Every day, I ask

Judah Alkaletz

Early 17th Century

Every day, I ask all those that pass by the shepherd’s tents,
What is all this, why is all this?
Has my beloved had a change of heart, and abandoned his flock forever,
And rejected them, and despised them?
The bear and wolf tear, and the young lion roars,
And the serpent, and the leopard, and the tiger, and the fox.
They answer me: “Your beloved will not return
To tend his flock any more, even if you make efforts high and low.
For they have rejected the pastures that he wished,
They have chosen their path, to betray him.
When he was leading them along still waters,
They rebelled against his words, and drank from a bowl of poison.
Their rock led them upon flat planes, and to the Sharon,
But they produced jagged cliffs, and a boulder ascended from their nest.”
I hasten to respond to them: After they sinned,
They suffered double punishment, and he sent a letter1 from heaven,
Written truly in his name, sealed with his seal,
From the one that measured the waters in the hollow of his hand.
“I am the one that turns a flat plane into rough areas,
Darkness into light—I speak, and thus I do.
I have come, in my letter, to ask about your welfare, O my flock.
Who could reject, who could despise the wife of his youth?”
Wait a bit, O my flock! Now, like a mighty man,
I will awake to fight battles against the useless nation.
I will heal your waywardness, I will forgive your sins.
I have great deliverance with me; it shall ascend with me.
I’ll build you, and you’ll be rebuilt; you’ll take up your timbrels,
You’ll draw waters of joy, and you’ll be purified in the channel.
You’ll forget the shame of your youth, and end it,
When you reach your respite, for I am your husband.
You will expand, to the left and to the right,
And your progeny will inherit the nations, and trample them with shoes.
I am the one that has placed that sand as the sea’s boundary.
No ship will pass it, for it will be the place for your shoes.2

Translated by
Gabriel
Wasserman
.

Notes

[I.e., Prophets. The various words of encouragement and metaphors in the following lines come from various places in Prophets.—Trans.]

[You will walk across the seabed in your shoes, on the path to the redemption.—Trans.]

Credits

Judah Alkaletz, “Every day, I ask (On the experience of the Jews in exile) (Hebrew)” (Poem, Algiers, early 17th century). Republished in: Ephraim Hazan, ha-Shirah ha-ʻIvrit bi-Tsefon Afrikah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2003), 231–233.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Judah Alkaletz

1570–1620

Descended from a line of scholars (his ancestor, also named Judah, was forced to leave Granada when Jews were exiled from the Iberian Peninsula), Judah (the third in his line) Alkaletz was born in Algiers. A teacher, preacher, commentator, and scholar—he is praised for his skills in all these capacities in a poem lamenting his death—Judah composed skilled and beautiful poetry. Many of his poems concern halakhic topics and testify to his great erudition and his poetic skill. One manuscript contains rhymed verses on the laws found in the tractates of Nashim and Nezikin, accompanied by a commentary. He also wrote poems on divorce laws, the laws of ritual slaughter, and other various nonlegal topics. The two extracts in this volume demonstrate the range of his poetry. One is of a halakhic nature, and the other depicts a woman searching for her beloved among the other nations of the world, mirroring Israel’s search for redemption.

You may also like

According to the Torah

According to the Torah, a man can acquire a woman in one of three ways: Through a document, through silver, or through intercourse. God is the one that gives a prudent wife. In truth, one must begin…
View Source
Chromogenic print depicting blurry building.
Tooltip info icon

Outside #3

In one of her early photography projects, Rovner took Polaroids of an abandoned Bedouin shack in the desert and reprinted them in different ways. Here the shack appears blurred, ghostly, as if seen…
View Source