After being awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for poetry, Jerusalem poet Eliaz Cohen began a tour of Israel's schools.
Jaffa Street in Jerusalem's city center.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
At first, he is reluctant to tell his story. He finally agrees, but still refuses to say where the incident happened, saying only that it was a "very 'Zionist,' and elite high school, with a very good, well-educated and dedicated teacher, who was as sad and horrified as I was." Cohen was lecturing on his poetry, which he describes as " Jewish in its perspective and connotations." He alludes to a test of sorts, which he presented to the unknowing high-school students. He read them some of his latest poems, including the haunting, Shma Ado-nai (Hear, O God.)
He then asked the students what they understood from the text. Not one of them understood the metaphors or the cultural-social motives and context.
"I felt awful," he recalls. "These were good kids, well-educated, with high marks, from good 'Israeli' and 'Zionist' families, and not one of them understood. I was very close to some kind of despair - issues like those mentioned in the poem didn't mean anything to those kids. Nothing. No memories, no recall from the past - let alone from the present. As if anything Jewish had been wiped out from their brains."
Eliaz Cohen was born in 1971 to what he calls "an average middle class religious Zionist family" from Petah Tikva. His family was, he says, "very open, very : very tolerant, very urban, nothing special.
And then, in 1979, within the framework of the first settlements and the Gush Emunim movement, my parents moved to Elkana, where they were amongst the founders. From then on, I had a very 'pioneer' childhood."
Like thousands of other young people in the settlements in the West Bank, Cohen attended a high school yeshiva and went to the army in the framework of the "hesder," where he combined his religious studies with his army service.
Even while following the most typical program young for Israelis from the settlements, Cohen says he felt the needed to write. "I always wrote, mostly prose, but then, during my service in the tanks, the writing literally burst out of me.I remember that once I even wrote while doing guard duty. I just couldn't stop myself.
"I came to poetry much later, while I was sent as a shaliach (emissary from the State of Israel) to the Jewish communities of the Caucasus. It was there that I discovered the writings of Mikhail Yur'yevich Lermontov [the Russian romantic writer sometimes referred to as "the poet of the Caucasus" - P.C.] and met Efrat, who later became my wife. Since then, I only write poetry."
Cohen is part of a group of poets and intellectuals known as Mashiv Ha'ruach, based in Jerusalem. The group also publishes a bi-annual review of Israeli poetry and organizes the Mashiv Haruach Festival in Jerusalem.
The festival, which took place this week in Jerusalem, is a three-day happening devoted to poetry, poets and poetry-reading. In addition, the Festival profiles the annual "harvest" of Mashiv Haru'ach's on-going poetry workshop, "Mizmor," which attracts dozens of young and gifted poets most of them, but not all of them, from the settlements in the West Bank.
The Mashiv Haru'ach Festival began in 1995, and, except for a two-year break, has continued annual. So this is, Cohen notes, "the bar mitzva festival.
Participation has been high since the first event. Cohen recalls that first festival, with dozens of young poets sitting on stairs and window sills. "We had not advertised very widely. From the large crowd, we understood that there was a tremendous need for what we were offering." Not the founder of the group, Cohen joined after several years. Together with founders Yoram Nissinovitch and Shmuel Klein he has managed to gain recognition of the Education and Culture Ministry and has gained a warm space in public awareness.
"Israeli poetry has made space for a different language - for poetry that is at peace with our Jewish roots, with the use of Jewish symbols, Jewish context. Above all, it has made space for poetry written by young people who live and create in the settlements, whose environment are the hills of Judaea, who today, like me, like in Gush Etzion. Today, these voices are heard."
Questions about the relationship between Israeli literature, and especially modern Israeli poetry, and Judaism are not new. Poetess Yona Wallach raised these questions years ago in a letter written in September 1967 to Zelda, a religious poet: "…You are creating a world, Zelda, this is the utmost a poet can do, and the beauty you bring leaves me longing… and I remember very much that I am Jewish…"
The debate continues. "For those for whom Judaism means halacha and political struggles, or wether the Bat Sheva dancers should or shouldn't cover their bodies when they perform for the 50th Independence Day of Israel - this is an unnecessary discussion," writes Hamutal Bar Yossef recently in an article entitled, Is Israeli Poetry Jewish Poetry? "...But if we agree that there is a place for the examination of the feminist, ethnic or homosexual aspects of a text, then we should, in my opinion, with the same legitimacy, uncover the Jewish aspects and roots of an Israeli text."
Does these questions point to a profound change in Israeli society's attitude towards Judaism? Is Israeli society moving from its secular Israeli language to a new Jewish-Israeli language?
Or is this merely a new fashion, a trend - part of a wider, "hip" but temporary phenomenon that will fade away after a while and gives room for another trend?
Is something new taking shape? Something, for example, that Bambi Sheleg, editor of the bi-monthly Eretz Aheret magazine, refers to as the "Renaissance of Judaism in Israel?"
"I see it more as a legitimacy to use judaism" says prof. haviva petaya and adds: "these motives were hidden aside for years, the motives from the cult, the jewish tradition, the jewish culture and I recall that when I published my book "from a scelled box (?)" in 1996, this kind of use was very very rare".
