O Hebrew Woman, who knows your life?
עודכן: 4 בדצמ׳
A Poetical Footnote to History
Published: Ariel - a quarterly review of arts an letters in Israel, no.49, 1979
"O Hebrew Woman, who knows your life?
In darkness you came and in darkness shall go;
Your sorrow, your joy, misfortune, desire
In you are born, in you they die."
Countless articles have been written about the inferior status of the Jewish woman before the Law, principally on account of the ancient marital laws. But nothing written on this painful subject can compare for power and influence with Yehuda Leib Gordons' poem "The Jot of the Iota"......
"0 Hebrew Woman, Who Knows Your Life?"
A Poetical Footnote to History
Ziva Shamir.
"0 Hebrew Woman, who knows your life? In darkness you came and in darkness shall go; Your sorrow, your joy, misfortune, desire In you are born, in you they die." Countless articles have been written about the inferior status of the Jewish woman before the Law, principally on account of the ancient marital laws. But nothing written on this painful subject can compare for power and influence with Yehuda Leib Gordon's poem, "The Jot of the Iota."
Six years passed from the day Gordon conceived the idea of writing it, until it was published in Smolenskin's "Ha-Shahar" in 1876. This was some time before the pogroms of the early 1880s, which led to the emergence of the Hibbat Zion movement and the immigration of the first Jewish pioneers—the Bilu 'im—to Palestine. At this time, the Haskalah was engaged in a struggle for internal change, a struggle which came to be called "The Polemic about Religion and Life." Its object was to move the rabbis to liberalize the Law and make it answer current needs.
The Maskilim condemned rabbinical casuistry and sought to separate it from the Halakhic law. They maintained that the Talmud was a corpus of regulations which had been good in their day, but no longer suited the spirit of the times. There was a demand for the compilation of a new, revised Shulkhan Arukh which, though written in the spirit of the Halakhah, would not be excessively severe, and be based on the modern notions of those days.
This polemic was a part of the long-standing campaign of the Maskilim against the superstitions and obsessions which, as they said, occupied the minds of most Jewish people. The brunt of their attack was directed, of course, at the Hassidim who, in their opinion, were the root of all evil and the embodiment of fanaticism and reaction. Applying the principles of Utilitarian philosophies, and with their inclination to Russian Positivism, the active polemicists—Lilienblum, Y. L. Gordon and others—concluded that the attachment to delusions and the belief in miracles was a result of the idleness and laxity that had spread among the people.
Under the influence of the Positivist philosophers, who had taken up the cause of the oppressed Russian woman, a campaign for the improvement of the lot of Jewish women was begun as well. Professor G. Elkoshi, a scholar of Haskalah literature, has discovered a poem written by the Russian poet Tyutchev, that addresses the downtrodden Russian woman in the very words of Y. L. Gordon: "0 (Hebrew) woman, who knows the life you lead?!" He then goes on to describe her bitter lot.
Early echoes of the struggle for the economic independence of women are found in an article written by Moshe Leib Lilienblum, entitled "Who is Independent", which appeared in the journal "Ha-Melitz" in 1872. The writer demands "that every woman shall be trained to support herself by some occupation, so that she will no longer be a doormat for her husband to trample on. So that if there should be no peace between a woman and her husband, she need not be enslaved to him by fear of hunger. Furthermore, the husband would not be able to dominate her as he pleases, because he will know that if he torments her, she will rise and leave him."
These words, but for their somewhat archaic style, might have been written by a militant feminist of the 1960s. These burning issues, the immediate resolution of which was strongly urged, were expressed in "The Jot of the Iota". This is not an echo of current controversies, but a highly emotional involvement in a heated debate. This is no thoughtful, considered response from a distant and objective viewpoint, but a fighting-polemical reaction, written in the heat of anger. The writer dispenses with the aesthetic distance which poetic norms require of the artist.
Yet even today, more than a hundred years after the composition of this poem and its companions in the series "Contemporary Epics", when these controversies are studied only by a handful of scholars and in university seminars, Y. L. Gordon's poem is still remembered and quoted. It remains provocative and moving and may still be read with interest and enjoyment. What is the secret of its survival? Why hasn't the story of the abandoned Bat-Shu'a become obsolete in our time, when there is little interest in poetry that is polemical, tendentious, and steeped in pathos?
