The Holy Balshemtov

Zishe Landau

1916

The holy Balshemtov walked in the field
In the cold dawn went walking in the field
As winds were blowing from the north.
Bitter cold from the north.
His limbs started to freeze.
Once his limbs were quite frozen
The holy Balshemtov opened his lips,
Sang out loud.
Here’s what his wide-open lips sang out
This is the song of his lips:
“How happy is he, who has merited
To be touched by your pain.
How happy is he, who has merited
To be, by your cold, quite frozen.
He’s happy, how happy is he.
How happy indeed, he is happy.”
The frozen air he kept thirstily drinking.
In deep mediations sinking.
All at once out in the heavens came
A large sun aflame.
It got infernally hot,
His face dripped sweat.
In the burning hot field
Blew no wind.
Suddenly through the burning hot field
The Balshemtov’s voice was heard
Singing a song of praise
Praise to the Creator:
“For cold and heat, sun and rain,
Day and night—praise to you!
For everything you greet a person with,
Praise to you, praise and praise!
Happy am I who is burning now
In your fires, burning,
And if I am fated by you, in my merit,
To collapse to the ground now from thirst,
How happy I am, how happy indeed
How happy indeed, I am happy.”

Translated by
Zackary Sholem
Berger

Credits

Zishe Landau, “Iz der heyliger ba‘al shem-tov” [The Holy Balshemtov], Di yidishe dikhtung in Amerike biz yor 1919 (New York: Farlag Yiddish, 1919), pp. 78–79.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Zishe Landau

1889–1937

Born in Plotsk in Russian Poland (today Płock, Poland) into a Hasidic family—his father was a scion of the Tshekhanover and Strikover rebbes—Zishe Landau received a traditional religious education that his stepmother supplemented with a secular education. After two years in Vilna, where Landau drew close to The Bund, he immigrated to New York in 1906 with his uncle. Turning to Yiddish poetry in 1907, Landau, with Mani Leib, Reuven Iceland, and Yosef Rolnik cofounded the Yiddish poetic movement Di Yunge in pursuit of a vision of Yiddish poetry liberated from narrow social and political agendas and free to explore art, irony, and beauty. Landau’s own verse was often dominated by irony and a posture of insouciance, but one of his most widely appreciated poems was, ironically, about the great mystic and fabled founder of the Hasidic movement the Ba‘al Shem Tov. In addition to poetry, Landau wrote prose, essays, and plays, and translated Heinrich Heine and others into Yiddish.

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