Alon Bakhut and a Warning Alongside It: On a World That Is Fading Away (Column 378)
Alterman frames old age as a mix of sadness and comfort
The column opens with Altermanās poem Gan Meir, which portrays old age as containing both sorrow and comfort. The poem provides the emotional frame for the entire piece: a backward glance at a world that grew and was built before your eyes, while you yourself bent, weakened, and gradually became part of its older landscape.
The inner core has not changed, but the audience no longer laughs
The rabbi describes a familiar feeling of older age: despite the years, inwardly he is still that same fifteen-year-old, with the same sense of humor and the same inner world. Life has of course changed, with family, children, grandchildren, and intellectual upheavals, but he does not feel that his basic self has been replaced. ××××§× the puzzled looks of young people when he tells a joke reveal the problem: it is not he who became someone else, but the surroundings that became too young to understand.
Relativity becomes the basis for claiming that the world is what grows younger
From here the central reversal is built. In a humorous register, the rabbi recruits thermodynamics and relativity: time flows forward, but everything depends on the frame of reference. Just as in space there is not always an absolute meaning to the question of what moves around what, so too in time one may place oneself at the origin of the axes and say that from oneās own perspective it is the world that moves backward, becomes younger, and grows more distant. For him this is not a descriptive mistake but a legitimate point of view.
Even the Talmud is enlisted, and the warning is aimed precisely at the young
Even the sugya about Mar Yenuka and Mar Kashisha is brought as a hint that age is also relational and depends on perspective. From there the column reverses the usual intuition: whoever thinks the older person is the one deteriorating simply does not notice that the world itself is gradually vanishing in terms of its connection to the past. The rabbi therefore warns his readers that their condition is worsening, and that they may disappear altogether if they do not do something basic like learn to understand his jokes and those of HaGashash.
Why the young solve technical problems, and perhaps why idealism weakens
This relativistic reversal also explains the young generationās command of technology: the younger the world becomes, the more scientifically and technologically advanced it is, and therefore for cellphone and computer problems one should turn to twenty-year-olds, or, if the problem is especially serious, perhaps even to kindergarten children. Alongside that, the rabbi adds, half-seriously, a sense that idealism may move in the opposite direction. The conclusion is not a physical thesis but an ironic and wistful view of aging: a person largely remains himself, but the world around him keeps becoming younger, stranger, and more distant.
Dedicated to Baby C, the grandson on the way,
who is right now in his last days before he begins to grow old.
To his mother, my dear daughter-in-law Keren, who carries him (and us) bravely.
And also to his grandmother (Grandma Daphna), who carries me and all of us bravely.
Enjoy!
Itās impossible not to open such a column with Nathan Altermanās immortal poem, āGan Meir.ā I dedicated it to my dear friend, Major General (res.), judge, and Dr. Menahem Finkelstein, at the beginning of my article in the book written in his honor (while he is very much alive, may he reach at least 120) and released into the darkness of the world a few months ago. It seems to me no less fitting to open this column as well.
| If we are granted that the fleet-footed time will not suddenly say to us: enough! we shall yet walk, my friend, along the paths of Gan Meir, leaning on canes, toward evening |
We shall walk among green trees
where Tel-Avivās starlings will storm within them,
and our beards will be long,
oh, and all our bones will say,
oh, and all our bones, my brother,
will tell of a sighing old age,
in which there is a bit of sadness and tears,
but there is also something of contentment.
Above us the trees will sway
lit by the light of dusk.
We knew them when still in pots,
and now their tops are in the heavens.
And behold, in the splendor of their stature
they have surrounded us with noise and trembling.
The years that raised them up
are the very years that bent us.
And the young women who once strolled here
in distant years at eventide,
will sit in the golden light
and knit socks for a grandchild.
And the great, young city
through which a river will pass,
will rise like a stormy garden,
and there is no force that will uproot her.