The story of the poem is well-known and serves as an example to illustrate Gordon's statement at the beginning of the poem, regarding the inferior status of the Jewish woman. Bat-Shu'a (whose name suggests a gentle birth), grew up in the house of Hefer, her father, in the town of Ayalon (in Hebrew, an anagram of Vilna, Gordon's birthplace). Hefer was "an eminent and wealthy man in his community", the owner of a hotel, stables, and a fleet of carriages and mail-coaches.
His daughter grows up with neither maternal care (her mother had died), nor that of governesses or tutors. Nevertheless, she is a splendid young woman—comely, well-mannered and virtuous, fluent in several languages, and accomplished in the arts of weaving, spinning, and embroidery. She has a pleasant voice, and can dance and play music, though no one has ever taught her. Nature brought up Bat-Shu'a, and she grew up naturally "without artistry", as the Romantics demanded.
In accordance with "the old ways," her father finds her a bridegroom after his own heart, not hers, and Bat-Shu'a goes to her wedding without knowing her husband-to-be. The poet implies that there has been a regression in comparison with biblical days, for even Bethuel and Laban asked for Rebecca's consent to her marriage with Isaac. Today, the narrator says ironically: "Are they Aramaeans that they need seek her consent?"
And who is to marry this beautiful girl, this paragon of perfection and charm? No other than Hillel, son of Avdon, from the village of Pir'aton. The son of a publican, with big calf's eyes, tail-like sidelocks, and a face like a dried fig, who had astounded his audience with a brilliant sermon he preached in the synagogue when he became Bar-Mitzvah. The wedding ceremony is described in the poem in a vividly comic fashion:
Hillel ben Avdon, the one from Pir'aton
Was rushed from his prayers to marriage;
The Hazzan then opened the she-ass's mouth
And she said 'Thou art lawfully wedded.'
As agreed in the marriage contract, the young couple was provided for by Hefer. The husband studied at a yeshivah while the wife raised the children, as usual in a small Jewish town. Then a major economic upheaval shook Russia, the impact of which was felt by the characters in the poem. In the sixth decade of the nineteenth century, the construction of a railway was begun, which brought economic ruin upon the Jewish community.
The events are described in detail in Leo Greenberg's book, The Jews in Russia. The Jews who kept inns and taverns along the highway, and provided travellers and coachmen with food, drink, and lodgings, were suddenly deprived of their livelihood and left penniless. Nor were the innkeepers alone ruined by the construction of the railway—the holders of spirits concessions, the coach owners, and the mail carriers were stricken as well. Bat-Shu’a's father has been ruined, and the couple, which has been dependent on him, must make its own way. Hillel, lacking a real trade, tries his luck overseas. Bat-Shu’a sells her jewellery and opens a shop. Days go by and there is no word from Hillel, and she has to be both mother and father to her children.
When the construction of the railway reaches Ayalon, the overseer—a Russified Jew by the name of Faby—takes notice of Bat-Shu’a and her sad state. The representative of light, progress, and Haskalah, Faby (Feibush-Phoebus), brings sunlight into the Vale of Tears. He takes pity on Bat-Shu’a and inquires into the whereabouts of her husband. He learns from an acquaintance in Liverpool that Hillel is making a living as a door-to-door salesman and that he is willing to divorce his wife in return for a large sum, to enable him to sail for the "Azarot Islands" in the ship Nahash Akalaton ("The Crooked Serpent"; it seems that Azarot—or Azoros in the Ashkenazic pronunciation—are the Azores, springboard to the New World).
The affair is settled by deputy, the letter of divorcement is obtained, and Faby resolves to marry Bat-Shu’a and comfort her after all her sufferings. But when the divorce letter arrives, it is disqualified by Rabbi Vafsi the Kuzarite (another anagram, this one of Rabbi Joseph Zechariah Stern, the rabbi of Shavli, where Gordon lived in the seventies). It is disqualified because the name Hillel was written in it without a yod. Bat-Shu’a remains an agunah (abandoned wife), and Faby, who knows there is no moving the rabbis, submits to their decree. When the railway is finished, Bat-Shu’a is left alone and abandoned. The end of the poem shows her as a pedlar in the railway station, beside the trains which twice brought her disaster. Bowed and dressed in rags, she is sunk in poverty and degradation.
