Translator’s Note:

Below, I have translated the first three stanzas of Hillel Zeitlin’s prose poem Kavanot v’Yiḥudim (“Intentions and Unifications”). I have attempted to keep the language close to the Hebrew rather than pushing to prioritize meaning, similar to how Rosenzweig approached his translations of the poems of Yehudah Ha-Levi. My goal is not to translate a form of bare affect or to plot into a colloquial English, but rather to try and bring over Hebraisms that might expand English itself. My work cannot be read as Zeitlin’s words, but rather as a work that stands on its own, acting in relation to Zeitlin but as a separate entity. However, in my translation choices, I have tried to keep the language to evoke a similar form and color the content accordingly. For example, I have chosen throughout to translate the word hineini, or “Here I am,” as “Here,” rather than elliding it as some others have. [1] Its repetition lends a certain rhythm to the text. Though not necessarily changing the straightforward meaning, it recalls a Biblical assertion of individuality and hereness before the divine, such as with Abraham’s response to God in Genesis 22. The themes of individuality in prayer and relationship to God recur throughout the poem. As a formal choice, I have retained spacing between paragraphs, quotation marks, ellipses, and words with spaced letters from the original. 

Our author, Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942), was born in Poland into a Hasidic family in the second half of the 19th century. Early in his life, he became very interested in non-Jewish and/or secular thinkers such as Dostoyevsky, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Tolstoy, as well as Zionist thinkers such as Ahad Ha’Am, Berdichevsky, and Brenner, of whom he was a close friend. Politically, he was initially attracted to Zionism before rejecting it for Territorialism after attending a Zionist congress. 

Later on in life, Zeitlin returned to Hasidism and Kabbalah, working for many years on an uncompleted translation of the Zohar into Hebrew before his murder in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. He sought to establish a new Hasidic movement that would not be limited to traditional Rabbinic thought, instead engaging with all of the art and knowledge of the world. He forged a path that we still follow today, not necessarily living in traditional Hasidic communities, but still learning from the teachings of Hasidic masters alongside the teachings of the rest of the world.

This prose poem, originally in Hebrew, has never been translated. It was originally published in 1903 in the almanac and literary magazine Luaḥ Akhi’asaf in Warsaw. The below translation is of the first three of a total of fifteen sections.

Intentions and Unifications 

(A Poetic Prose) 

A. 

Here I pray and the trees pray with me. 

Here I bend and they bend with me, here I bow and they bow with me. 

One tree, high and exalted, stands before me. He lowers his head, arches his height, he bends and sways, bends and sways. 

He bends and the rest of the trees bend after him, he bows and they bow after him. He is a shaliaḥ tzibbur (“prayer leader”). 

The congregation and their ḥazzan (“cantor”) are adorned with prayer shawls of full tchelet (“blue thread in tzitzit”), and their tzitzit drag across the ground. 

The trees bend and bow and the grass with them too. The community prays and the school children are with them… 

When the ḥazzan blesses, the congregation and the children respond with all their might: “Amen yehei shmei raba m’varakh l’alam ul’almei almaya.” (“Amen, let the great name be blessed forever and for all eternity.”) 

And we pray with him with fear and love, with great intention, with a special devotion of wonder. 

And with “eḥad” (one) we have the simple intention, that God is one and God’s name is one, that all is one, that all the changes and the differences, the divisions and the contradictions, the opposites and the refutations, the substitutions and the transformations are simply illusions… 

And we do not excess in private intentions, because we engage a single communal one: that it is not just the T O R A H in full that comprises the names of God, but rather the whole W O R L D. 

And we do not bother our ruler with many requests, as we are only asking for: “Sim shalom, tovah u’vrakha, ḥayim ḥein ḥesed v’raḥamim.” (“Place peace [over the world], goodness and blessings, life grace kindness and mercy.”) 

B. 

If when home, it is good to pray with the windows open too, here Psukei D’Zimra (“Morning Songs of Praise”) is good only when said in a valley or on a mountain.

The heavens and all of their hosts, the trees and the currents, and waters and all kinds of grass, the animal and the beast, the insect and the bird and all the angels of song, here they are before you, before your eyes. 

It is good to sing in a choir. It is good to say Psukei D’Zimra with the choirs of those who dwell above and those who dwell below all together. 

“Horn, harp, and lyre,” “lute and pipe,” and all the “resounding cymbals” (Psalm 150) — they are unnecessary, the choir sings beautifully without any of these instruments. 

It is not uncommon to hear the voice of the shepherd’s flute. There is the one whose clear and refreshing voice spills out into the wonderful melody: but there is also the shepherd’s flute that is a marring voice, and it disturbs the oneness of the melody. 

“Even the good and beautiful man is here just a man. He does not have the purity nor the innocence of the rivers and the stars.” 

“Here I love to praise God with the heavens, the angels, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the fire and the water… but I do not love to praise along with the young men and the maidens alike, the children and the elders.” (Psalm 148) 

I love to say Psukei D’Zimra with the congregation, but only with a created congregation that has not tasted the taste of sin. 

Here, my desire is to forget the children of man, their unfortunate mire and impurity, standing in the palace of worldly song, in the palace of Origin, in the field blessed by God. 

C. 

Out of all of the blessings, here I love the blessings for the thunder and the blessing for the rainbow. 

She is a beautiful Origin of calm and serenity, but she is also endlessly beautiful in fury and wrath. 

Thunder and noise, cloud and fog, storm and tempest, fire and hail, blast and flow - they are special jewelry for a bride we call ‘Origin.’ 

And in donning these ornaments, she will show to our eyes all, in scale and splendor, might and power. 

And beneath those manifestations, there might be moments that Origin will show as overwhelming white-faced beauty, here she will show in fury as a dark-faced graceful woman, and the darkness will add on a special adornment.

And there are those manifestations without darkened faces, because if they are too dark, they are dark like the Tents of Kedar. 

And they blacken her face more and they were like the black wings of death. 

And like all manifestations of blackened face, yes she will become beautiful, yes she will fill with splendor, she will become high and exalted. 

And like all where she will show wrath and fury, like all whom she will scare and frighten, yes she will grasp the hearts of those watching and gazing upon her beauty and splendor. 

And in her wrath and fury, there are those manifestations that will wear her face of awful sadness, and her cries are like a poor orphan, and with her tears she fills the spring and river, field and garden, valley and mountain. 

And her tears transform into gemstones on the tops of stems, on the cups of roses, on the blades of the branches, on the wings of the bird, on the insect and the bug. 

And the Origin cried without rest and her tears were pregnant with every furrow and flowerbed, every plant and flower, every thirst and flutter. 

And she cries more and washes away the dirt of the land and fills every nook and cranny, every pit and hole, all the grooves of the fields. 

Or, there are some manifestations that will suddenly make her face shine, and they wore joy and she will show them the blissful daughter of laughter. 

And now, the Origin wore her precious clothes and she donned colors and shades, and the R A I N B O W she will show…

Endnote

[1] See the brief excerpted translated fragments of this text included in Arthur Green’s biographical sketch at the beginning of Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin (New York, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2012).