zionist movement, thousands of idealistic young Jews from Eastern Europe went to live in Palestine as pioneers (halutzim). Many who took part in the early-twentieth-century revolutionary struggle in Russia immigrated and laid the foundation for the Israeli labor movement Beginning as hired laborers, they went on to establish collective farms (kibbutzim), build roads, drain marshlands, and generally transform the countryside.
speaker’s wry comment that his entire life seems to have been defined by war: “Even my love affairs are measured by times of war, / I say that this happened after the Second World War / or we met one day before the Six-Day War” (Poem 16, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 14; trans. G. Abramson).
Section 2: Jerusalem
The second, longer, section of the cycle (Poems 17–39) contains poems about Jerusalem. There is an implicit political element in any mention of modern Jerusalem, and when it appears in a cycle concerned with the theme of war, this is certainly the case. In the cycle the speaker gives us a factual statement about the city’s 19-year division between Israel and Jordan. He regrets the unification, not for political reasons but because of a certain romance lent to life by the division of the city:
For nineteen years the city was divided,
The lifetime of a young manWho perhaps died in the war.
I long for the tranquillity and the yearning.
Crazy people would cross the dividing fence,
Enemies would breach it,
Lovers would go and check it…
(Poem 23, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 18; trans. G. Abramson)
For Amichai’s speaker, paradoxically the longing for Jerusalem was more satisfying than the acquisition of the entire city. Perhaps the longing for Zion, always represented by Jerusalem, is more desirable than the achievement of it, a possibility confirmed in the poem in, “I long for the tranquillity” and “the areas of no-man’s-land were like calm bays [italics added],” indicating the comparative peace before Jerusalem was restored to the Jews (Poem 23, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 18; trans. G. Abramson). In the subsequent poem (Poem 24), the speaker gives reasons for feeling this way. He contrasts the dignified, quiet of divided Jerusalem with the entity he now calls a noisy, fat woman wearing gold and copper, whom, he says explicitly, he does not love. In the modern, brash city, crowded with tourists, the speaker has lost the sense of spirituality invested in Jerusalem by historical and religious loss and longing.
Elsewhere the speaker asks implicitly what Jerusalem is for and gives the answer in one of his startling similes: it is like a ship in a bottle that does nothing but stand for the real ship on the sea (Poem 19). Jerusalem represents the ideal holy city, one that does not exist but could exist. The idea behind this poem is that there is a real Jerusalem known to God but he has given us nothing but a representation, preserved and unchanging, merely an object to be admired or a memory of true holiness. Both in Poem 19 and later in Poem 23 the fantasy satisfies more than the reality. The speaker indicates that the actual Jerusalem is a city built on death with gravestones as foundations (Poem 18), or a dead city whose citizens are earthworms (Poem 35).
Nevertheless the inner beauty of Jerusalem is there for those who seek it, not at the commercial Western Wall but at David’s tomb (Poem 26), an interior space, sensed but unseen. To a certain extent, this hidden element sustains modern Jerusalem: King David’s tomb, which the poet describes in elevated images, and four buried synagogues (buried to protect them from “God’s bombing”) are its spiritual subsoil (Poem 31, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 23; trans. G. Abramson). In truth, the gains and despoilings of Jerusalem’s past can never be wholly excised from the speaker’s awareness. But, despite his deep affection for the city, there is a sense of fatigue that stems from the need to remember and the constant guilt of forgetting, which defines Amichai’s writing. What is the nature of his obligation to remember? His answer is that whatever it is, religious tradition, national aspirations, Zionism, or the wars, he finds it tiring to be so active and constant a component of history, as if the remembering ensures the nation’s existence. For the Israelis, the historical and political past is a living part of their present and the very weight of active memory is burdensome. “Let everyone remember,” the speaker says, “so that I can rest” (Poem 34, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 26; trans. G. Abramson).
While the speaker, tired of the burden of memory, may want to relegate the keeping of the spiritual and historical heritage to official institutions (Poem 34), he is constrained to remember a single individual who fell in Jerusalem “at the gate of Gethsemane,” whose body is “an added gate in the wall” and of whose death “all of Jerusalem is a meaning” (Poem 38, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 29; trans. G. Abramson). The speaker may be referring to a soldier in this instance. But the scholar Hillel Barzel takes “Gethsemane” (where Jesus went to pray and was arrested after the Last Supper) to indicate Jesus, who represents all those slain for the sake or in the name of Jerusalem. “Gethsemane” may point not to the fallen soldier or the person of Jesus, but rather to their quality as victims, the archetypes of all who have fallen in war for Jerusalem’s sake. The idea of dead soldiers being fuel for the coming of messiahs (Poem 12) is linked to this poem (Poem 38) about martyrdom; the word “messiahs,” to the oblique reference to Jesus. In any case, the true nature of Amichai’s earthly Jerusalem (the ship in the bottle) asserts itself: it is a place of death, introduced in this cycle by images of blood and war, culminating in the strangely glorious figure of the slain one, a soldier or Christ, who ascends to heaven (Poem 38).
