(Author: Naomi Dison Kaplan, Vol. 65, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2010)
When one asks writers why they write, their answers vary slightly, but on the whole all stress that it is not about choice – they write because they have to. It is an urge, and it is part of their personality; it gives meaning to their lives.
Being the ones that hold the pen gives writers power and control over the written text. They are in control of the machination process, which explains also the abundance of written material after major traumas. The ability to describe and share difficult circumstances serves as an emotional outlet, which is recognized as psychologically beneficial. In addition, the authors’ control over the events narrated alleviates the feeling of helplessness accompanying the loss of control experienced, usually by victims of unhappy circumstance.
One of the most common circumstances where modern people lose control and as a result feel frustrated and helpless is when they are uprooted and find themselves in a new environment, with new people, foreign customs and ways of life to contend with.[1]
The alienation associated with immigration is aggravated when the move involves also a change of language, that is, the abandonment of one’s mother tongue and having to learn to communicate in a new one.
The inability to express oneself at a level acceptable to ‘people of the pen’ is a major problem to immigrant writers. Through the loss of the author’s best tool, the mother tongue, the verbal expression that could have alleviated the trauma of their being uprooted is muted at the very time when the need to express themselves is so great.
To make things even more difficult, the writing of literature, which goes beyond journalism or reporting facts, draws heavily on the prevailing cultural milieu, and every language carries within it layers of cultural reference.
Thus, “immigrant authors” face a choice: if they write in the newly acquired language, when much of its cultural layers are as yet not known to them, they then produce poor literature. However, if they stay in their mother tongue, which in most cases is not the local language, then they face poor readership. This notwithstanding, some do choose to write in their mother tongue as they are fully aware that their ability to express themselves in the new tongue is not on a sufficiently high level. Neither prospect is a good one for people whose essence depends on their ability to write.
Where do immigrant writers, and those who belong to minority groups, place themselves? What language do they use and what cultural reference do they allude to? Who is their imagined reader? This subject is of great importance for all who consider Jewish culture close to their hearts, given that Jews are a minority throughout the Diaspora.
Who do Jewish writers write for? Their religious connections, who may understand subtle cultural references? Or do they write for their geographical neighbours, who share other codes of reference?
This paper deals with the issue through examination of current Hebrew writers in South Africa, and with particular attention to the prestigious Cape Town writer, Azila Talit Reisenberger. Currently, she is regarded as the most eminent Hebrew writer in South Africa, and one of the most acknowledged and esteemed Hebrew writers in the Diaspora.
Azila epitomizes writers who move from country to country and from language to language, finding themselves “on the seam” between past and present, known and foreign, physical reality and mental affiliation, and how they are hindered by or utilize the fact that they are the ‘Suture as the Seam between Literatures’ (as she entitles her 2006 paper, Journal for the Study of Religion, Vol. 19 (2). 2006. 125137). These issues, whether decided instinctively or after cognitive deliberation, determine the creative process. Writing literature is a co-operative process, as even when the authors write in order to organize their thoughts and ideas, they have an imaginary reader in mind. And though it is an imaginary reader, she or he is a participant in the creative process. This comes through very strongly in the following extract from and interview of the playwright Athol Fugard by Brent Meersman (Mail & Guardian, 26/2/2010):
So you miss the South African audience?
Yes, for one simple reason: it’s the audience that occurs to me when I’m writing a play. Harold Pinter said, “You write a play first for an audience of one – yourself at the desk. Then you think about it after that first encounter, if it has any quality”. I think about a South African audience that will know, capture, and enjoy the nuances that one brings into one’s writing. I write for my fellow South Africans. White and black, we are dealing with the same issues; they haven’t gone away….
Do you view your work in recent years, in particular, Victory and Coming Home, as part political activism?
If you’re going to tell a real South African story, you don’t have to worry about its political resonances; they come with those built into them. Just get the story straight, tell the story truthfully and it will be like a pebble in the pond. There will be ripples and you don’t have to worry about those ripples. No one goes into a pond without ripples. And you know, South African stories are like that. Why are people desperate? They are going to be very basic issues.
This paper, through a close reading of Reisenberger’s writing, examines two main issues pertaining to Minority Literature, especially Hebrew writing, in South Africa: Who is the imaginary or ‘implied’ reader whom the authors have in mind when they tell a story? And what are the narrated themes: stories from the past or present, the home land or geographical reality?
