Poets, payments and politics
At the end of this summer, Israel’s Finance Ministry will begin to introduce four new currency bills: 50- and 200-shekel bills in the fall; 20- and 100-shekel bills in the following spring. Nothing unusual about that – after all, every governmental treasury does this periodically – but this four-bill makeover may be unique on the world scene. Each of the four bills will feature a national poet as its star personality! Not a politician among them.
On the face of it, this is truly strange from a couple of perspectives. First, in Israel the true “stars” have always been political leaders – not so much because they were all sterling individuals, but because Israel is so heavily political that every other profession pales in influence. Second, poetry is almost non-existent today on the Israeli scene. Sure, there are poetry lovers here and there, but the vast majority of readers consume novels and non-fiction books, and they do so voraciously. In fact, Israel is among the world leaders in book sales per capita.
So what gives? Have the technocrats in the Finance Ministry – normally hard-nosed economists – suddenly softened? Or maybe this is actually a political decision? Since every politician is controversial, let’s go for the uncontroversial poets of yesteryear? Not quite. In any case, even here there is a measure of controversy (more on that in a moment).
It turns out that each of these poets has been hugely influential in their own way: Rachel the Poet (that’s what people call her – Rachel Ha’meshoreret), Saul Tchernikovsky, Leah Goldberg and Nathan Alterman (in ascending shekel order).
Rachel’s poetry has inspired, and been used as the lyrics for, dozens of highly popular mainstream songs; whereas many Israelis today have no idea who she is, they can all sing her lyrics in more modern tunes.
Tchernikovsky was a medical doctor, translator and poet. He edited the Hebrew terminology manual for medicine and the natural sciences. Among other works, he translated into Hebrew Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Shakespeare, Molière, Goethe, Heine, Byron, Shelley, the Gilgamesh Cycle, the Icelandic Edda – a true Renaissance man! And by the way, he also happened to be a close friend of a certain Klausner family in Jerusalem, whose son used to call him “Uncle Shaul.” You may have heard of that son’s name – Amos Oz.
Goldberg not only wrote terrific poems but also authored wildly popular novels and even several children’s books.
And then there’s Alterman, Israel’s pre-eminent journalist-poet. That sounds like another oxymoron, but he managed to not only combine two careers as a national poet and a major columnist, but also, on many occasions, penned his political column in verse, which only further raised his influential profile during the early decades of the State.
As for controversy, everyone seems to love the idea of having Israel’s greatest poets on their bills (the greatest Hebrew poet of all, Chaim Nachman Bialik, already has had his visage on a bill). But there’s been lots of criticism (about the fact that all four currently honored poets are Ashkenazi) claiming that, once again, the culture of
Mizrachi Jews (those who lived in the Arab world, from Yemen in the East all the way to Algeria and Tunisia in the West, with Egypt, Iraq, Iran, etc.) has been relegated to the sidelines. For several decades, this has been a significant bone of contention, even if Mizrachi culture has made major inroads in Israeli society: cuisine, popular music, even high-level business. But the sensitivity remains.
Of course, these four money bills aren’t the end of the story. There are coins to be re-minted, new streets to be named, monuments to be built. Who knows – perhaps a Mizrachi poet will eventually grace what all Israelis have really been waiting for: the 500-shekel note!
PROF. SAM LEHMAN-WILZIG (profslw.com) is deputy director of the School of Communications at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. This past spring, he was a visiting professor at the Israel Studies Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.
