Challenge and Comfort (Extract)

By KAREN ALKALAY-GUT
Extract from Issue 15, November 10, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. A new English translation of the Book of Psalms retains the power of the original to inspire and reassure believer and skeptic alike. I had Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms on my bedside table when my husband was suddenly hospitalized, so I took it with me. If I were a praying woman this would have been a good book to have at my side, but my major purpose was to distract my husband from his terrible state with technical questions. But although the English was beautiful and poetic, without the original we would have had no way of arguing blissfully over the accuracy of the poetry and the text. How could we have had a good laugh about how much better we could have translated it if we didn't have the Hebrew tehilim with us? Luckily, there was a copy on the table in the lobby, and when he went to the operating theater, there was a shelf of them in the waiting room, and many in use. So I began, like the strangers around me, at the beginning, and found an immediate sense of recognition in the first sentence of Alter's translation: "Happy is the man who has not walked in the wicked's counsel, or in the session of scoffers has sat." Later, I looked at the King James version and saw that its translation for bemoshav letzim lo yashav was "nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." Although letzim in modern Hebrew might mean only "clowns," Alter's "scoffers" was right for me. If I, skeptical as I am, could only suppress my tendency to scoff, the Psalms could perhaps help to ease my anxiety. Alter's first sentence showed me the perfect way to approach the Psalms, in my fretful state. My perspective on the translation immediately became personal and intimate. To what extent could I, in my terrible fear and uncertainty, respect Alter's translation of these words and appreciate their significance to me? As on one side of me a woman was reading the Koran, and on the other a priest was murmuring something in Latin, while in front of me two girls held their psalmbooks and rocked, I could either become one of the supplicants or a 'scoffer.' So many people, praying in so many different ways, made me suspicious about the value of prayer, and I was relieved to find that my tendency to mock had already been anticipated, understood and accommodated. I felt not only that the translation could be trusted, but also that the process of reading the Psalms in either language was in itself a process of comforting: that as I would continue reading, the book would take into account the stages of supplication and questioning in times of woe. Robert Alter is, of course, the right person to translate such a sensitive and beautiful work of psychological and moral healing. As the author of "The Literary Guide to the Bible," "The Five Books of Moses," "The David Story (1 and 2 Samuel)," "The Art of Biblical Narrative," and "The Art of Biblical Poetry" as well as books on Kafka and Stendhal, Alter knows the logic of the Bible, as well as the world of the absurd and chance. But in this case, as satisfying as the translation was, some of the learned notes seemed strange to me. The passage from the third verse, vehaya k'etz shatul al palgei mayim, is translated beautifully by Alter as: "And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water." These lines are footnoted with dry scholarliness concerning the significance of a tree in an arid land, and the necessity of water to make it flourish. This comment does take the geographical context into consideration. But to me the meaning, recalled from studies long ago as well as from numerous allusions in Hebrew poetry, had to do with the stability of the tree with all its needs fulfilled, all the more so since stability was what I was seeking in reciting the psalms, stability for myself and fruitfulness for those for whom the tree and I am responsible. These two responses to Alter's translation and commentary carried through the entire text - a sense of genuine trust, and an occasional quarrel. Sometimes I quibbled with the translation and the notes, with no authority but my own senses. Take the beginning of Psalm 3, mizmor leDavid bevarho mipnei Avshalom bno, rendered in the King James Version as: "A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son." It is translated by Alter as "A David Psalm, when he fled from Absalom his son." He explains that the ambiguity of the Hebrew prepositional prefix le - which could mean "of," "for," "by," or "to" - is preserved in the phrase "David Psalm." Extract from Issue 15, November 10, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.