In Memory of Yoram Taharlev, of Blessed Memory (Column 442)
Four days ago, Yoram Taharlev passed away at the age of 83. A poet and lyricist, playwright, author, and translator—a true polymath. Almost until his very last day he was still on stage. He is responsible for several classics of Hebrew song, and those who know his work know how wide-ranging he was.
I met him once, before an interview we had on Channel 20 (in its early days), and we chatted about this and that. A very pleasant man, an eternal optimist, with a wonderful sense of humor, candid and honest, kind and generous, quick-witted and, of course, a virtuoso master of words. He was very interested in Judaism and even wrote about it, mainly on the cultural-folkloric plane (though I must say: not my cup of tea). I received a suggestion and readily agreed that it would be appropriate to dedicate a column to his memory. I don’t see a point in writing a eulogy here; instead I’ll suffice with some of his own words. He does it far better than I could.
I’ll begin with a maqāma that was sent to me this morning, which he wrote for the last event and did not live to read. One can, of course, read it as a ballad for the Lithuanian Asperger (see columns 142 and 218, where I’ve now attached it in the comments). My loyal readers will easily understand why I open with this one. I certainly couldn’t have phrased it any better:
| Today, in our crazy country, which swaps one elite for another every year,
go try to explain to the average citizen what Lithuanian Judaism means. That superb Judaism, which truly was the elite of the elite, the authority of the authority, the Judaism that ignited and thrilled, that you could not buy with anything material— not with a villa and not with a suite, not with Lolita and not with Aphrodite, but with one small word: “ve-hagita!” (“and you shall study”). An excellent Judaism the likes of which you have not seen from then until now, the Judaism of the intellect, Lithuanian Judaism. And if you try to explain this to Israelis—woe to you, for as the Lithuanians used to say: Ale yevonim di zelbe ponim All the Greeks have the same faces— today the cheeky Israeli will tell you: “All the Poles have the same face!” And if you try to explain how Lithuanians differ from Poles, Galicians from Romanians, Hungarians from Germans, he will look at you, my son, as if you had fallen from a Goldfaden opera into the Mediterranean Song Festival. For what does the Israeli know about his roots? If, for example, you ask someone on the street what he knows about the GRA, he’ll say it’s a street at the old central bus station, a street of nut shops, cassettes, cold drinks, and a few massage parlors for foreign workers. And if you seriously intend to explain who the GRA is, it will be better, for the sake of domestic peace, if you kindly avoid the elitist expression “the Gaon of Vilna.” Because a “genius” in Israel today—one can say this with confidence— is either a soccer genius, a financial genius, or Yehoram Gaon. Therefore, when we come this evening to praise and extol our roots, we must know in advance that we’re speaking only to ourselves! We, the children of the Lithuanians, must reveal the secret to our children and grandchildren— who their forefathers were and who our forefathers were— not to cultivate in them the sin of pride, but precisely “see entry: love,” so they will not feel guilty for being so restrained, measured, and sometimes cold, while their friends, the rest of Israel, rejoice and exult, dance and sing, party and gamble. So that our children understand that this restraint is not tied to their personal character—it’s a genetic anthropological matter; they belong to a breed of realistic, logical people, people who are all thinkers in potentia, the top decile of intelligence. Let’s put it on the table: The people of Israel, always and forever, divide into two—and this is almost scientific: the heirs of the Hasidic mind and the heirs of the Lithuanian mind. While the heirs of the Hasidim—who have almost always been the overwhelming majority— dance and exult as if life were a celebration, the descendants of the Lithuanians chart their path from worry to worry. When the heirs of the Hasidim say “eat and drink,” for the Messiah is arriving any minute now, the Lithuanians lock themselves away in inner rooms and examine themselves by Hovot Ha-Levavot and Mesilat Yesharim. But our descendants