Then we will look, my friend and brother,
at one another with a fading smile
in which there is a bit of sadness and tears,
but there is also something of contentment.
And little by little, from old age and weakness,
we will lower our heads onto a knee,
and children will draw near in a whisper
and say: the sons of Terah have fallen asleep.
If we are granted that the fleet-footed time
will not suddenly say to us: enough!
we shall yet walk, my friend,
along the paths of Gan Meir,
leaning on canes, toward evening.
The poem appeared in 1944 in āThe Seventh Columnā in Davar, and received at least two musical settings (by Hanan Yovel and by Akiva Nof). It was written for the opening of the park, and in it Alterman imagines his state at a later age (when the park will be younger than it is now).
This morning my wife Daphna and I, your faithful servant, came to an interesting realization: itās not that we are aging, but that the world is getting younger and younger all the time, alarmingly so. I donāt know what to do with this insight other than the need I feel to share with you something from my life experience.
Like all our friends, I too feel that although I have reached the age of sixty (and one, but donāt tell), inside Iām exactly the same person as at fifteen. The jokes are the same jokes (truly excellent), the feelings the same feelings, and the inner world more or less as it was. Iāve gone through intellectual upheavals, and of course there were changes in my personal life (after all, I am responsible for a wife and six dwarfs and four and a half delightful grandchildren, if we include Baby C), and yet the inner core is exactly as it was.
And still, a person tells a wonderfully successful joke, and everyone around looks at him as if heās landed from the moon. It seems these idiots donāt quite digest that this was a joke. Well, I console myself that they donāt even understand whatās funny about the Gashash troupe, so Iām in good company. This is exactly what I hear from my friends too (who, surprisingly, are more or less the same chronological age). Each of us drops a joke in front of his children or their friends, and immediately is sure heās won them over. Now all the youngsters will surely understand that heās totally with it (not from the world to come), one of the gang with a most excellent sense of humor (ācool,ā even?!). But suddenly he notices embarrassed, somewhat bewildered looks, or at best a polite chuckle. And even regarding that chuckle, itās not clear whether itās a polite response to the ājokeā (yeah, right) or just a titter at the expense of the old codger clowning around before them.
And little by little, from old age and weakness,
we will lower our heads onto a knee,
and children will draw near in a whisper
and say: the sons of Terah have fallen asleep.
So whatās going on here? Surely I havenāt matured. Iām still that fifteen-year-old with a superb sense of humor who has everyone rolling (even then it wasnāt exactly so, but againādonāt tell). So why donāt they laugh? Ah, the answer is obvious: they are simply younger than they used to be. In the past, when everyone laughed, I was surrounded by people my age. After a while, I noticed that the people around me began to be younger by about a decade. Very quickly I reached the sorry state where the world had become so young that among those around me were tots forty years my junior. But this amazing process continues, and now there are people around me fifty and sixty years younger, and I assume by induction that this will continue in the same direction. At some point the world will reach an age at which Iāll stop seeing it because of the temporal distance between us, and then no one will laugh anymore (I hope there will be a few who will shed a tear over the beauty that has withered to dust, an old Terah like me).
Or perhaps the verse will be fulfilled in us:
If we are granted that the fleet-footed time
will not suddenly say to us: enough!
we shall yet walk, my friend,
along the paths of Gan Meir,
leaning on canes, toward evening
You surely think Iāve flipped the time axis and now see time running backward (the illusions of old age). Thatās really not true (for I am not old at all). Contrary to what emerges from pure physics (the kind valid at temperature 0), thermodynamics teaches us that time always moves forward (!); it is you who drift along it in the opposite direction. And about this the prophet cries out and warns: take noteāyouāre going the wrong way. You are swimming against the current and driving in the oncoming lane. Even if you are not run over by the wheels of time flowing toward you, you will go and disappear into the recesses and depths of history without noticing:
And behold, in the splendor of their stature
they have surrounded us with noise and trembling.
