This week’s Torah reading closes the Book of Numbers, leaving the People — who have journeyed for 40 years, losing many people in the process and raising new generations — poised to cross the Jordan. The narrative includes a 42-stage recitation of journeys: “These are the stages of the children of Israel…” (Numbers 33:1-49). Each of the stages is reported as follows: “…and they journeyed FROM [old place]….and they camped [new place].”
One lesson of the reading seems to be the importance of noting every stage on the way. And the repetition of “journeyed from” — forty-two times! — hammers home the idea that you have to leave one place to get to a new one. But events of recent weeks in the nation, as well as some travel of my own, suggest that recognizing where we are is no simple matter.
Flags
In South Carolina a few days ago, the Confederate flag was removed from the State House. (See, e.g., Al Jazeera.) Observers reportedly chanted “USA! USA!” as well as “nah nah nah nah…goodbye,” and the removal was heralded by many as a victory over hate and divisiveness. In addition, other instances of the same flag, in stained-glass windows at the Washington National Cathedral, for example, also face possible removal.
from Al Jazeera
However, there are some who mourn the loss of what they consider a “heritage symbol.”
Still others argue that the US flag, Mount Rushmore, the faces on our currency, and a variety of other national symbols and observances need to go as well. (See, e.g., Black Agenda Report.)
So, if we had to name this stage in our country’s history, what would it be?
Where are we leaving?
Where are we headed?
Are we making a collective journey at all, if we don’t share a starting point?
Horns
Stained-glass window at Kenyon College’s Church of the Holy Spirit
Meanwhile, I am visiting Kenyon College in Gambier, OH, this week, where this image of Moses (right) holds a prominent place in the campus Church of the Holy Spirit.
The horns are based, most scholars think, on a mistranslation of the word קָרַן — as “keren” [“grew horns”] rather than “karan” [“sent forth beams (of light)”] in Exodus 34. They appear most famously on sculptures of Moses by Michelangelo and Donatello (both centuries before the window design).
The horns were a “widespread medieval negative image of the Jew,” according to My Jewish Learning, and “led to the widespread notion that all Jews had devilish horns.” Moreover:
Der Sturmer cover 1932
The Nazis seized upon the negative Jewish body image and used caricatures and other forms of propaganda to present the Jews as sub-human or as disfigured humans. The Nazi weekly Der Sturmer was famous for disseminating these images. (See right, e.g.; more here).
In a 1997 history of the church, Perry Lentz says, “in the left-most first window a Moses with a distractingly muscular forearm is bringing the ten commandments.”
A video, used in promoting the “Beyond Walls” program that brought me to Kenyon this week, pans the church windows at a distance too great to discern content, while a young spokesperson declares: “When Kenyon was founded, we were Episcopalian, but now we’re completely non-denominational.”
In Bialik’s poem, the Matmid, there is both a collective of students and a “lonely voice,” chanting solo at night:
His comrades three await him in his place,
They, who have been his friends since first he came:
The burning light, the desk, his Talmud text.
— HaMatmid [The Talmud Student], Helena Frank, trans.
1947 illustration for the poem, “The Talmud Student,” by Lionel S. Reiss (1894-1988)
See also, Reiss’ illustration of this passage at right.
According to one biography, and several articles on Lithuanian yeshivot [academies] of the late 19th Century, this is a direct reflection of author’s experience. Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934; also: Haim or Hayim) studied in Volozhin in the late 1880s, where several, somewhat competing, educational forces were at work:
comraderie among students and a sense of collective learning;
the anti-ascetic leaning of one master, Rabbi Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin (“the Natsiv”); and
the 24/7 learning philosophy of Rabbi Chayyim Soloveitchik.