Reisenberger, who is known to many by her nickname, Tzili, was born in Israel in 1952. After matriculating, she served in the Israeli Defense Force and Studied Industrial and Environmental Design at Bezalel in Jerusalem. In 1975, she travelled in Europe and the Americas with a back pack. She lived with Eskimos, was robbed in Jamaica, was a guest of Pierre Trudeau in Quebec and served as an au pair in New York. During her one-day visit to Barbados, she met Peter Reisenberger, who joined her in Israel. After their marriage, they came for a belated honeymoon to Cape Town, and never left. They have lived in Sea Point and Camps Bay and raised their three children as proud South Africans, yet have always emphasized strongly their ties to their roots, in faraway lands.
Azila went back to academic studies, acquiring every degree (BA, Honors and MA) while her children were being born. When she went to the delivery room for the first time in 1979, she came out with her first-born son, Robin, and a poem: “Ima’ot Ha’Olam tevorachna” (Blessed be the mothers of the world).[2] During her sitting for her PhD, she was asked to lecture in the Hebrew and Jewish Studies department at UCT. Currently, she heads the Hebrew department at UCT’s School of Languages and Literature and is a sought-after lecturer throughout the world. Since 1990, she has assisted on ad hoc basis as Spiritual Leader for Temple Hillel, the Progressive congregation in East London.
Apart from her academic publications, Azila has published many poems and short stories in literary journals around the world, and five books of her own. Two of her plays have been performed at the Grahamstown Festival of the Arts by the UCT Drama School, namely Adam’s Apple (in 1991) and The Loving Father (1996).
Azila’s books are: Nekuda U’mabat (poetry), Eked, Tel Aviv, 1986 (Hebrew); Kisses Through a Veil, (poetry), Green Sea Publishers, Cape Town, 1994 (English); Mahzor A’hava, (poetry) Gevanim, Tel Aviv, 2002, (Hebrew); Mipo ad Cape Ha’Tikva Ha’Tova” (short stories) Gevanim, Tel Aviv, 2004 (Hebrew) and Life in Translation, (poetry) Modjaji, Cape Town, 2008, (English, with four poems in English and Hebrew).
In 2002 and in 2005, Azila further wrote and edited two academic books dealing with minority groups, an issue at the forefront of her academic interest, viz. Women’s Spirituality in the Transformation of South Africa,(Ed) Waxmann Munster: New York/Munchen/Berlin, 2002 (English) and Pride in Tradition through Acceptance – Jewish Identity in SA, as reflected in Lison’s Stories, Green Sea Publishers, Cape Town, 2005, (English and Hebrew). After an international conference on Minority Literature that she organized in Cape Town in 2005, she edited the following year a full journal volume designated to ‘The Echoes of Religion in Minority Literate’ (Journal for the Study of Religion, Vol.19.2).
As seen from the above, it is clear that the language in which Azila has written has shifted with her years of living and working in South Africa. Initially, her writings were all in Hebrew. Some were then published in English, thanks to translations by others and in recent years, she has written in both languages. Evidently, her daily use of English as a language of communication has impacted on her will and skill to write in it.
One can argue that proficiency in English has helped her to make the transition, yet this has not always been the case with Minority writers. This is the view of Jennifer Cohen, who studied the writing of Israel Ben-Yosef, the Hebrew academic and author who lived in South Africa yet published all his poetry in Hebrew. She maintained that some authors express themselves well only in their mother-tongue and therefore, despite having often gained genuine proficiency in the local language, consciously decide to stay with what she called Girsa d’Yankuta (the mother tongue – mama lashen as the Yiddish
equivalent would have it).[3]
Earlier in her writing career, it seems that Azila Reisenberger was not conscious of the issue of language and of its importance. However, with the passage of time, more and more poems have dealt with the theme of language. In her 2008 Life in Translation, the local publishing house included four poems in Hebrew, side by side with their English translation. Given that the publishing house in question had nothing to do with Hebrew or Jewish culture, the inclusion of the Hebrew poems side by side with the English version “makes a statement”.
Themes
The fact that Azila’s first poem was born in the delivery room together with her first born son suggests that her poetry is very personal and records her own life in an artistic, biographical way. Indeed in her first book of poetry (Nekuda U’Mabat – ‘A Point and a View’, 1986), Azila, who was 34, wrote poetry of love to her husband, children, parents, between two women who happen to be her friends, ethereal love to ‘the mothers of the world’, sadness about the difficulties and suffering of women around the world and about maturing and self acceptance. All seem to be a close reflection of her thoughts and those of many other women in their mid-thirties like her.