Ostensibly, this is a straightforward, militant poem - a poem in the service of an idea. It does not allow for questions and ambiguities, but expresses everything directly and bluntly. All is black and white, there are no gray shades. The rabbis symbolize darkness and ignorance; Faby represents the enlightenment; Bat-Shu'a is the oppressed Jewish woman. But this is not in fact the case. A closer analysis of the poem shows that it indeed is composed of binary contrasts, as usual in Haskalah literature: light is opposed to darkness, progress to ignorance, imprisonment to liberty, blessing to curse, disaster to joy, flowering to withering and so forth. Nevertheless, the contrasts are not presented in their extremes: there is a gradual transition from pole to pole, and the opposites begin to blend into one another; until things are no longer as clear as they seemed at first.
For example, Faby, the railway builder, is supposed to represent light and progress. His name, as has been noted, indicates that he brings the sunlight of Haskalah to Ayalon. In fact, Faby is the one who inadvertently completes the ruin of Hefer's family. To be sure, he brought the town modernization and progress by means of the railway tracks - but the same line causes Bat-Shu'a's calamity. If not for the economic collapse of her father, her marriage would have been stable. At any rate, her husband would never have gone overseas to seek his fortune, and would not have left her an agunah. Perhaps then Faby is not Phoebus Apollo, the sun-god.
His name can also be compared with 'Phoebe', the moon-goddess. Perhaps his is but the pale, deceptive light of the moon, and what happens to Ayalon is not a miracle like that of Joshua in his war with the Amorite kings, when the sun stood still at Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ayalon. In the poem, Ayalon, the town, remains in the Vale of Tears (or the "Valley of Judgement", as Gordon calls it). There are no miracles. Faby's appearance does not bring about the hoped-for change of fortune, deus ex machina. Whoever awaits the arrival of the messiah, or believes that Elijah will chance upon his way, will be disappointed.
Another example of the blurring of differences between the extremes is the marriage of Bat-Shu'a and Hillel. She is described as possessing all the womanly virtues; yet a careful reading will disclose that she is in fact the "man", and her husband the "woman". She is the one carrying a millstone around her neck, whereas the common idiom has the husband wearing it. In the description of the wedding ceremony this prodigy, the gifted yeshivah student from Volozhin, is described not as a book-laden donkey, but as a she-ass. "The Hazzan then opened that she-ass's mouth/ And she said 'Thou art lawfully wedded.'" Note well: "and she said," not "and he said."
This is an obvious allusion to the story of Balaam in the Bible, where the curse becomes a blessing. Here, in the marriage ceremony, the Seven Blessings turn into curses and calamities. Another humorous allusion refers to the biblical Avdon, son of Hillel of Pir'aton, who was buried in Ayalon. He, the biblical judge, had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy jackasses. In the poem, Hillel son of Avdon of Pir'aton is an only son, pallid and feeble, and from seventy jackasses there remains one she-ass - Hillel himself. Furthermore, Aton (she-ass) is in the Ashkenazic pronunciation a homonym of the word ason, which means 'disaster, calamity', and is thus a premonition of the tragedies which overtake the house of Hefer.
Gordon's heroine is in a trap, condemned, figuratively speaking, to life imprisonment. Describing her situation and her prospects, he uses the words of Ecclesiastes about the fate of a stillborn child: "For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun ..." (6:4-5). This suggests a determinist and profoundly pessimistic view of the prospects of the Jewish woman: she is not destined to go out into the world, to develop and to achieve, but only to languish in eternal darkness.
This is the attitude of a fighter who is not a fighter, of one who whets his sword for the battle, but gives up beforehand and resigns himself to defeat. This is no doubt due to the fact that Gordon was in two minds regarding the struggle for the improvement of the status of the Jewish woman, a struggle whose standard he bore. It appears that he did not really believe in its future prospects, and the ambivalence is evident in his work. Curiously, however, this subtle ambiguity, expressing itself in the complex and delicate blending of contrasts, blurs the sharp dichotomy of light and darkness - a characteristic of the Maskilim - and thereby makes the poem a better literary creation. The contemporary journalistic campaign for the improvement of the status of the Jewish woman came to an end, but the poem survived the public controversy which brought it into being.