must also know this: even if they inherited the hard and tormented Lithuanian temperament, they must not forget that it gave us the Musar movement, founded the Tarbut schools, theaters, and youth movements, and fashioned a diligent, active people who learn not for honor and not for a degree. It is the breed that produced a vast religious and secular literature, the breed that invented the wise and wondrous Jewish humor, and of course established the illustrious chain of yeshivot—may their dispatch never cease— yeshivot in which, in Israel today, even Shas avrekhim study— these are the Lithuanians, wise, learned people whom, for example, you won’t succeed in convincing that what will save you in life is a tzaddik’s blessing on some amulet. A breed of serious people, who don’t catch the bug of Kabbalah, messianism, and mysticism, but check the peshat, the logic, and even the statistics. This is us, the descendants of Lithuanian Jewry; you won’t get us to pour water on the hands of some elderly kabbalist, shlit”a, not to be the Messiah’s donkey nor Balaam’s ass, not to follow with eyes closed after men set above the people. We don’t rely on miracles, not on the lotto, not on the horoscope. We are the salt that the people of Israel lack today— a sound head—a gezunten kop. |
I’ll conclude with another maqāma, mainly for those of the third age, called 60 Seconds about 61 Years:
| Forty-seven: debates at the U.N.,
Moshe Sharett delivers a speech, coffee during the break. Russia supports partition. Forty-eight—the hour has come, Ben-Gurion declares, the crowd cheers, a bus ablaze, shots outside, and we begin to run. Forty-nine—everything’s shut, we’ve finished the War of Independence, absorbing waves of immigration, a shack, a bed, a primus stove, we won’t forget the Altalena, Dov Yosef declares austerity, an explosion in Ramat Rachel, and we keep on running. We haven’t even caught our breath— oh, the Red Rock! Oil flows in Hulikat, bravo to Unit 101! Hey, we dried the Hula, there’s sugar in the city of Afula, reparations—one billion marks, in Jaffa the Luna Park rises! Fifty-five, fifty-six, reprisal raids, the Kadesh operation, industry in Lachish, Stelmach—what a header! A Shavit missile flies to the sky, Eichmann comes from Argentina, and my heart will rejoice and sing, there are secrets in the city of Dimona. |
The sixties—have some faith:
this isn’t a crisis, it’s just a recession. Lines already form at the consulates, the last one out turns off the lights. And suddenly—the Six-Day War, the whole country recovers, the world teems with sympathy, a settlement in Tel-Sebastia, the queen—in the bathtub. That’s the power of democracy. They’re already renovating the Kotel, and we keep on running. Yom Kippur came and went, we learned nothing at all, a right-wing upheaval, who can understand life? And suddenly—by heaven’s name— Sadat visits Yad Vashem, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, it too will pass, and quickly. Oh our land, oh our land, Lebanon right at our backs. Eighty-eight—Intifada, an expressway to nada, in Oslo a new page opens, the prime minister is assassinated. Arafat returns to Ramallah, in his stead Hezbollah rises, Hamas seizes Gaza, again you’re first, ya kaza. Thus our days pass, between “oy vey” and our enemies, between falafel and sushi, between the jeep and the Mitsubishi, oh my country, don’t be jealous of me— Olmert, or Barak, or Bibi, life here, my friend, Survivor on a Caribbean island. |
Alas for those who are lost. May his memory be a blessing!
Discussion
Great.
Where was it published?
A dear and talented man, and of course also one of the least Asperger-like lyricists around.
I too once met him at some conference. He, having arrived early, was forced to listen to a lecture on aggadah that I gave. And I stayed to listen to his delightful rhymed performance, in which he recited, among other things, the maqama you brought here. Afterward we chatted a bit. The man was one of the builders and shapers of a secular Zionist Jewish culture; he created it and worked within it, and poured into it old treasures as well as new. Interesting that unlike Hanoch Levin (not to mention Bialik), he was not formerly religious; he had no inherited childhood version, and one may assume that whatever he learned from Jewish sources he learned through effort and choice. Truly, alas for those who are gone.
I don't know. I got it on WhatsApp.