It is a common phenomenon that the first book of many writers is their most autobiographical, and therefore I was surprised to find a poem about sitting in a wheel-chair. In a personal interview with Azila in March 2010, I learned that in her late teens, she had been confined to a wheel chair and had had to relearn how to walk. This, together with the fact that her first poem was born with her first born son, and is a praise song to all mothers in the world, makes me state quite clearly that her first book is, as with many first time writers, a “poetic biography”.
Kisses through a Veil, her second book (1994), is in English. From the preface, one learns that the poems were translated or edited by others (Rachelle Mann, Hannah Blacher and Deborah Rhind, and edited by Barry Lotz). The themes in the book are more varied. We still find great admiration for mothers and motherhood, for the close knit relationships in a family, and many poems about love. However, this time love is depicted as much more sensuous and erotic, with some poems about divorce, and second families, which may not have been born out of personal experience but is fairly common these days.
Some of the themes of the poems in Kisses through a Veil are similar to those in the first book, yet they are now much richer and more sophisticated. A women’s longing is describe as ‘Eve’s Melody’ (p35), which opens with:
Come play me my love,
Silenced Grand Piano.
Come play me my love The Ivory soft
With the black secret notes…
In ‘The Emissary’ (p38), with strong allusion to the Bible, she likened the modern Shlichim from Israel to Abraham’s messenger, Eliezer. Through this allusion, she dishes us a subtle criticism, all with a smile, and only to people who know their Bible:
He drank eagerly
From the pitcher Of her lust.
And soon forgot
His camels
And his master
Who sent him.
When she refused
To follow him
Into the Promised Land –
He stayed at Nahor,
Where they multiplied
Like the sand of the sea.
Befitting a poet who reaches her forties, there are contemplative poems about the meaning of life, Liberation, God, “accepting things as they are” and “Path to your dreams”, on one hand, while there are poems of revulsion at ‘stupidity’ on the other.
One of the moving poems in Kisses through a Veil is that entitled ‘Legend’, dedicated to the academic and fellow poet Israel Ben-Yosef. The then head of the Hebrew department when she began lecturing at UCT, he was her mentor, who recognized her talent and encouraged her to write poetry.
It is in this book that we read for the first time about living “in Exile” away from one’s own homeland and close family. As it was published in 1994, eight years after her arrival in South Africa and her leaving her extended family back in Israel, one sees here the beginning of the theme of longing for the “old home”.
In 2002, Azila published her third book of poetry, in Hebrew, Mahazor Ahava (A Cycle of Love). These poems are varied and multi-faceted, reflecting a sensitive observant eye and deeply contemplative soul. The subject of love, marriage and family depict many sentiments associated with it. On one hand, there are many allusions to the ultimate love as seen in the Song of Songs by King Solomon; on the other, it acknowledges and records love, as mating of the Black widow, or poems about ‘abortion’. An example is Aza Ka’Mavet Ahava (Strong as Death is Love, p8, here in English translation):
Strong as death is
Love Divine Flame, when
Consummated
Out of Man’s constraint.
Many waters are not able
To quench love,
Nor can rivers flood it away.
No Dew drops of reason,
No torrents of laws
Can extinguish it…
There are poems of ‘the rules of the game’ or divorce on one hand and celebration of the ‘feminine’ on the other. Now, at 50, Azila has moved away from the personal and records the richness of life around with its varied experiences. Life and family is less than half of the book; in the other parts she describes life as a long journey, she contemplates about ‘what is the benefit’ of it all, she writes about the ‘Hidden light’ (Ha’Or Ha’Ganuz) in the ‘Kabalah’ and a few other poems with a strong Jewish aspect, such as ‘Kadish’ and ‘Kabalat shabbat’. In spite of their very Jewish names, and terminology, these poems can be described as spiritual, rather than religious, and the most striking feature about them is the rich allusion to Biblical texts, to the Prayer Book, and to Jewish customs. It is clear that Azila’s teaching and research at UCT and her role as a spiritual leader of the Progressive community in East London has added to the depth of her writings. One has to read these poems carefully in order to enjoy the multi-layered reference, and see its richness. In this book the section of ‘longing for home’ is growing. There is a lot of pain in poems which describe the longing for the mother-tongue, to mother’s love, to the old home. There is a sharp sense of alienation in “being” an outsider.