The “Jerusalem” part of the cycle is more abstract than the previous section, yet reminders of Jerusalem’s troubled history are embedded throughout. The lurking reality of the Yom Kippur War and other wars are directly recalled in Poem 35, which mentions “jihad and war” bursting out “like figs”; in the previous poem, national flags are the “coloured shrouds of history,” and other images of the homeland are coupled with pain, death, and memory (Poems 35, 34, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 26; trans. G. Abramson).
WILFRED OWEN AND JOSEPH TRUMPELDOR
Wilfred Owen, an English soldier-poet, wrote bitter verses about the death of soldiers in World War I. His poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” ends ironically with the latin poet Horace’s words, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”; that is, “It is sweet and decorous to die for one’s country” (Owen in Parsons, p, 64). Similar words have been attributed to the Israeli pioneer Joseph Trumpeldar, Trumpeldor 1880–1920) was a Russian-born Jewish hero who fought first in the Russo-Japanese War (1904), in which he lost an arm, and then in World War I, distinguishing himself for bravery in the British offensive at Gallipoli (1915), Later Trumpeldor devoted himself to organizing pioneer groups to settle in Palestine. In 1920 he was killed in the Arab riots at Tel Hai in the north of Israel, which he was helping to fortify. It is reported that his last words were, “En davar, tov la-mut be-‘ad artsenu” (“Never mind; it is good to die for our country”) Whether or not he really said these words is debatable, but in any case, his life and death became a symbol to pioneer youth from all parts of the diaspora. Songs, poems, and stories were written about Trumpeldor. His courage, idealism, and personal appeal made him an icon for pioneering socialist movements and right-wing groups alike. Poem 12 in Amichai’s cycle ends with an image of dead soldiers as fuel for the coming of messiahs, which, taken with the original Latin slogan and Trumpeldor’s supposed last words, makes the poem as unequivocally bitter as Owen’s.
Yet two verses before the end (Poem 37), Amichai creates a metaphor of great beauty, that of Jerusalem as a launching pad for the next world, the hollows of its valleys having been filled in with all its history, and its artifacts, good and bad, to make a level, smooth runway “for my sweet aircraft / which will come to take me up there” (Poem 37, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 28; trans. G. Abramson). In similar fashion, the final verse is a simple, sentimental affirmation of hope. The first poem in the cycle told of a child being weaned; the last expresses the hope of another birth: in holy Jerusalem “two people are lying together / on the bed / to make a new and happy person (Poem 39, Shire Erets Tsiyon, pp. 29–30; trans. G. Abramson).
Poetic protest
Poem 12 features the line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. With its idea of the supreme sacrifice—one’s life for one’s country—the motto has long been a watchword of war. In the poem, the slogan is linked not explicitly to war, but to building the homeland, a dangerous endeavor because of its association with war. After 1967 and to an even greater extent after 1973, the phrase began to ring hollow in Israel and Israelis started to question the sacrifice of the nation’s youth. This poem of Amichai’s echoes that questioning, a questioning that makes the emphasis on sacrifice in Songs of the Land ofZion, Jerusalem so representative. The poet’s apparent denigration of this slogan, supposedly recited by the Zionist pioneer Joseph Trumpeldor, can be seen as a denigration of the kind of Zionism that Trumpeldor represented. Yet, the poem suggests, so entrenched are these words in the national consciousness that they can never be erased and will continue to motivate sacrifice in war. Later, with Amichai’s permission, this poem would be printed in an anthology of poetry that protested the Lebanon War of 1982. Including Poem 12 in a volume devoted to criticizing the Lebanon campaign ensured that it was read as a political statement.
Central to the whole cycle of poems is Amichai’s bitterness about the wars that Israel has fought and in which he served. In a country where everyone serves in the army—esteemed as a force for good, the source of security, and the backbone of nationhood—the constant denunciation of war could be read as a subversive statement. However, the poet does not blame Zionism for the wars: his attitude is more radical than that.
In Poem 4, the poet claims to “have nothing to say about the war./ I have nothing to add, I’m ashamed” (Poem 4, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 8; trans. G. Abramson). Of course, the poet may not be “ashamed” of the war, but of his inability to say anything about it. In fact, he goes on in the poem to say a great deal. He makes two absurd observations, each followed by the word “yes”: that the sun revolves around the earth and that the earth is flat. These are followed by a third observation—“there is a God in heaven, yes” (Poem 4, Shire Erets Tsiyon, p. 8; trans. G. Abramson). Taken together, the lines build to an irony that reveals what the poet thinks about God’s place in the scheme of war: his poetry indicts God as either the maker of war or an indifferent onlooker. In this regard, Amichai differs from other poets of his generation: his poetry invariably implicates God in Israel’s wars.
