This first US publication of Erez Bitton, one of Israel’s most celebrated poets, recalls the fate of Moroccan Jewish culture with poems both evocative and pure. Considered the founding father of Mizrahi Israeli, a major tradition in the history of Hebrew poetry, Bitton’s bilingual collection dramatically expands the scope of biographical experience and memory, ultimately resurrecting a vanishing world and culture.
Preliminary Background Words
My mother my mother
from a village of shrubs green of a different green.
From a bird’s nest producing milk sweeter than sweet.
From a nightingale’s cradle of a thousand Arabian nights.
My mother my mother
who staved off evil
with her middle fingers
with beating her chest
on behalf of all mothers.
My father my father
who delved into worlds
who sanctified the Sabbath with pure Araq
who was most practiced
in synagogue traditions.
And I—
having distanced myself
deep into my heart
would recite
when all were asleep
short Bach masses
deep into my heart
in Jewish-
Moroccan.
Erez Bitton was born in 1942 to Moroccan parents in Oran, Algeria, and emigrated to Israel in 1948. Blinded by a stray hand grenade in Lod, he spent his childhood in Jerusalem’s School for the Blind. He is considered the founding father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel—the first poet to take on the conflict between North African immigrants and the Ashkenazi society, and the first to use Judeo-Arabic dialect in his poetry. His most recent award is the Bialik Lifetime Achievement Award (2014).
Table of Content
Contents
Introduction: The Poetry of Erez Bitton
FROM Blindfolded Landscapes (2013)
Blindfolded Horses
The Dog and His Master
The Poem of the Cane
This Summer
For the Algerian Poet Rabah Belamri
To Say Desert
Treaty with the Elder Son
Late Learning
You Who Cross My Path
My Father Gave the Neighbors
Roll Call
Sights
When I Was a Child of Light
With the Kids
Hoarse Rababa
Your Eyes
More and More
Not to See Granada
Forgetting Something in You
You and I
Yesterday’s Kiss
Families at the Jerusalem School for the Blind
Sketching the Future at the Jerusalem School for the Blind
Children at the Jerusalem School for the Blind
Becoming a Weaver
The Child Sitting in Corners at the School of the Blind
Voices
For Gvira
Mommy Wrap for Me
Yom Kippur at the School for the Blind
For Elisheva Kaplan
On Top of a Wall
FROM Timbisert, A Moroccan Bird – New and Selected Poems (2009)
A Broken Nightingale
A Broken Nightingale
Heart Valve
My Mother, Her Children Wouldn’t Live
Lod Cemetery
At Sunset
On Winter Mornings
For Aharon ben Chmou
Ballad about a Town at Sunset
The Wail of Women
Lullaby in the Town of Oran
We Are Strangers
Spanish Song
Clipped Orange Trees
Poem at the Heart of Jerusalem
In the Sealed Rooms
Cesspits
Poem of 1991
Our Pains at Night
A Moroccan Offering
Preliminary Background Words
Zohra El Fassia
A Marginal Boy and a Social Worker
Elegies for ben Shushan
A Purchase on Dizengov
Moroccan Wedding
On the Earthquake in Agadir
Meeting
The Book of Na’na
The Love of Children in White Caftans
Uncle Yehuda Sharvit between Marrakesh and Draa
Summary of a Conversation
Mother Is Cajoling a Bird
Al-Keskas ul-Feran 1
Al-Keskas ul-Feran 2
At the Feet of the Women
Zaish
Sullika’s Qasida
Intercontinental Bird
To Speak Within the Light
In Praise of the Dreamers of Jerusalem
To Speak of a City to its Face
My Mother Collects Down
Scaffolding
Addendum: Excerpts from Ana Min al-Maghrib [I’m from the Atlas Mountains]—Reading Erez Bitton’s Poetry (Hakkibutz Hamehuchad, 2014)—nine essays, by scholars and poets, selected and edited by Ktzia Alon and Yochai Oppenheimer.
Acknowledgments
About Erez Bitton
About Tsipi Keller
About Eli Hirsch
Critical response to Erez Bitton’s work
Index of titles and first lines
About the author
Erez Bitton: Born in 1942 to Moroccan parents in Oran, Algeria, Erez Bitton emigrated to Israel in 1948. Blinded by a stray hand grenade he found near his home in Lod, he spent the rest of his childhood in Jerusalem’s School for the Blind. He received a B.A. in Social Work from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an M.A. in Psychology from Bar Ilan University. He wrote a weekly column for the Israeli daily
Ma’ariv and worked as a social worker and as a psychologist. His first two books,
A Moroccan Offering (1976) and
The Book of Na’na (1979), established him as the founding father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel—the first poet to take on the conflict between North African immigrants and the Ashkenazi society, and the first to use Judeo-Arabic dialect in his poetry. The author of five poetry collections and a play, he has served as chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association, and is the editor-in-chief of the literary journal
Apyrion, which he founded in 1982. Among his awards are the Miriam Talpir Prize (1982), the Prime Minister’s Prize (1988), the Yehuda Amichai Prize (2014), as well as the Bialik Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2014). His collection
The Book of Na’na was published in French (Editions Saint Germain, 1981). Bitton lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his wife Rahel Calahorra, and is father to a son and a daughter.
Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the U.S. since 1974. The author of nine books, she is the recipient of several literary awards, including National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, New York Foundation for the Arts fiction grants, and an Armand G. Erpf award from Columbia University. Her most recent translation collections are
Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (SUNY Press), and
The Hymns of Job & Other Poems, a Lannan Translation Selection (BOA Editions). In addition to Erez Bitton’s
You Who Cross My Path (BOA Editions), her selected volume of Raquel Chalfi’s poems,
Reality Crumbs, will be published in 2015 (SUNY Press).
Eli Hirsch is a poet, editor, and literary critic. Born in Petach Tikva in 1962, he published his first poems in 1979, and holds a graduate degree in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University. He is the author of four volumes of poetry, and his most recent collection is
Hanging Gardens of Tel Aviv (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012). He has published numerous book reviews and essays, and, since 2007, writes a weekly column on poetry in the Literary Supplement of the daily Yediot Ahronot. He was Editor in Chief at Modan Publishing, and is currently (since 2003) the Literary Editor at Hargol Publishing House. Hirsch teaches Creative Writing in the Literature Department at Tel Aviv University.
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