Shana Tova


I wish you a good and sweet new year. Since it is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, only this will do:


The Eve of Rosh Hashanah


The Eve of Rosh Hashanah. At the house that’s being built
a man makes a vow: not to do anything wrong in it,
only to love.
Sins that were green last spring
dried out over the summer. Now they’re whispering.

So I washed my body and clipped my fingernails,
the last good deed a man can do for himself
while he’s still alive.

What is a man? In the daytime he untangles into words
what night turns into a heavy coil.
What do we do to one another—
a son to his father, a father to his son?

And between him and death there’s nothing
but a wall of words
like a battery of agitated lawyers.

And whoever uses people as handles or as rungs of a ladder
will soon find himself hugging a stick of wood
and holding a severed hand and wiping his tears
with a potsherd.


—Yehuda Amichai

tr. Chana Block & Stephen Mitchell