80 Friday, May 1, 1982 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Dan Pagis Volume Is Latest in JPS Poetry Series "Points. of Departure" by Dan Pagis, the fourth vol- ume in the Jewish Publica- tion Society's Jewish poetry series, offers a representa- tive selection — over 50 poems — of one of the lead- ing Hebrew poets of this generation. The book is translated by Stephen Mitchell. Pagis, born in Romania in 1930, spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp. In 1946 he arrived in Israel and subsequently settled in Jerusalem, where he is now professor of medieval He- brew literature at the He- brew University. His imag- inative landscape extends from the grim vistas of genocide to the luminous horizon of medieval Hebrew poetry and includes a series of "science-fiction" poems where time is accelerated, distorted, even reversed. "As a poet," Robert Alter observes in his introduc- tion, "Pagis generally pre- fers contemporary vehicles and a contemporary sound, but it is also worth keeping in mind that the 16-year-old immigrant ignorant of He- brew so thoroughly assimi- lated the rich classical tra- dition of the language that in his scholarly work he has become the foremost living authority on the poe- tics of Hebrew literature in the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance." Although Pagis' own poetry is necessarily more understated than the medieval texts he has studied, in its distinctive modern idiom it, too, as Robert Alter notes, !‘is a self-conscious demon- stration and affirmation of what the poetic imagi- nation can do." Through its Jewish Poetry Series, the Jewish Publication Society of America seeks to foster per- ceptive, precise, poetic translations from the vast and various range of the works of Jewish poets — medieval, Renaissance, and modern — in Hebrew, Yid- dish, and the many other languages in which Jews have created. The series will also give long life to significant con- temporary work by Jewish poets in America, Israel and throughout the world. The Jewish poetry series will normally devote a separate volume to the work of each poet — with facing texts in (1970) and "Change and the many poems appearing by this one excerpted to the case of translations — Tradition: Hebrew Poetry in parallel columns, in He- indicate the forcefulness of but place will also be made in Spain and Italy" (1976). brew with the English the JPS series popularizing for anthologies. In "Points of Departure," translation, are exemplified Hebrew poetry: The general editors of the poetry series are Yehuda Point of Departure 7,2 41711 11771 Amichai and Allen Man- delbaum. The previous volumes in the Jewish poetry Hidden in the study at dusk, triovn -1-m3 ,13ri = ••••. 1vnin5 • series are "In Light of I wait, not yet lonely. , 1'r1 ???3 Ni7 Genesis" by Pamela A heavy walnut bureau opens up the night. Tian 1i ~r~ -rp.a 11 ? White Hadas, "Hebrew Ballads and Other The clock is a tired sentry, MI? ITT il'#71itc") Poems" by Else Lasker its steps growing faint. riv4 Schuler, and • "The Syrian-African Rift and Other Poems" by Avoth From where? In Grandfather's typewriter, ruiDr3; ?11. 1773 Yeshurun. an Underwood from ancient times, tr?in-rp. ?..3 , 7p7? - 1117171. /i Mr Pagis has been publish- thousands of alphabets are ready. .1,371;- r.49`7r4 '35K ni ~ 71 ing poems since 1949, trans- lations (mainly from the What tidings? German), a story book for children, and scholarly .ppt?; 17ri H vj avin 1??:4, studies. His books of poems I think that not everything is - in doubt. -1nm apiv .'inn pinn, N•5y are "The Shadow Dial" I follow the moment, not to let it slip away. (1959), "Late Leisure" My arms are rather thin. n4p, nivi1T ,`? ti! (1964), "Transformation" -P.t 1; Tz, (1970), "Brain" (1975, 1977) I am nine years old. and- "Twelve Faces" (1981). Among his scholarly Beyond the door begins 5 711"in 1-07r.5 -PPP works are "The Poetry of the interstellar space which I'm ready for. 5`,?.?:17.1 14; )?r.3y. David Vogel" (1966), "The ni)p`? tov447 )pin?? 51iti Poetry of Levi Ibn Altabban Gravity drains from me like colors at dusk. 1 '74 ,-Tkr)_17??D 1:71.? Ipzz of Saragossa" (1968), "Secu- I fly so fast that I'm motionless lar Poetry and Poetic im.tvjr31 Theory — Moses Ibn Ezra and leave behind me .14V 17Y 1117V 5;ti and His Contemporaries" the transparent wake of the past. - • 1 • - Jerusalem: An Old City With New Solutions By TEDDY KOLLEK Mayor of Jerusalem World Zionist Press Service JERUSALEM = We in Jerusalem have all the problems your cities have — and then some. The addi- tional problems include an annual growth in our popu- lation of four percent, which means 2,500 more children attend school every year; the political problems of the Middle East that concen- trate to some considerable extent on Jerusalem; and historical and holy places which have to be preserved. Amid the urban unrest that troubles so many of the world's cities in general, and the turmoil that con- tinues to dominate the Mid- dle East in particular, Jerusalem stands as an is- land of relative tranquility, economic progress, urban renewal and religious revi- val. That does not mean that we have solved all our local problems. Far from it. Nor have we found a magic formula to resolve the polit- ical conflict that rages around us. What we have created in 14 years of painstaking work since the artificial di- visions of concrete and barbed wire were taken down and minefields were cleared, is indeed a united city. And Jerusalem Day will be celebrated May 20. was But never Jerusalem an integrated city nor is it so now. Of course - there is interac- tion, particularly in the marketplace. Without