During my year in Israel in Rabbinical School, I had an incredible opportunity to study with a man named Daveed Ehrlich. Daveed was a lover of literature, a writer himself, and a lover of great food. In fact, Daveed owned a restaurant in Jerusalem, perhaps some of you have been there, called T’mol Shilshom. The beauty in that name is for another Toward Shabbat email, but it’s a phrase from Tanakh that translates to “the day before yesterday.” T’mol Shilshom was the manifestation of a vision that Daveed had, far more than a bookstore cafe. Besides serving some of the most delicious dairy food you’d find in Israel, it was a place that brought together religious and secular Jews for cultural events, poetry readings, and great literature.
The walls in T’mol, as we used to call it, are lined with bookshelves, and the words in the books, Israeli literary culture and the Hebrew language itself, used to accompany us every Monday over lunch. On Mondays, 7 of us, rabbinical students from 3 different seminaries, would meet with Daveed and talk about the readings he’d assign us that week. Daveed introduced us to the greats of Israeli literature. Sadly, Daveed died this past week, long before his time, and I spent time looking through some emails from him. I found an exchange that I had long forgotten about in which Daveed and I shared thoughts about a Yehuda Amichai poem he had assigned us. The poem is the second in a cycle entitled B’chayay, B’chayay (in my life, in my life), and the translation is my own.
.כשהייתי ילד התפללתי קריאת שמע על המיטה ,אני זוכר את השורה הראשונה ״המלאך הגואל אותי מכל רע״ אחר כך לא התפללתי שוב, לא על המיטה ולא בגבעות, לא במלחמה ולא ביום ולא בלילה אבל המלאך הגואל נשאר איתי והפך למלאך אוהב והמלאך האוהב יהיה למלאך המוות בבוא העת, אבל תמיד אותו המלאך .הגואל אותי מכל רע
When I was a boy I would pray the bedtime Shema. I remember the first line “Hamalach haGoel Oti Mikol Ra”/ The angel who delivers me from all evil Afterwards, I never prayed again, not at bedtime and not in the hills, not in war and not at day and not at night but the delivering angel stayed with me and turned into an angel of love and the loving angel will be the angel of death when the time comes, but always that same angel who delivers me from all evil.
Daveed and I wrote to each other about the meaning of this angel. I was disturbed by the grim nature of it, seemingly waiting for the angel of death to arrive. But Daveed wasn’t troubled by this, and he wrote to me that the malakh, the angel, was a spiritual presence that he felt Amichai deeply believed in. He wrote that we might even read this malakh as the poet’s own soul reflected outwardly. That perhaps Amichai, taking this prayer from his childhood with him through wars and through life, felt inside of himself that there was a power to help him persevere through difficult moments in life. We might call that an angel or we might call that tenacity or strength, but whatever it is, it gets us through life.
This Shabbat, as I reflect on the short time I knew Daveed and all that he exposed me to and taught me, I’m thinking about this angel that Amichai held on to so tightly. We all need that angel a little bit right now. We all need to believe that there is a delivering power in the world, a power that will help us get through something hard and a force that will help guide us through challenging moments. I thank Daveed for that powerful gift. May his memory be for a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
We will NOT be having services at shul this Shabbat. I hope you will join Abe and me for Hachanah l’Shabbat (Preparing for Shabbat at 6:15PM this evening), and for Havdallah (Saturday at 8:10PM). Click those links to connect on Zoom, or check it out on Facebook.
Please check out our website for some Shabbat-related learning resources. You’ll find a d’var Torah from a congregant, a study sheet for all prepared by Danny Kraft, and mystical readings on the parashah put together by Abe, Geo, and Danny.