Literary context
Members of the first literary generation of the State of Israel, to which chronologically Amichai belonged, were either born in Israel or, like Amichai, came to Israel at an early age and learned Hebrew. Many of them distinguished themselves in the War of Independence and all saw Israel proclaim itself a state while they were still in their teens or early twenties. This was the first generation to speak Hebrew as their mother tongue or as a vernacular. Almost all these writers had something profound to say about war; the war poetry of certain writers—Haim Guri (b. 1922), for example—became hymns for the fighters. More than any one of these writers, Amichai seemed to distill the war experience of his generation, expressing, without bravado or sentimentality, the reality of being a soldier and the terrible sadness of war.
Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem takes a view of war that differs from that of other contemporary Israeli poets. The cycle does not talk explicitly about the battlefield, but hints at the reasons for the war and gives readers insight into the post-1973 mood. There is an equally unique attitude to Jerusalem in the cycle: it does not portray the city with any kind of reverence, but depicts it ambiguously, as mysteriously attractive, aloof, and dangerous. The equation of Zion and Jerusalem with war in general and the October War in particular shows clearly that Amichai’s view of Jerusalem was less than wholly positive, and by no means conventional.
Reception
Amichai received many prestigious prizes, among them the Bialik Prize (1976) and the Israel Prize (1981), and in 1986 he became a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Overall, the reception accorded to Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem at the time of its publication (in Behind All This a Great Happiness Is Hiding) was positive. The cycle aroused no great controversy, perhaps because Amichai had already written a very much stronger Jerusalem cycle after the war in 1967 (Jerusalem 1967), which severely criticized Jerusalem and suggested that it was not worth all the sacrifices made for it. Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem is gentler and more elegiac and while it hints at Jerusalem’s heart of darkness, which Amichai had explored in detail in the earlier Jerusalem cycle, it also indicates some affection for its spiritual beauty. Literary scholars praised the lyricism of the cycle and, above all, its ability to express the collective experience. One noted critic wrote of “the beauty of sensual and ironic poetry whose effect has not lessened to this day” (Blat, ha-Tsofeh, p. 4; trans. G. Abramson).
Some members of the younger generation have faulted Amichai, along with other writers, for the content and tone of his poetry and fiction. The political scientist Yoram Hazony accuses several Israeli writers of “a pronounced difficulty in relating in a constructive fashion to the Jewish state” and singles out Amichai for conjuring “deeply ambivalent” images about the Jewish political restoration, citing as evidence Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem (Hazony, p. 29). Such criticism is a part of a debate raging about Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and the disputed territories, not only in Israel but throughout the diaspora. In the eyes of some, Amichai’s poetic meditations are a denial of the value of the Jewish state; others find fault with his admiration for the heroes of the Palmah, going so far as to say that his writing glorifies the values of military might and warfare (Dalia Karpel, Ha’ir, 3 November 1989, in Kressel Archives). Most writers and artists meanwhile consider it their task to constitute a voice of opposition or to puncture any vainglorious or hubristic sense within the nation, an objective that Songs of Zion, Jerusalem certainly achieves.
—Glenda Abramson
For More Information
Abramson, Glenda. The Writing of Yehuda Amichai: A Thematic Approach. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Amichai, Yehuda. “Patriotic Songs.” In Amen. Trans. Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes. Oxford University Press, 1978.
_____. Shire Erets Tsiyon, Yerushalayim (Songs of Zion, Jerusalem). In Me-ahore kol zeh mistater osher gadol (Behind All This Lies a Great Happiness). Jerusalem: Schocken, 1974.
Barzel, Hillel. “ha-Kinot ha-metukot shel Yehudah Amihai” (The Sweet Lamentations of Yehuda Amichai). Me’asef le-sifrut tarbut ve-omanut, Yediot Aharonot 25 October 1974, 2.
Blat, Avraham. “Meshorer ha-akhzavut” (Poet of Disappointment). Ha-Tsofeh, 27 December 1974, 4.
Cohen, Joseph. Voices of Israel: Essays on Interviews with Yehuda Amichai, A. B. Yehoshua, T. Carmi, Aharon Appelfeld and Amos Oz New York: State University of New York Press, 1990.
Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995.
Hazony, Yoram. The Jewish State: the Struggle for Israel’s Soul, New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Insight Team of the Sunday Times. Insight on the Middle East War. London: Andre Deutsch, 1974.
Kressel Archives. Leopold Muller Library. Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Oxford, United Kingdom.
Kronfeld, Hana. On the Margins of Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims. New York: Vintage, 2001.
Parsons, 1. M., ed. Men Who March Away. New York: Viking, 1965.
Yudkin, Leon. Escape Into Siege. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.