The years that raised them up
are the very years that bent us.
And if not a proof, then a hint: it is stated in the Talmud that Rav įø¤isda had two sons: Mar Yanuka and Mar Kashisha. Rashi explains (Ketubbot 89b, s.v. āMar Yanukaā): āRav įø¤isda had two sons, and their names were the same, except that the elder is called Mar Kashisha and the younger Mar Yanuka.ā But Tosafot (s.v. āMar Yanuka,ā Bava Batra 7b) write: āHe is the elder, and because he was born in Rav įø¤isdaās youth he is called Mar Yanuka. And Mar Kashisha is the younger, born in Rav įø¤isdaās old age.ā Mark this well.
The theory of relativity teaches us two things: 1) that time and space are not two different things. They are two components of a four-dimensional space. Time, too, is a kind of space (indeed, its coefficient in the metric differs, and this is not the place). 2) that how we view things depends on the point of view (the coordinate system).[1] The conclusion from these two claims is that just as in the spatial context, someone observing from the standpoint of planet Earth will see the sun circling it, so if I place myself at the origin of the temporal axes, itās no wonder I see the world around me indeed growing younger. In the spatial context, I explained that there is no ārightā and āwrongā here (contrary to the common but mistaken discourse on the matter), and so it is in the temporal context. Here too there is no right and wrong. From my perspective it is entirely true that the world is getting younger, and this of course arouses in me deep concern for its fate. Its connection with me is weakening until in the end it will disappear entirely, the poor thing. I wonder what will become of it then?! So at least donāt say I didnāt tell you and didnāt warn you. You surely donāt see it. You probably think Iām aging, and thus you donāt see your clearly deteriorating state. If so, allow me to say to you honestly and bravely before you fade away completely: pay attention to your worsening condition! If you donāt do something about it (like, for example, trying to understand my jokes and those of the Gashash), you will disappear.
Youāll ask me: so how is there technological progress if people are drifting backward in time? Thatās your mistake. Technological and scientific progress is indeed achieved with the advance of time, but only when my environment flows backward along the time axis, that is, becomes younger. I tell you this from experience. After all, the fact is that a few years ago, when my surroundings were less young, the world was less technologically developed. By the way, for some reason I have a feeling that idealism flows in the opposite direction along the time axis, but perhaps Iām mistaken. About this the wisest of all men, who long ago faded away in the depths of historyāthat is, made himself young to nothingāalready said:
Do not say, āHow is it that the former days were better than these?ā For you do not ask this out of wisdom.
You think that moving forward in time brings scientific and technological progress, but this is of course a mistake. On the contrary, when the world goes and becomes young, it advances technologically. The farther the Big Bang recedes from us into the past, the more science advances. The world may belong to the young, but they too in turn become old and pass the world on to those younger than they. No wonder that nowadays, when I have a problem with my cell phone or laptop, I turn to higher instances: twenty-year-olds. And if the problem is truly serious, following the advice of my brother Danny, the wisest of men, I must turn only to experts no older than kindergarteners. As our sages said: āI saw an upside-down world; those above are below and those below are above.ā
You have been warned!
Discussion
And from age 13: the world is like an old geezer.
Go out and learn: SF does have value, if only as a toolbox for fine homiletics.
One thing struck me like a snakebite. Iām roughly halfway there in age, but already now I donāt feel that the inner core is exactly what it used to be. Quite the opposite. It seems to me that everything has changed, and I donāt really recognize the child I once was. Itās not that the general feeling of childishness isnāt there, but it isnāt connected to that child who drank my chocolate milk every morning when I was little. He, of blessed memory, was wrong about everything. I need to think about this in a quiet moment.
For a possible solution, one should watch the film Tenet (released in November 2020), and listeners will enjoy it.
1. R. Michael, you are definitely old, for both of us are at the stage of āat sixty, old ageā (Mishnah Avot 5:21).
May you live to 120 at least!
