The Hebrew Language

About this poem

Moving from right to left, like a bullock ploughing the soil, and then turning around to continue its labor, the Hebrew language is written as a boustrophedon, with every letter, every word requiring careful inquisitive introspection by the reader, with open invitation to meditate night and day, backwards and forwards, on what is written and what is being read. After having recently composed a poem entitled “Bereshit Unfolded,” a kind reader observed that in referring to the meaning of that poem, I had inadvertently omitted the aleph in the Hebrew spelling of the word bereshit (correctly written in Hebrew as בראשית), which I have since corrected and which, symbolically, is perhaps the most important letter of the Hebrew alphabet, pointing to our Creator Elohim as Creator Father, initiator and finisher of all, the Alpha and the Omega. This one-stanza five-line Tanka poem is composed as a parsimonious tribute to the divine beauty of the Hebrew language. more »