"Toil" (Hebrew: עָמָל Amal) is a 1928 poem by
Avraham Shlonsky
Avraham Shlonsky (; ; March 6, 1900 – May 18, 1973) was a Russian-born Israeli poet and editor.
He was influential in the development of modern Hebrew and its literature in Israel through his many acclaimed translations of literary classics, ...
. The poem forms part of a sequence named after
Mount Gilboa
Mount Gilboa (; ''Jabal Jalbūʿ'' or ''Jabal Fuqqāʿa''), sometimes referred to as the Mountains of Gilboa, is the name for a mountain range in the West Bank. It overlooks the Harod Valley (the eastern part of the larger Jezreel Valley) to ...
. and reflects the author's life six years after his arrival in Palestine, while working on paving roads with other members of the
Third Aliyah
The Third Aliyah () refers to the third wave, or aliyah, of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine (region), Palestine from Europe. This wave lasted from 1919, just after the end of World War I, until 1923, at the start of an economic crisis in P ...
. The poem begins "We have a small hand with five fingers, Wax fingers thin to breaking. The pulse beats at their beginning and at their end—fingernails." The poem is celebrated for its re-imagining of the religious imagery of Judaism in terms of the settlers' Zionist pioneer construction ethic. An example is found in how
prayer shawls and
phylacteries are used as metaphors to describe the emotions of the pioneers as they build roads: "Dress me, good mother, in a glorious robe of many colors, ..." In the poem "toil" becomes a form of worship itself, or, per Chowers (2012), "an altar at which to worship".
Translations
The poem has been translated into English several times:
*Rebecca Mintz, ''Modern Hebrew Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology'' (1966).
[''Modern Hebrew Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology'' ed. Ruth Finer Mintz 052000868]
Page 178
1966
*
Leah Goldberg
Leah Goldberg or Lea Goldberg (; May 29, 1911, Königsberg – January 15, 1970, Jerusalem) was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, illustrater and painter, and comparative literary researcher.
Her wri ...
"Al arba'a shirim shel A. Shlonsky"
our poems by A. Shlonsky Moznayim.38.5-6 (1974)
*T. Carmi, ''The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse'' (New York: Penguin, 1991)
References
External links
The Palestine-Israel Journal - Online text of the poem.
1928 poems
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