2. I long ago compared good literature (perhaps this is especially noticeable in Hebrew translations of books) to wine.
Both improve with time. Wine ages and improves, while Hebrew, sadly, keeps deteriorating. Therefore the old books are much better than the new ones.
Haha, true, the rabbi gave me a kind of serious stand-up routine in this column. . .
These really are points worth thinking about.
And the rabbi shouldnāt say he doesnāt get the young peopleās mindset; on the contrary, the rabbi gets exactly how people look at an old fossil. [Or perhaps the rabbi doesnāt understand the mindset of todayās youth, but rather when the rabbi himself was young he would chuckle with his friends about the local old fossil… and this requires further study].
It is worth noting, as Judge Dan Menachem Finkelstein discusses, another issue with which brain research and legal theory deal: the question of the legal admissibility of ārepressed memory,ā as noted in his Wikipedia entry.
Best regards, Yifa”or
With God’s help, 2 Nisan 5780
Terah is the clearest example of a person who, at an advanced age, manages to make a 180-degree change in his worldview. From a zealous idol worshiper who complains to Nimrod about his wayward son smashing the idols, Terah becomes his sonās disciple, adopts his faith, and leaves Ur of the Chaldeans with his family on the way to the land of Canaan, meriting as a penitent a share in the World to Come, about whom his son is promised: āAnd you shall come to your fathers in peace.ā
Terahās powerāto be attentive and open to receiving Torah from those younger than himselfāwas given to Torah scholars who teach Torah, who say: āI have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, and from my students more than from all of them.ā
Best regards, Yaron Fisch”l Ordner
Young people too may suffer from rigidity, imagining that the norms and conventions of their generation are āfirm pegs that must not be moved.ā The old sometimes reveal to them that what they think is simple and obvious is not really so simple and obvious.
When the young encounter the memories of the old, they discover that the āinnovativeā ideas occurring to them āhave already existed for agesā and are not free of difficulties and refutations; and on the other hand, in the distant and recent past there were more successful approaches.
Only the fruitful dialogue between seniority and experience on the one hand and innovation on the other can lead in a true direction.
Best regards, Yifa”or
āAnd do you suppose that I am blind? I am not blind at all; it is only that all the time in the whole world amounts, for me, to no more than the blink of an eye, and therefore he seems blind, for he has no glance at all upon the world, since all the time in the world amounts for him to no more than the blink of an eyeā¦ And I am very old, and yet I am still very young, and I have not yet even begun to live at all. And nevertheless I am very oldā¦ā
āHe took everyone out of the tower, and first he took out the baby, because in truth he was older than all of them; and likewise, the more infant-like anyone was, the earlier he was taken out. And the great old man was taken out last, because the more infant-like anyone was, the older he was. And the oldest among them was more infant-like than them all.ā
āThe Seven Beggars,ā by R. Nachman of Breslov
Nice. I liked it. š
Indeed, really beautiful. (After all, one could have said of that passage in R. Nachman, ānonsense.ā But it isnāt. Itās exactly the same paradox you described in the post so charmingly.)
It seems that Rabbi Nachman did not mean nonsense, nor a paradox. The idea there is that someone who remembers farther back into the past is older. As though he himself had already been alive from the time he remembers. Therefore, someone who remembers himself from when he was a fetus in the womb is older than someone who remembers only from the day of his birth. (And one who is more infant-like has forgotten less and is therefore older, because the rate of forgetting is greater than the rate of growing, and with each passing day he forgets two days of the past.)
And the beggar who is old and young is so because he has a long lifeāmeaning, he is old relative to the life of an ordinary person, and very young relative to his own lifespan.
That is what is written there in the story, for whoever reads it in full. And whoever wants to insert hidden mystical secrets there may do so.
If you knew the ages of the readers of your musings, you would be comfortedā¦
Are they really all 19 years old?
And I had already thought I was exceptional š
The world is like Benjamin Button.