Article
On the Shores of the Kinneret
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January 18, 2006
How does day pass at the Kinneret? Dawn rises when we begin to work. We numbered fourteen, with blistered hands and tan, bare and scratched legs. Strong faces, burning hearts. The whole air echoed our tunes, our talk and our laughter. The hoes went endlessly up and down. For a moment one may stop working and wipe the sweat from the forehead with the corner of a kaffiyeh, and throw a loving glance at the sea. So good. Blue, blue, blue wordlessly bearing greetings, healing the soul. Somewhere a sailboat floats over the water, and soon the tiny steamboat carrying passengers from Zemach to Tiberius will exhale its smoke upwards.
At noon we returned to the farm, accompanied again by the sea, a blue eye peering at us through the dining hall window. The homeland’s blue eye.
The poorer the food, the gayer the young peoples’ voices. We were afraid of welfare. We were drawn closer to sacrifice, to torture, to prisoner's chains which would allow us to bravely sanctify the name of our homeland.
I remember we planted eucalyptus trees in a swamp, where the Jordan River leaves the Kinneret and runs southwards to the Negev, foaming on the rocks, flooding its banks. More than one of us trembled with fever afterwards on a thin bed. But not one of us, not even for a moment, ever lost the feeling of thankfulness for our fate. We labored out of soulfulness.
The thirst was racking. One of us would enter the water with our favored container- a tin can once used for kerosene. What a pleasure it was to reach down toward the gravel of the shore, and to drink endlessly, like a forest creature, to immerse one’s burning face into the water, stop to take a breath of air, and once again to drink until exhaustion.
It is said: this water has wondrous properties. Whoever has drunk it will return. Is this why the young men abroad long for the quiet shores of the Kinneret, because their ancestors quenched thirst here?
On the Sabbath I used to set out for a rest in the nearby hills. So many twisting crevices, so many dear hiding places, so many green river beds: if only I could remain here all my life. It is good to walk down the path around the shore, until one sees the wall of the city and its round towers. Tiberius is ancient. It doesn’t look like a city to me, but rather a drawing in a school book about the distant past. Look, these stones saw the pale face of the preacher of Nazareth. Heard the oral law of the rabbinical sages. And these gray stones even remember the face of beautiful Veronica.
The Kinneret is not simply a landscape, not just a part of nature; the fate of a people is contained in its name. Our past peeks out of it to watch us with thousands of eyes; with thousands of mouths it communicates with our hearts.
1919 Translated for PIW from the works of Rachel
The Ben Yehuda Project
The poetry and prose of Rachel in Hebrew
The poet Rachel celebrates the hard work of pioneer women and men, and hears the Bible at the Sea of Galilee: “Not simply a landscape, not just a part of nature; the fate of a people is contained in its name.”
We women awoke at dawn. It seems as if – had we arrived one moment earlier, we would have taken the night by surprise: ferreting out its mystery, assimilating its secret discourse. First glance – toward the sea. At this hour it is immersed in sleep, somewhat dark within a frame of bluish mountains which are also asleep.The only beach is ours. Each pebble and twig is well known to us. To the right, the Jordan River, the shore rising in a steep incline. A few poppies, anemones and dandelions celebrate the only spring of their lifetime on its sloped banks. Left, on the shore, stands a lonely palm tree. I have dreamed for hours at its side. A small lonely palm raises – who knows how – its wreathed head. And there, below, alongside [the settlement of] Tiberius, oleander bushes, an abundance of green thickets. The other shore is far, foreign. The Kinneret separates us from it. The Horan hills overlap it, dark in the morning, lilac at noon, dressed purple at sunset. Drawing us, attracting us like everything on the other shore. I remember a moonlit night in summer, we rowed out boats toward the sands of “that shore”. We strode on the earth, preserving the footsteps of Abraham; we heard the echo of God’s words in the olden days: “I will make your name great”. We climbed boulders and looked down on the narrow fissures. There the springs quenched the ancient carob roots with chill waters.How does day pass at the Kinneret? Dawn rises when we begin to work. We numbered fourteen, with blistered hands and tan, bare and scratched legs. Strong faces, burning hearts. The whole air echoed our tunes, our talk and our laughter. The hoes went endlessly up and down. For a moment one may stop working and wipe the sweat from the forehead with the corner of a kaffiyeh, and throw a loving glance at the sea. So good. Blue, blue, blue wordlessly bearing greetings, healing the soul. Somewhere a sailboat floats over the water, and soon the tiny steamboat carrying passengers from Zemach to Tiberius will exhale its smoke upwards.
At noon we returned to the farm, accompanied again by the sea, a blue eye peering at us through the dining hall window. The homeland’s blue eye.
The poorer the food, the gayer the young peoples’ voices. We were afraid of welfare. We were drawn closer to sacrifice, to torture, to prisoner's chains which would allow us to bravely sanctify the name of our homeland.
I remember we planted eucalyptus trees in a swamp, where the Jordan River leaves the Kinneret and runs southwards to the Negev, foaming on the rocks, flooding its banks. More than one of us trembled with fever afterwards on a thin bed. But not one of us, not even for a moment, ever lost the feeling of thankfulness for our fate. We labored out of soulfulness.
The thirst was racking. One of us would enter the water with our favored container- a tin can once used for kerosene. What a pleasure it was to reach down toward the gravel of the shore, and to drink endlessly, like a forest creature, to immerse one’s burning face into the water, stop to take a breath of air, and once again to drink until exhaustion.
It is said: this water has wondrous properties. Whoever has drunk it will return. Is this why the young men abroad long for the quiet shores of the Kinneret, because their ancestors quenched thirst here?
On the Sabbath I used to set out for a rest in the nearby hills. So many twisting crevices, so many dear hiding places, so many green river beds: if only I could remain here all my life. It is good to walk down the path around the shore, until one sees the wall of the city and its round towers. Tiberius is ancient. It doesn’t look like a city to me, but rather a drawing in a school book about the distant past. Look, these stones saw the pale face of the preacher of Nazareth. Heard the oral law of the rabbinical sages. And these gray stones even remember the face of beautiful Veronica.
The Kinneret is not simply a landscape, not just a part of nature; the fate of a people is contained in its name. Our past peeks out of it to watch us with thousands of eyes; with thousands of mouths it communicates with our hearts.
1919 Translated for PIW from the works of Rachel
The Ben Yehuda Project
The poetry and prose of Rachel in Hebrew
© Rachel
Translator: Lisa Katz
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