This theme of being in between is the core of Azila’s book of short stories Mipo ad Cape Ha’Tikva Ha’Tova” (‘From here to the Cape of Good Hope’, 2004). This is an interesting title, as while she was writing it, she was living in South Africa, yet the word ‘mipo’ denotes ‘from here’ – which in the book can be understood as Tel-Aviv. So the fact that she physically was in Cape Town, the point of view is from Tel-Aviv as the starting point all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. Indeed, some of the stories in the book describe life in Israel, while others describe life in Cape Town.
The geographical locations of some of the stories are vague. It can be due to the fact that most deal with the ‘human condition’, which is universal, but for stories which are so colourful and ‘grand’ the lack of exact time and place is puzzling. This can be attributed to the fact that in the late 1990s, when some of the stories were written, emigrants out of Israel were being criticized and regarded as ‘weaklings’. As Reisenberger knew that the book would be published in Israel, consciously or unconsciously she may have concealed the fact that she now lived permanently in Cape Town. It is, however, rather hard not to guess this from the themes and characters in some of the stories themselves, such as from ‘The Bergis’. This describes a young family who move to an old house on the slope of the mountain and mentions the Bergis, Van-Riebeeck, Apartheid, and even Sea Point promenade (without specifying Sea Point). Thus, South Africans recognize immediately Sea Point, while for readers in Israel, the location is slightly vague.
Another typically South African story is ‘All is Well’, about the relationship between a Jewish family and their Xhosa maid. There is the story Basar Va’dam (Flesh and Blood) about a butcher from Salt River and stories about Cape Town harbor and the South Easter, East London and even about a family, without a location, that Capetonians may recognize as a depiction of an eminent family in town.
This collection of stories won a prestigious literary prize in Israel, and the book was met with great compliments, by literary critics as well as readers. It is easy to see the aesthetic and artistic values: one of the stories is narrated by an old Jewish man, and through his “slow thinking” Azila levels criticism against certain conservative traditions. The story is crafted in a unique way, so as to draw the readers to a particular view-point. Therefore it is “not an author” or an all-knowing voice criticizing a situation, lest the readers develop a strong ‘antithetical sentiment’. But as the narrating voice is simple and not so clever a person, the readers distance themselves from his stereotypical opinions, and indeed Reisenberger gets them on her side.
In 2008, Azila published another poetry book ‘Life in Translation’, which was sold out, and had to be reprinted. This is clearly a South Africa creation. The themes are varied and rich, as befitting her multifaceted and interesting life. As the publisher describes it, “[she] is a Bible scholar, a Rabbi, a mother, a wife, and a poet”. Currently, Azila calls South Africa her home and celebrates life in Cape Town, yet deeply misses Israel and ‘her’ Hebrew language. The poet Antjie Krog and Professor Marcia Leveson, both known literary figures in South Africa, have both addressed the theme which emerges most strongly in the book: living in between cultures, between languages, and between lands.
Wrote Krog, “Not to be heard. Not to be understood. Azila Reisenberger’s poetry makes us overwhelmingly aware how often we have to translate ourselves in order to matter”.
Leveson comments: “Tenderly and candidly the[se] poems lay bare the experience of a woman who feels herself an outsider, in between two lives, two countries, two languages … these fresh moments of insight and nostalgia make an important contribution to the multi-lingual nature of South African poetry”.
The poems in Life in Translation reflect the inner world side by side with the physical reality of life in South Africa, by a Jewish woman. In many ways it is a collective poetry of the Jewish community in South Africa, in the same way that it can be seen as a collective poetry of women; or of creative people the world over. It is a clear voice “from the margin”. Therefore I would entitle it clearly a representative of ‘Minority Literature’.
In a recent review of Life in Translation, published in 2010 in the official publication of the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, Marike Beyers pinpoints the most important issue which I would like to impress upon in this article, that is that in spite of Azila’s poetry being so individualistic, it is an important voice of the South African Jewish community. The following are extracts from that review:
The poems in Life in translation speak with warmth of the experiences of loving and being loved. They speak of being a mother, a teacher, a woman within a religious community that does not explicitly acknowledge her voice, a Jew living in and with history, a person finding community with and kindness from others, finding herself in a language other than her first thoughts.
