Remembering the Sources
Yehuda Amichai’s "Instead of a Love Poem"
By Joseph Lowin

Shakespeare, Petrarch, Ronsard–the great love poets of the Western Tradition–compared their beloved to a rose, or at least to a summer’s day. It takes a Jewish writer to write love poetry using the laws of kashrut as its central metaphor.

Yehuda Amichai was born in Wurzburg, Germany, in 1924. He grew up in an observant home. Although his poetry informs us that he has lost the faith of his ancestors, it also teaches us that he has by no means abandoned it. Many of his poems chant warmly and lovingly (one is tempted to say, liturgically) of the role of his religious father, and through him his forefathers, played in his emotional formation. In virtually all of Amichai’s books of poetry and prose one will recognize frequent allusions to biblical and rabbinic texts.

Amichai takes these texts and wrestles with them, often seemingly turning them on their heads or using them in secular contexts. Paradoxically, it is this midrashic use to which Amichai puts the Jewish textual tradition in "daily life" that makes his poetry Jewish.

"Instead of a Love Poem" comes from Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers, a slender volume published in Israel in 1980 and in the United States in 1983. The subtitle, in Hebrew She’elot u-Teshuvot, refers obliquely to the body of writing known as Rabbinic Responsa. This allusion anchors Amichai’s text in the Jewish tradition.

The title of the poem alerts us to the fact that this will not be a love poem in any traditional Western sense. The first line takes us back to the Torah for its organizing metaphor, not, as we might have expected, to the Song of Songs, but to the text from which we derive the laws of the separation of milk and meat.

The first stanza, ending in a comma, is not a sentence; it is the first half of a simile.

(1) Just as from "You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk," (2) they made the many laws of kashrut, (3) but the kid is forgotten, the milk is forgotten, and the mother is forgotten,"

The reader is asked to conjecture to what the intricate laws of kashrut will be compared. The answer is hinted at in the third verse, which is an emotional commentary on the first two. Today one does not need to know the textual source in order to "eat kosher." Lamentably, the principle on which these laws are based is forgotten.

In the second stanza the poet’s meaning begins to clarify.

(4) So from "I love you" (5) we made our whole life together (6) but I didn’t forget you (7) as you were then.

His proof-text, the source of his affective life, is the simple three word declaration, ani ohev otakh. Since the first time these words were uttered, many changes have taken place. The reader cannot fail to recognize the simple truth of this observation. Both people and relationships change and develop.

In the last two lines of the poem, Amichai distances himself from the populace. His declaration that he still remembers "the kid, the mother, and the milk," that is to say, his beloved as she was at the beginning of their relationship, seems to turn Jewish history on its head.

Of course, that is not necessarily so. Another conclusion suggests itself. Just as the poet remembers the source of his love life, so the Jew, and particularly the Jewish poet, is enjoined to remember the sources from which we derive our "responsa" to everyday life. "Instead of a Love Poem" is not merely a love poem. It is also a brief homily to Amichai’s readers about the nature of Jewish writing–and reading.