One Biographer’s View
1) “Bialik was no longer alone with his sacred books in the vacant synagogue of his hometown,” writes biographer Sara Feinstein of Bialik’s arrival in Volozhin. “Now he felt part of a mighty force of hundreds of talmudic scholars whose voices rang with fervor and exhilaration.” (Sunshine, Blossoms, and Blood, p.43; more below)
2) Of the Natsiv, she writes:
It was said that he once admonished a Matmid who went to extremes by denying himself food and sleep:
In your obsessive studying you do not have time to become a scholar. When you cease to exaggerate your being a Matmid, going without food or sleep, you will begin to know Torah.
3) The yeshiva’s founder, Rabbi Chayyim (the elder) Soloveitchik, ancestor of the master of Bialik’s day, “had decreed at the time of the Yeshivah’s founding that learning must go on twenty-four hours a day: ‘The sound of leaning must not cease to be heard within its walls.’ All students were required to take shifts in learning during the night, over and beyond the regular schedule of lectures and recitations…” (Feinstein, p.38)
Feinstein goes on to quote a description of a yeshiva day around the time Bialik was there:
Every student, no matter what age, is expected to attend the Shaharit (morning service) at 8:00 a.m. At the conclusion of the service some may return to their lodgings fo breaksfast, others remain in the study hall…Following Ma’ariv (evening service) students return to their lodgings for their evening meal. Some return to the Yeshivah to study past midnight, others sleep until 3:00 a.m. when they return to study until morning.
— Feinstein, again, p.38
citing Berdyczewski, “Toldot Yeshivat ‘Ets-Hayyim,” ha-Asif (1887): 237
Why is Bialik’s Matmid Alone? (Reprise)
Knowing the strong tradition of Jewish learning in groups, particularly pairs, I wondered in this blog, a few days back, why Bialik’s student is alone: is this a literary device? a reflection of personal isolation? a homelitical warning?
Apparently there is something of a controversy today about educational practice in the 19th Century, with some debate about when and where paired study called “hevruta” was used. See “Three Partners in Study” and “Learning in Pairs.”
— and, in support of paired study, I note that it was my study partner who read through the latter citation finding material pertinent to the question I was asking…points I had missed, even while citing the article! —
Even if hevruta study was regularly employed at Volozhin, however (which appears debatable), it seems that Bialik’s poem reflects the odd, late-night vigils required of students there.
So that answers the basic “why is he alone?” question, and it provides additional background for understanding the poem, HaMatmid. Deeper layers of the question remain. And “What’s wrong with this picture?” has a different resonance.
With gratitude to my many partners in study, past and present, long-time and newer. And with special thanks to my chevruta, Amy Brookman.
HaMatmid and Bialik Resources
Feinstein, Sara. Sunshine, Blossoms, and Blood: H.N. Bialik in his Time, A Literary Biography. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005.
Hebrew. The full Hebrew text is available at Project Ben-Yehuda, which “aims to make accessible the classics of Hebrew literature (poetry and prose, but also essays, letters, memoirs, and reference works) to the reader of Hebrew.”
English. An English translation, posted for educational purposes and covering much of the poem, is available at Poetry Nook.
The Hebrew Poetry group at Temple Micah (DC) is exploring some works of Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934; also: Haim or Hayim). So I have recently discovered “The Talmud Student,” one of his most famous poems. I find it fascinating and powerful. But it leaves me with one large question I’m hoping someone(s) can help me answer.
Some read this poem as pure ode to Talmud study:
The ideal Torah student is constantly studying. His is the image portrayed by the great poet Chaim Nachman Bialik in his masterpiece, HaMatmid [The Talmud Student]. There he describes the night and day devotion of the young man to his studying task in moving and inspiring terms. For Bialik, himself once a yeshiva student, the “Matmid” is the true hero of Jewish history.
— Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, VP emeritus of the Orthodox Union
It is also, perhaps more commonly, read as a statement of “great ambivalence” toward the way life in the Lithuanian yeshiva of the late 19th Century CE. (See, e.g., this Jewish Virtual Library note.)
