Re-Imagining Genesis 12: 1 in Simkha Bunim Shayevitch’s “Lekh-lekho”

• In Event: Re/Considering Religious Traditions at the Time of the Holocaust Jewish and Christian Theological Attitudes

Abstract

In the Lodz ghetto, Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011) was befriended by Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch (1907-Auschwitz 1944). Rosenfarb recalls their friendship in an essay printed in the 1991 issue of the Yiddish literary journal Di goldene keyt. In the article, she recounts how they met, how he became her mentor, how he introduced her to a number of literary figures in the ghetto, and how she became the audience for his writings. Although most of Shayevitch’s work was lost, two poems from the period, “Lekh-lekho” and “Friling 1942,” were found in the ruins of ghetto. Two letters written to Shmuel Rosenstein, a ghetto official, were also found. In 1946, the Jewish Historical Commission in Lodz published the four pieces in a booklet entitled Lekh-lekho. When Rosenfarb received a copy of the booklet later that year, she recalls with a measure of happiness that her friend would not be totally forgotten. She notes that the two poems are important because they display his talents, thoughts, and feelings in the midst of the catastrophe.

In my presentation, I plan to examine “Lekh-lekho” to show the ways that Shayevitch adapted traditional sources to conceptualize his contemporary circumstances. The title of the poem is a direct reference to Genesis 12: 1, in which God tells Abraham to go forth from the land and promises him a great nation. Shayevitch uses the migration in the time of Abraham to describe the expulsion of the Jews in the time of the Nazis. Written in 1942, “Lekh-lekho” is a 448-line poem addressed to Shayevitch’s five-year old daughter in which he prepares her for their upcoming journey from the ghetto. Struggling to find a way to describe the fate of Eastern European Jewry during the Holocaust, Shayevitch re-imagines the biblical story. The poem tragically transforms the foundational theological premise of Judaism - the contract with God and raises the question of how does the Holocaust transform the original covenant. Since the covenant with Abraham is inseparable from the migration to the Promised Land, what is the covenant that binds the Jews who “migrate” to their death? That question will be the broader focus on my discussion.

Author

• Rosemary Horowitz, Appalachian State University