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JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012MY RIGHT HAND’S CUNNING: AJERUSALEM STORY*Tamar SaksThe well-known South African journalist andZionist activist Michael Belling has written anovel which is, according to the blurb, “both atender love story and a story of Israel in its earlyyears”. It’s called My Right Hand’s Cunning, alovely title, derived from the biblical verse “If Iforget you, oh Jerusalem, may my right handforget its cunning”. This is most fitting, not onlyin that it is a story about Jerusalem, but in that oneof its major themes is in fact remembrance.The story is dominated by Meir Rosen, aHolocaust survivor who protects himself from thehorror of his own memories by building andmaintaining a solid wall of silence around himself.His is an “airless, secluded, insulated soul”,taciturn, acerbic, blunt to the point of rudenessand, with good reason, altogether a miserablebeggar. Meir is the sole survivor of his family(barring his niece, Tamar, who managed to getout of Europe before the war). The only patches ofcolor in a life of rigidly enforced greyness are hisvolunteer work at the Talpiot refugee camp, Tamarand her husband Avi and the only friend whosurvived like him, Yehuda Rabinowitz. The basicstoryline of the book is how his relationship withRachel Levy breaks the wall and releases him.Just one more Holocaust story, one might think,but this book is more than anything a story ofIsrael, in the years when the idealism andcommitment that launched it was still fresh andvigorous.The hope is tangible, but so is the fear. Thepeople struggle with the paradox of Jewishsurvival. History both buoys them up and weighsthem down. The awareness of the world’s hatredis inevitable - not only are the wounds of theTamar Saks matriculated at Beth Yaakov Schoolin Johannesburg. She is currently studying atAteres Bnos Yerushalayim girls’ seminary inJerusalem.Holocaust still fresh, with the hooded, carefullyblank eyes of the survivors visible on the verystreets, but the evidence of past attempts at Jewishextermination are all around. This is the land,remember, where the bones of Jews can be foundcrushed under Roman ballistae. There are also therefugees, living proof of present hardship.The atmosphere thrums with the magic ofIsrael, the layers and layers of history, the politicalquagmires, the heroism of the army, the curiousmixture of hope and cynicism that is so peculiarlyJewish. Hebrew catch-phrases and sayings - manyderived from the Bible – abound: Taharathaneshek - purity of arms, Mah yiheyeh? - Whatis going to happen? Ein breira - There is nochoice. The whole is punctuated by discussionsand debates that reveal the state of mind, not onlyof the main protagonists, but of the people inIsrael’s formative years. The young are steeped inhistory, because “in this country, history was allround them, Biblical names were not just part ofthe fabric of history and legend, but interwoven intheir daily lives.”Another theme of My Right Hand’s Cunningis a kind of dialogue that takes place betweenhope and the awareness of past horrors. Hope ispersonified by the youth, by Avi and the pregnantTamar. Awareness of the past is personified byMeir and Yehuda. Yet the roles are exchangedduring the course of the story. Avi and Tamar are,by the very fact that they live in Israel, more thanaware of the past and the hatred that the nationsbear Am Yisroel. And Meir’s despair is eventuallyovercome by Rachel and their mutual love. Thereis a strong sense of history, and of place,throughout, and a fascination with politics (veryIsraeli!) that gives the book weight andauthenticity. Added to this, the story and itscompelling characters make for an absorbing read.My Right Hand’s Cunning: A Jerusalem Story byMichael Belling, Tange: Johannesburg, 2012, 297pp.46
JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012DRASTIC DISLOCATIONS*Roy RobinsDrastic Dislocations is a selection of poetryfrom Barry Wallenstein’s six previous collections– from Beast is a Wolf with Brown Fire (1977) toTony’s World (2009) – and includes more thansixty new poems. The selection is a shrewd one,exhibiting the poet’s peculiarly skewed andentirely unpredictable vision of contemporarylife.From poem to poem, stanza to stanza,Wallenstein’s tone shifts smoothly from robust torestrained, jubilant to jaundiced. He is a master ofthe almost invisible transition, the seeminglyeffortless metamorphosis of meaning and mood.He writes as vividly about the simple splendourof a summer day as he does when evoking whatDelmore Schwartz described as ‘the famousunfathomable abyss.’If existence is an abyss, it can best be fathomed,for Wallenstein, with family, good company,sensual experience, and, of course, the poet’sbeloved jazz. (Many of these poems have beenperformed publicly, with live jazzaccompaniment.) With its elastic inflections,Wallenstein’s verse is full of grace notes and bluestreaks and surprising sideways turns into dreamsof despair and cold-eyed self-assessment. Heportrays pain authentically – which is to say,painfully – but also writes movingly about thatmost artistically unfashionable entity: humanhappiness.Many of the poems in this volume areaffirmative, full of an optimism that feels equalpartsEuropean and American, simultaneouslymeasured and carefree, open to every sensation,made buoyant by the bliss of infinite possibility.Whereas in his early work, one gets a sense of apoet who does not love quite enough, in his mostrecent verse Wallenstein seems to possess withinhim inexhaustible affection.He writes most tenderly about his family.‘Ballad,’ a conversation between the poet and hisdeceased mother, is especially accomplished:What are you doing my darling son?I’m sitting in this boat, dear mother.And where is your boat my son, pray tell?At sea in the distance my mother.Roy Robins was a 2010-11 Gordon Institute ofPerforming and Creative Arts fellow. He wasformerly the online editor for Granta magazine.He holds an MA degree in English Literature.The poem, with its melancholic reverie, itsintermingling of past and present, child and adult,memory and dream, is simple and savagelystirring. The nursery-rhyme form carries the readera long way, but the underlying sense of loss andanguish takes one further still.‘Father at 85’ is similarly poignant and probing.The poem’s final line – ‘He still wants more’ –registers like a jolt of electricity. It is as powerfula refrain as Philip Levine’s ‘You can have it’ orRobert Frost’s ‘Provide, provide!’ or the wordsthat close out Delmore Schwartz’s ‘America,America!’: ‘more: more and more: always more.’It seems fitting to follow Wallenstein’s family,his children, their history, from inception toadulthood, through the inter-leading rooms thatform the house of this book. Here is Wallensteinin ‘Four Weeks to Birth’:Our genes are hiding in the belly of a fishin the skin of a bellyin the belly of a fishfloating glyphsmicro-hints of dancing ghosts.In ‘Jessie Beforehand,’ he describes hisdaughter’s foetus, which ‘swims in the famouslucidity / of mother’s love and our confusion.’Wallenstein’s verse veers, too, betweenadmirable lucidity and not always artful confusion.There are times – most frequently in Tony’s World– where he exhibits a tendency towardsunnecessary abstraction. In these instances, hisjazz métier begins to feel less like an asset andmore like camouflage for cryptic sentiment. Butit is possible to be both jazzy and precise; bothcryptic and exacting.The titular protagonist of Tony’s World is anelusive alter ego, reminiscent of the Henry ofJohn Berryman’s The Dream Songs. At onceurban prophet and holy fool, Tony is deliciouslydefiant and defiantly himself – he is Wallenstein’smost memorable lyrical conceit.Perhaps surprisingly for a poet who has spentmost of his life in Manhattan, some of the finestpoems in this collection concentrate on the countryrather than the city. Wallenstein rarelyromanticizes nature, nor does he attempt todesensitize or demolish it. He is attentive in anunpretentious manner, aspiring towardsunderstated Impressionism and gentle selfexpression.The marvellously meditative earlypoem, ‘A House in the Mountains,’ celebratessimple pleasure and a lovely calm, as its speaker47
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