[He criticizes those who do not know who the Vilna Gaon was and what his genius consisted in. I do not know the man or his discourse apart from a few songs that were published, but I will venture a guess that he too did not really understand that genius. Did he used to study sugyot and delve into the words of the Gra there? The difference between not knowing who Einstein was and knowing that he was “a genius Jewish physicist who invented the theory of relativity,” without knowing anything at all about the contents he dealt with and created, is not very great. Indeed, a magical splendor hovers over Lithuania and its sages, but to behold it you need the spectacles of the field in which they engaged—namely, Talmudic analysis (of which I, at least, have tasted a little). ]
You can see the maqama mentioned, about Lithuanian Jewry, on his website:
http://taharlev.com/makama_id_5.html
True.
And one should add, based on what we learned from Rabbi Michi, that if it is a genetic matter, as is written in the maqama, what is there here that is worthy of appreciation?
“A warm Lithuanian heart” — at least two oxymorons
It is a principle in itself to “know your roots” (perhaps only as a means of understanding the individual self; I did not fully grasp that from the text). But genetic not necessarily; perhaps it is more cultural-social. Intellectual talent is genetic, but its shaping and refinement are greatly influenced by society.
Character in general is not a matter for appreciation. But here this is culture, and not necessarily character.
Only one. Unless in your view a heart is not necessarily warm, in which case the claim that a Lithuanian has no heart and the claim that a Lithuanian is not warm are two independent claims.
“I will begin with the maqama they sent me this morning, which he wrote for the last event and did not merit to read.” I didn’t understand—which event?
Apparently an event had been planned for him.
By the way, regarding the temperature of hearts: I once thought that the use of “warmth” (and especially “a warm heart”) in the sense of friendliness and sympathy was late, but I do not know for certain. Perhaps from the language of Hazal? Perhaps a literal translation from other languages? Tzarikh she-yavo Eliyahu ve-yomar.
Because in the Bible it seems that while fire in the mouth and nose symbolizes temper and anger, a warm heart is a great desire to bring something into effect. In Psalms: “I said, I will guard my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep a curb upon my mouth; I was dumb with silence,” etc. [but in the end:] “My heart grew hot within me; as I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue.” In Jeremiah: “Then I said, I will not mention Him, nor speak any more in His name. But it was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones.” In Hosea: “They are all adulterers, like an oven,” etc.; “their heart approaches like an oven all night; in the morning it burns like a flaming fire” (and not as Ibn Ezra, see there).
[This also resolves a slight difficulty. For behold, according to Abba Shaul, one who marries his yevamah not for the sake of the commandment but for her beauty, etc., it is as though he has violated a forbidden sexual relation. The difficulty is that regarding the blood avenger it is written: “lest the blood avenger pursue the manslayer, because his heart is hot, and overtake him because the way is long, and strike him mortally”—that is, the heart of the blood avenger is heated, his wrath burns within him, and in his great anger he kills the manslayer, and this implies that it is permitted to the blood avenger. So why does Abba Shaul not say that one who acts as blood avenger for the sake of vengeance is like a shedder of blood, contrary to what is explicit in the verse? True, this can easily be answered even otherwise, but according to what was said it is also explained well: a warm heart does not mean burning anger, but only zeal to do some particular thing—and I can still tell you that the zeal is for the sake of the commandment.]
A Jewish heart must indeed be warm, as stated in tractate Shabbat, chapter Rabbi Akiva, regarding: “What about Jewish seed in the womb of a gentile woman?” Shall we say that this was not said because the bodies of gentiles are not warm like those of Jews, for Jews are anxious about the commandments; and as Rashi explains there, “anxious about the commandments” — to fulfill the commandments, and they tremble over the matter, and out of worry they grow warm, as it is written (Psalms 39): “My heart grew hot within me”:
If only the Lithuanianism (the Haredi kind) being spoken of actually existed; Lithuanianism today has adopted the habits of mysticism (“you won’t get us to pour water over the hands of some old kabbalist,” amusing), healthy patterns of thought have become blurred, and all this still under the noble banner of “Lithuanianism.” Alas for those who are gone and are not to be found again.
More power to the Rabbi Dr. for these moving words from a warm Lithuanian heart.