I Studied Love by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

A friend of mine sent me this poem to share:

I STUDIED LOVE
by Yehuda Amichai
Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

I studied love in my childhood in my childhood synagogue
in the women's section with the help of the women behind the partition
that locked up my mother with all the other women and girls.
But the partition that locked them up locked me up
on the other side. They were free in their love while I remained
locked up with all the men and boys in my love, my longing.
I wanted to be over there with them and to know their secrets
and say with them, "Blessed be He who has made me
according to his will." And the partition
a lace curtain white and soft as summer dresses, and that curtain
swaying to and fro with its rings and its loops,
lu-lu-lu loops, Lulu, lullings of love in the locked room.
And the faces of women like the face of the moon behind the clouds
or the full moon when the curtain parts: an enchanted
cosmic order. At night we said the blessing
over the moon outside, and I
thought about the women.

A very fine piece of writing -- it conveys the experience of longing & connection through the partition in orthrodox assemblies. I love these lines:

And the partition
a lace curtain white and soft as summer dresses, and that curtain
swaying to and fro with its rings and its loops,
lu-lu-lu loops, Lulu, lullings of love in the locked room.
And the faces of women like the face of the moon behind the clouds
or the full moon when the curtain parts

Such a beautiful sensual contrast, the soft summer dresses in that hard, subdivided monolith of a "place of worship". The wordplay of lu-lu-loops might be the translators' work. Or maybe there is a fortunate correlation to such fantastic sound-play in Hebrew.

Tho I don't know Hebrew, my guess is that poet should should have gotten rid of "an enchanted cosmic order". Same old thing: an abstract concept already implied in the image. Look at the words themselves: so dull in their naming as to achieve the opposite of the enchantment they are trying to evoke.

This is only the opinion of a certain hubristic hudibrastic non-he-brew Editor (me).