The Art of Ambivalence Judah Halevi’s
"My Heart Is in the East"
By Joseph Lowin

It will surprise no one to learn that there are ardent lovers of Israel who have not, for all that, made the decision to leave the Diaspora community they call home and go on aliyah to Israel. Instead, they live–and choose to live–with a bi-polar tension: the pull of their homeland and the pull of their home.

This tension is not a new phenomenon in Jewish life. In fact, to judge by the Zionides (a series of some 35 "Songs of Zion") by Judah Halevi (before 1075-1141), the idea of ambivalent Zionism is at least 850 years old. In no poem by this medieval Spanish poet-philosopher is this tension felt more keenly than in the poem that begins,

(1) My heart is in the East and I am in the furthermost West.

The most striking feature of this poem is its use of slightly off-center biblical parallelism. In the first line, for example, Halevi arrogates to himself two separate identities, my heart/my self. To highlight the difficulty of joining his "heart," the poet emphasizes the distance between the two parallel worlds by placing his "self" at the sof, the metaphorical end, of the Western one.

In the second line, he moves ostensibly into the world of the senses.

(2) How shall I taste that which I eat and how shall it be pleasing?

The parallelism is established here by the repetition of the word eikh (how), and by two roots which usually refer to the senses but which, in the bible phrases to which they allude, move from the sensual and toward the spiritual. For tet-ayin-mem, see Psalm 34:9, which enjoins us to "Taste and see how good is the Lord," and for ayin-resh-bet, look at Psalm 104:30’s liturgical quality, "May my words be pleasing to Him." The unifying element in this verse is God.

The first word of the next verse, eikha, brings the spiritual side of the poem to a crescendo. At first, one thinks that this word is just another way of saying "How?" and that lines 3 and 4 are just a continuation.

(3) How shall I pay my vows and pledges while (4) Zion is in Edom Land and I am in the chains of Arabia?

Immediately, it dawns on the reader that eikha is not a continuation but a new starting point, the opening word of the Book of Lamentations. Recited on Tisha Be-Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, it commemorates the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. But, lest we think that this poem is just a "modern" rewriting of Jeremiah’s text, the line continues with two words, nedarai ve-esorai, that come to us straight from the Kol Nidrei liturgy. Again we are presented with an "imperfect" parallelism–Tisha Be-Av and Yom Kippur–two fast days, one in memory of destruction, the other in celebration of mankind’s worthiness for redemption.

Line 4 alludes somewhat playfully to the tense political situation in which Judah Halevi finds himself–caught between two occupying powers. Jerusalem (Zion) is now in the hands of Christian Crusaders, descendants of arch-enemy Rome, the rabbinic heir of biblical Edom. On the other hand, Halevi’s current home in southern Spain is under Muslim rule. Halevi emphasizes the similarity inherent in this imperfect parallelism by playing on the Hebrew words Ê evel/khevel. Not only does the word Ê evel mean "region," as it does in the poem, but it also alludes to the expression Ê evlei mashiaÊ (birth pangs of the Messiah), the bringer of redemption. The word khevel (chains) calls to mind the image of a redeeming Messiah bound in chains.

The last two lines of the poem continue the harmonic parallelism with a visual image.

(5) It would be easy in my eyes to leave all the good things of Spain; as (6) It would be precious to my eyes to see the dust of the destroyed Holy of Holies.

Both of the near-homonyms at the beginning of these lines have biblical overtones. Verse 5 carries an echo of Deuteronomy 25:3 niklah . . . le-einekha (degraded . . . before your eyes) while line 6 resonates with the expression in Isaiah 43:4, yakarta be-einai (You are precious in my sight). What is this attraction of the Temple in ruins? Is the poet saying unequivocally here that the wreckage of Jerusalem is better than Spain in flower? Is such an assertion consonant with Halevi’s final decision to leave Spain for Jerusalem? How do we reconcile it with the poet’s long-standing home/homeland bi-polarity?

Toward the end of Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari, a popular treatise on the pre-excellence of Judaism, the Jewish defender of the faith says that Jerusalem will be rebuilt and redemption will come "only when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they will embrace her stones and dust." A destroyed Jerusalem is merely the first step in the process of its redemption. The next step is man’s.