The U.S. was in a “lingering period of childhood,” said Frederick Douglass on the occasion of Independence Day in 1852. “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.”
At this point, we’ve got another 163 years on us, and many a patriot’s heart is indeed sadder, reformers’ brows heavier: Too many of Douglass’ words still ring true today, however much has changed since 1852; for too many U.S. citizens, a day celebrating U.S. ideals is one “that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
Meanwhile, we are about the enter Shabbat Balak, with a fantastical Torah reading that centers around strange visions, an outside prophet’s view of an inchoate nation, and a people’s struggle with diversity.
In addition, tonight begins the final series of Fare Thee Well concerts, prompting many a meditation on youth, age, and the length of the strange trips we’re on as individuals and communities.
Houses of worship across the United States are separated by many things: culture, religious denomination, style of prayer, theology and language. We’re also separated by demographics and location, even in the same town.
I believe it was DC’s former police chief Isaac Fulwood who noted that 10 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour of life in the city. Of course, many things have changed since Fulwood’s tenure in the late 80s — and Jews, as well as some other religious communities, don’t hold their biggest weekly worship on Sunday. But his basic point remains.
The relative segregation of our lives and our worship communities means that, in cities like the District of Columbia, some communities mourn violent deaths with terrible regularity while others, in the same city, remain largely unaffected.
It has been one of my deepest prayers that we can find ways, in our various worship communities, to ensure that our worship reflects the welfare of our own city, specifically, while never losing cite of our wider place as citizens of the world. One place we must start, I continue to believe, is for every house of worship in the city to acknowledge the violent losses of its citizens, even if those lost and their primary mourners are not members of the congregation.
#SayThisName
In this past week, the District of Columbia has been bereaved of the following individuals through homicide:
June 26 1200 block of Raum Street, Northeast
23-year-old Kevin Cortez Johnson, of Southeast, Washington.
June 28 1600 block of E Street, Northeast
33 year-old Darrell Michael Grays of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 29 Unit block of Galveston Place, Southwest
25 year-old Rodney Delonte Davis, of Manassas, Virginia.
We are still in the 30-day period of mourning for these individuals, lost to homicide:
June 8 5100 block of Southern Avenue
21-year-old Qur’an Reginald Vines of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 10 (after June 3 injuries) Gallaudet and Kendall Streets, Northeast
57 year-old Anthony Ray Melvin of Clinton, Maryland.
June 13 3200 block of 23rd Street Southeast
54 year-old Kenneth Fogle of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 13 2300 block of 15th Street, Northeast
44 year-old Donald Franklin Bush of Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
June 14, 5200 block of Central Avenue, Southeast
26-year old James Brown of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 17 1300 block of Orren Street, Northeast
25 year-old Larry Michael Lockhart of Northeast, DC.
June 17 3300 block of D Street, Southeast
28 year-old Antonio Lee Bryant of Southeast, DC.
June 18 800 block of 51st Street, Southeast
42 year-old Brian Sickles of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 18 1300 block of 5th Street, Northwest
26 year-old Patrick Shaw of no fixed address.
June 19 3600 block of Calvert, Northwest
53 year-old Joel Johnson of no fixed address.
June 20 (after June 16 injury)
16 year-old Malik Mercer of Clinton, MD (former 10th grader at Ballou SHS in SE).
June 23 (after June 21 injury) 2200 block of H Street, Northeast
26-year-old Arvel Lee Stewart of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 23 1200 block of Holbrook Terrace, Northeast
19 year-old Heineken McNeil of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 24 at the Tidal Basin
20 year-old Deante Tinnen of Southeast, DC.
June 25 16th & Galen Streets, Southeast
21 year-old Stephon Marquis Perkins of Maryland.
The horns were a “widespread medieval negative image of the Jew,” according to My Jewish Learning, and “led to the widespread notion that all Jews had devilish horns.” Moreover:
"A Song Every Day" 