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Hello Poetry Lovers,

An often heard quip in poetry circles goes like this:

Young poet,  "There's no money in poetry ....!

Old poet: "True, but there's no poetry in money either!"

That said, here's some current news:

 Israel's government has approved some famous personalities who will appear on a new series of shekel banknotes.

The approval of the list Sunday, which includes some of Israel's most beloved national poets, comes after the list was finalized last month by the Bank of Israel following more than a year of heated debate.

The personalities who will grace the new notes are Rachel the Poetess on the 20 shekel note, Saul Tchernichovsky on the 50 shekel note, Leah Goldberg on the 100 shekel note and Natan Alterman on the 200 shekel note. 

Rachel, who died in 1931, is a leading poet in modern Hebrew whose works have been set to music. Tchernichovsky was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize for Literature.

Goldberg, who died in 1970, was a poet, author, playwright, literary translator and researcher of Hebrew literature who translated "War and Peace" into Hebrew.

Alterman, an author, playwright, poet and newspaper columnist who died in 1970, won the 1968 Israel Prize for Literature.

Poets on banknotes? This is a stunning piece of news, unprecedented, as far as I know.

The whole subject of  Israeli language poetry is an interesting one, since  Hebrew did not exist as a secular language until quite recently. We know that while the Jewish people never abandoned Hebrew as a language of prayer and law, it was not actually spoken for centuries. Nor did much secular writing take place until Haim Bialik and Saul Tchernikovsky in Odessa; a modern Hebrew dictionary did not exist until quite near the turn of the 20th Century.

A few more pertinent facts:

The psalms of David were written in Biblical times, in ancient Hebrew.

For centuries the Jews of Europe spoke and wrote in Yiddish.

Following the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, (Haskalah) change swept through Europe, including the shtetles where Jews lived. These were heady times; intellectuals were engaged in debates about literature as well as Zionism. Late in the 1800's Bialik, Tchernikovsky, and others, who were part of the literary scene in Yiddish, began to also write in Hebrew.  

Here is part of a poem by Tchernikovsky, that was later set to music. It reflects the yearning for Zion.

They say: There is a land,

a land drenched with sun.

Wherefore is that land?

Where is that sun?

They say: There is a land,

its pillars are seven,

seven planets,

spiringing up on every hill.

Where is that land,

the stars of that hill?

Who shall guide our way,

tell me my path?

Already have we passed several

deserts and oceans.

Already have we traversed several,

our strengths are ending.

How is it we have gone astray?

That not yet have we been left alone?

That land of sun,

that one we have not found.

A land where shall come to pass

what every man had hoped for,

Everyone who enters,

had met with Akiva.

Peace to you, Akiva!

Peace to you, Rabbi!

Where are the saints?

Where is the Maccabee?

Answers him Akiva,

answers him the Rabbi:

All of Israel is sainted,

you are the Maccabee!

Where is that land,

the stars of that hill?

Who shall guide our way,

tell me my path?

They say: There is a land,

a land drenched with sun…

Wherefore is that land?

Where is that sun?

In the first decades of the 20th Century some of the newly minted Hebrew language poets made their way to Eretz Kna an; the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust as well as statehood for Israel in 1948 enormously impacted all of life, language and literature that followed.

The poetry of Israel today is as varied and often abstract as anything being written in any other language, and often more poignant and unique, reflective of every nuance of life lived in a complex and extremely threatened society.  This is a subject far too extensive to comment upon here, but perhaps another time in this space.

For now, I find it interesting that unlike the comonplace homage paid in other societies to war heroes and politicians, Israel has decided to honor its poets by placing their images on their hard currency!

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