In combining small moments in her family life with broader narratives such as classical mythology or Biblical texts, the poet interweaves intimacy and a regenerative sense of community… The sense of finding a space for women within a broader context, is echoed in poems that recast Jewish stories or texts in a modern and particularly feminine context. One example is ‘In the beginning’ that presents a pregnant woman’s thoughts in terms of the creation story. Breaking off the end-line is particularly powerful: “And it was evening and it was morning/ And it is”
…Many of the poems speak about family events and rites of passage (when a person reaches a new status in life – sisterhood, growing older, watching one’s children, friendship, desertion, and funerals. These gain particular poignancy within a homely, but recognized wider narrative.
In ‘Heritage’ she casts herself into the living tradition of her predecessors. Jewish history is also fore-grounded in ‘Whispering’, where the holocaust remains with the poet even in small everyday rituals of life. The despair of feeling isolated from life is expressed in linking a fall from a bed to the history of a people – “Hard and cold the diaspora”…
There is a great joy in language. The mother-teacher takes joy in her children’s linguistic inventiveness in ‘Naches’. There are the beautiful phrases that link concepts or perceptions in startling ways, such as “this is Wordly bliss”; “My mouth was wide open/like a fish frozen scream”; and the lovely image in which she startles the Rabbis and – “makes their beards/sit up and take notice”.
There is also an awareness of translation – of being between languages. Some poems are in Hebrew script. Some poems have been translated by other poets. In the poems themselves this is expressed in a poem addressed to ‘you who live secure in your mother-tongue’ and in the poet looking for meaning in the dictionary – ‘is there a word for the wish to/belong?/I am validated only through/being mediated/in the dictionary’.
More than this, there is a sense of experience, of life being a process of translation, with the individual: “… wedged in between,/as if trapped in a wheelchair/with stairs/both ahead and behind”.
Life in translation is a collection bringing those stairs right here where we can recognize them as our stairs and wheelchairs too.
The philosophers already asked: if a tree falls in the forest and none sees it, did the tree ever fall? And the answer is that unless something is witnessed and validated it is difficult to answer if it ever existed. History usually keeps records of the past. After major events such as wars and disasters, historians sieve through all documents and engage in interviews to find a pattern and a record for posterity as to what happened. But usually, very little attention is paid for flowing life during peaceful times. Yet if one does not record the flowing reality “on the ground”, who in the future will know if we ever existed?
As the Jewish communities in the Diaspora are amongst other Minority groups and little of their rich lives is ever recorded in the chronicles of the host countries and main-stream histories, it is incumbent upon us to keep the community experience for posterity. “I suggest that the richness of the community should not only be evident from how many communal meetings took place, how many donations were given or of how many great gala events were celebrated. These may be important, but the life of the ‘people’, the mainstream members of the community, can be gleaned from telling the stories of members of the community, as they who “sit on the seam” between life experience of all citizens in South Africa and the Jewish community. They are the ones whose work will bear witness to our community existence. In the same way that Zalman Aaron Lison’s short stories from the 1950s reflect the existence of the Jewish community in South Africa at that time, as well as (if not better) than any historical document, I suggest that Azila Talit Reisenberger’s writing will be read as “living history”, or what she herself calls: ‘poetic biography’, of the Jewish community in South Africa at the turn of the 21st Century.
Amos Oz, describes people as Russian dolls, who are replicas of their ancestors whom they carry within (in Oto hayam). I suggest that Reisenberger is like one such babushkas Oz describes. She carries within her not only her ancestors, but also the community within which she now lives. Her writings are not just ‘one woman’s poetry’, but rather a reflection of the collective.
As a part of the South Africa literary corpus, Reisenberger’s writing is essential, as a voice which writes “from the margin”, representing a minority group, as it not only
enriches main-stream literature and prevents “cultural reductionism” (Reisenberger, 2006:125137), it allows minority groups to reflect on and celebrate their culture. It may reflect one-woman’s life experience, but depicts it with the richness of the Jewish culture. It celebrates not only the religious tradition, but also national loyalty and the love of the Hebrew language, and should be kept as a witness for our collective cultural experience.
Dr Naomi Dison Kaplan, a former Hebrew teacher, was educated at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town and the Rabbi J L Zlotnick Hebrew Seminary. She was awarded her Ph.D. for her thesis, ‘The Power of Laments in Alleviating Despair:Revisiting Hebrew Laments’ (UCT, 2003).
NOTES
- I agree here with Joseph Sherman, who maintains that the hardship experienced by immigrants gives rise to the creative process (From a Land Far Off, Jewish Publication Society, Cape Town, 1987: 1-15)
- According to the speech at the launch of Life in Translation, 30 January 2008, Cape Town.
- In “Minority Literature conference” at UCT, 28-31 August 2005.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
