Poetry for Students

144 Poetry for Students

critique of religious and nationalist pieties, and for

his sharp questioning of conventional, self-

aggrandizing collective beliefs.

It may be best to begin this assessment of

Amichai’s work by focusing on his ironic approach

to traditional faith and his representations of God.

In one of his early poems, published in the early

1960s, Amichai writes: “God has mercy on Kinder-

garten Children / less so on schoolchildren. / And

for adults he has no mercy at all / he leaves them

alone. / And at times they must crawl on all fours

/ in the burning sand / to get to the aid station / and

they are gushing blood.” God who is said to have

compassion for kindergarten children does not

seem to be responsive to wounded adults—a clear

metonymy for soldiers in battle who are left to fend

for themselves. If God is compassionate toward

kindergarten children, why does he not care about

the wounded soldiers? After all, they too must

crawl on all fours, like children, having been cut

down in battle. Should not God have mercy on the

bleeding soldiers, should he not care even more for

the wounded who are crawling on “burning” sand?

After all, their anguish is much greater. Amichai’s

God is distant, detached, inscrutable, indifferent,

authoritarian, cynical, even ruthless. Amichai refers

to God in mechanical terms, at times, labeling God

as “the police” that maintains order among various

religious groups. His representation of God sug-

gests a secular critique of the traditional concep-

tion of God as the redeemer of the chosen people.

In Amichai’s poetry, God stands for world order,

a principle of morality and humanity—God is a

metaphor for meaning. But again and again the hu-

man quest for meaning is futile, because in much

of Amichai’s poetry aggression and hostility rule

the world.

This poem raises doubts not only about the

Jewish religious approach but also about the na-

tionalist interpretation of war. By focusing on the

wounded casualties of war, Amichai emphasizes

the high price of war. Where the previous genera-

tion of Natan Aherman and Avraham Shlonsky pre-

sented Zionism as a new secular religion, Amichai

rejects the grand pieties of Zionism. Where Shlon-

sky presented the Zionist endeavor in metaphysi-

cal, even mystical terms, Amichai presents this

endeavor in prosaic, routine, quotidian terms, drag-

ging the lofty formulas down to earth and examin-

ing the underside of each ideological proclamation.

For Amichai, the true meaning of Judaism is ex-

pressed in the ability to recognize the humanity and

religious dimension of the national enemy. To say

that Amichai rejected Judaism and Zionism would

then amount to a fundamental misunderstanding.

What he rejects is the heroic and exclusive aspects

of Judaism and Zionism.

In his Jerusalem 1967 cycle, written after the

Six-Day War, Amichai questions the consensual

“othering” of East Jerusalem’s Palestinians. In a

poem entitled “Yom Kippur,” Amichai describes

his encounter with an Arab shopkeeper in East

Jerusalem. On Yom Kippur, the poetic “I” dons

“dark holiday clothes,” a symbol of mourning, and

proceeds to stand in front of the Arab shop by Dam-

ascus Gate. The poet identifies with the shop-

keeper, comparing him to his own father, who had

a similar shop in Europe, a shop that was “burned

there”—in Germany. Not only does the poet em-

pathize with the Palestinian shopkeeper, he per-

ceives the buttons, zippers, and threads as sacred

objects: “A rare light and many colors, like an open

Ark.” This epiphany becomes the core experience

of Yom Kippur. The traditional prayer in the syn-

agogue is replaced by a silent meditation on the

human bond between enemies, the conventional ark

is replaced by a revelation, the revelation is that the

enemy is just as human as the speaker, just as per-

secuted as his own father was in Europe.

Amichai’s pessimistic assessment of the Zion-

ist condition complements his skeptical vision of

the human quest for meaning. This quest is bound

to fail because the world is torn asunder by hatred

and distrust. “Half the people in the world love the

other half / Half of the people hate the other half./”

Hatred is endemic not only to the Arab-Israeli con-

flict but to the world at large. “Must I because of

these people and those people / Go and wander and

change unceasingly / Like rain in its cycle, and

sleep among the rocks / And be rough like olive

trunks / and hear the moon barking over at me?”

Not like a Cypress

Amichai’s poetic

signature, his ability to

deflate sacral pieties, and

to celebrate mundane

experiences and ordinary

reality also requires some

interpretive effort.”