It’s hard for me to pick heroines, in general I have a hard time with choices. Give me a life-threatening life crisis and everything is clear and clear to me, what to do, who to turn to, where to turn, what to work on and what the priorities are. In crisis situations I see things clearly, like a drawing in the sand that is painted in front of my eyes. But in everyday choices I get entangled, facing the need to choose a rug, a picture frame, what to cook to sit on or who my light heroine is I get into hopeless loops.
It’s hard for me to pick heroines, in general I have a hard time with choices. Give me a life-threatening crisis and everything is clear and clear to me, where to turn and what the priorities are. In crisis situations I see things clearly, like painting in the sand. But in everyday elections I get entangled
This year everything is different and my choice for the holiday was easy and unequivocal. My light heroines this year are the poet Nelly Zakash and the translator Dina von Schwartz from Satai Who translated Zakash’s book “Psalms of the Night”.
Cover of the book “Psalms of the Night”
Nelly Zakash was a German Jewish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature together with SY Agnon. We did not learn about her at school or at university. Maybe because she was a woman, maybe because she was a Holocaust survivor and it did not fit the Israeli ethos, maybe because following the Holocaust she suffered from mental crises and was treated in psychiatric hospitals in Sweden. The act of translating her poems is an act of great kindness. Chesed with Zakash, Chesed with the songs and Chesed with us readers of Hebrew poetry.
The author Elena Prenta devotes a chapter in her book “Occasional Inventions” to the act of translation, which she perceives as a two-way process between language and the world:
“My only heroes are the translators, I love the translators especially when they read enthusiastically and offer translations. Thanks to them Italian travels the world and enriches it, and the world with its many languages crosses and changes Italian. These translators carry nations into other nations, they are the first to face Remote way of feeling. Even their mistakes indicate a positive effort. The translation is our salvation, it frees us from the well within it, quite by chance we had the chance to be born…. But if I could I would invest myself in all languages and let them all seep into me. Even the dangerous Google Translate with the list The length of the languages that come and go comforts me. We can be much more than what fell to us to be. “
I received the book “Psalms of the Night” during the holiday season. I have a habit of reading new books of poetry while praying. This is how I found myself during the holiday prayer in an improvised corona minyan among the grass and trees, with the Torah scroll wrapped in a tallit lying on a rectangular table, eagerly reading the introduction the translator wrote to the book “Psalms of Night.”
This is a rich, fascinating and profound document. The translator is also a clinical psychologist and in her opening words to the book she incorporates deep psychological insights into Zakash’s life story.
The translator is also a clinical psychologist, and in her opening remarks to the book she incorporated deep psychological insights. While reading, I was with Nelly Zakash in Berlin, in the ghetto, in forced labor and in a letter crying out for help she wrote to the Nobel laureate Selma Gerlef
Zakash knew the respected writer from her youth, adored her and corresponded with her. She was troubled, when the world grew dark and threatened to close in on her, She applied to the rescue for Lagerlef. The call was answered, Nelly and her mother were smuggled to Sweden and found refuge in a small apartment of the Jewish community.
In an artist’s hand the translator describes the process of growth and development of a poet-girl whose words, poems and literature are both home and ultimately her lifeline. A covenant of words is made between her and the world, and this covenant hurts and saves at the same time. The introduction teaches about the deep layers of poetry, the shattering of language and the creation after and within the non-transient fracture. Writes in clear language about the wound, the margins of the wound and the patients and creation used in the mix.
Simultaneously with the reading of the Torah I heard the choir of the wanderers, the choir of the survivors, the quiet sea of loneliness while knocking on the door.
Before my eyes I saw Ruth standing at the crossroads and Abraham and Sarah building houses facing the sun, toward God. At the same time as singing a hymn to Shabbat and David H. Uri and Yeshai, I read the song “Psalms of the Night” over and over again from the blue cover in bright letters.
Wrapped in a tallit, I rolled with Nelly in the incarnations of the world she went through from the darkness of Berlin to winning the Nobel, in the incarnations of crises and hospitalizations and the revolving doors of her life.
Eretz Israel / Nelly Zakash
Your spaces were measured in ancient times
By your saints, who have crossed the line of the horizon.
Your dawn air is dreamed by the firstborn of God,
Hararich, may you smile
Ascend in the breath-flame
Of imminent secret intimacy.Land of Israel,
Stargazer is selected
To the heavenly kiss!Land of Israel,
Now when your people are scorched to death
Come to your valleys
And all the echoes call for the blessing of the fathers
For the sake of the returnees,
And announce to them in a light cast a shadow
And Elijah and the farmer went after the plowman,
And the moss in the garden grew
And he has already reached the wall of heaven –
Where is the narrow alley between here and there
In it God gave and took as a neighbor
And death did not need a harvest cart.Land of Israel,
Now when your weeping people return to you
Wings of the world
To write the psalms of David in your sicknesses
And to sing in the evening of the day of his toil
The word of the Sabbath, ‘and they may’ –
Now maybe a new Ruth is standing
And in her poverty she gathers lessons
At the crossroads.
This is one of the illuminated poems in the book, most of whose poems are dipped in dark black. The song, like the life of Zakash, moves between the dawn air and light without shadow and a people scorched to death and weeping, between a heavenly kiss and the Valley of Weeping.
The song, like the life of Zakash, moves between the air of dawn and light without shadow, and a people scorched to death and weeping, between a heavenly kiss and the Valley of Weeping.
Readers of the song “Eretz Israel” I realized that the translator herself is some new Ruth, in the poverty of the world picking up lessons and songs. My heart is filled with gratitude. Thank you for being able to touch an eternal reality, involving deep blue and glowing letters. Thank you for the opportunity to feed the spirit with the rich and temporary food of the world of poetry.
In days of plague and physical, religious, cultural and moral illness – the book “Psalms of Night” is a beacon in a stormy and dark sea, erecting the mind and spirit. He opens before us a door to be much more than what fell to us to be.
The column is lovingly dedicated to my good friend, the psychological and translator Dina von Schwartz Mastai, in honor of the launch of the book of poems “Psalms of the Night / Nelly Zakash”, which can be purchased from Keshev LaShira.