it, the Arabs would not be able to gain from the dual benefits of tourism and of trading with Israel and Jewish Jerusalem on the one hand and with Jor- dan and the remaining Arab states on the other. Yet our policy is aimed at enabling each community to live within its own social, cultural and religious framework. That goes not only for Jerusalem's 100,000 Moslems, whose schools teach by the Arab curriculum and whose four Arabic daily newspapers, notwithstanding the prob- TEDDY KOLLEK lems, comprise the only free Arabic press in the entire Middle East. It also applies to every one of the over 30 different Christian denominations represented in the city. Armenians want to live as Armenians and see Jerusalem as their spiritual center. Greeks want to re- main Greeks — their Or- thodox and Uniate Greek Catholic churches are the dominant Christian ele- ments in Jerusalem — the Assyrians remain Assy- rians, the Abyssians remain Abyssians while the Maro- nites, with a new church and community center pro- vided by the city, retain, as everybody else, an identity of their own. I do not want to use ter- minology of "separate but equal." In our case, it is pre- cisely the ability of each group to follow its own tra- ditional pattern of life, which is the basic reason for their presence in Jerusalem for centuries. . Our aim, - largely achieved, is to create a free and open city based on harmonious co- existence of different communities; raise the level of the infrastructure and of city services in the Arab quarters to that which the city's Jewish majority has enjoyed for over 30 years; and assure complete freedom of ac- cess to the holy places of all three great religions. The task of urban re- newal is staggering, from increasing the water supply tenfold, providing drainage where there was none, and laying out parks and new roads, to caring for the aged and moving classes from re- nted rooms to newly built schools at a cost out of all proportion to the Arab resi- dents' share in the city's meager income. Of course the walled Old City has received first prior- ity in our efforts at excavat- ing, restoring and rebuild- ing the glory that is Jerusalem. The city wall has, been cleared, repaired and surrounded by a green belt. Damascus Gate, one of the finest examples of Is- lamic architecture, -is the first gate to have been given a major facelift, and a safe and picturesque promenade is gradually being con- structed atop the city ram- parts, where visitors can walk in the footsteps of the guards of King David. The ancient Jewish quar- ter, where Jews have lived in close proximity to the Temple Mount for 2,500 years, and which was de- stroyed by the Jordanians after our War of Indepen- dence, is almost completely rebuilt and alive with resi- dents once again, although only five of the 56 synagogues destroyed have so far been restored. The alleys criss- crossing the Moslem and Christian quarters have all been properly paved, the Via Dolorosa re- stored and the Stations of the Cross properly marked, the rickety old houses throughout the Old City shored up and supported by stone arches. While Jewish worship- • pers can now freely visit the famed and sacred Western Wall, the only remnant of the ancient Temple area, the two Moslem mosques atop the Temple Mount ap- pear in greater splendor than ever before, their up- keep supported by the entrance fees of over 3,500 foreign visitOrs a day, com- pared with an average of less than 100 visitors a day in Jordanian times. We have two major "headaches" in the day-to- day life of the city's Jewish majority of 300,000, a majority that, in various _ numbers but similar prop- ortions, has predominated in modern Jerusalem for the last 140 years. - The first major problem arises out of the fact that about 30 percent of the Jewish residents follow an Orthodox lifestyle, while other Jews follow a more secular lifestyle. A few of the more fanatic Orthodox sects try to interfere with Sabbath traffic on roads near their homes. Since religious Jews are obviously attracted to Jerusalem because of its very sanctity, one cannot stop at imposing the letter of the law. Our efforts are directed at persuading both Or- thodox and secular Jews to show greater tolerance of each other's sen- sitivities. There has been some improvement in this respect but it is a problem that will not go away and for which there is no easy solution. The second major prob- lem is slum clearance. We are working hard to close the gap between the poorer and better established groups within the Jewish community. Above all, we are working on legislation giving Jerusalem authority over many of the functions now in government hands;many of which we would then pass on to neighborhood commit- tees. These would include rights of taxation and allow them to cooperate within a smaller area with the citi- zens directly concerned over local problems. Primarily we see the delegation of authority to the city and its sub- sequent decentralization as a means of granting our Arab citizens, even if they remain Jordanian nationals, a greater de- gree of participation in and responsibility for the daily conduct of their af- fairs. We envisage a population of 650,000 by the year 2000, with more or less the cur- rent ration of Jewish to non-Jewish residents, no expansion of the city boun- dary and a green belt around the outer city. Jerusalem in the year 2000 will celebrate two his- toric anniversaries: 3,000 years since King David made Jerusalem his capital and 2,000 years of Chris- tianity. The watchword for our work in Jerusalem can be summed up as "planning for the future while preserv- ing the past."