Pealing back the meaning

Sitting alone in my bedroom, suffering with COVID-19, I was pleased to receive a knock on my door from a neighbour. He was delivering a marginally belated birthday gift to ease the isolation of isolation. The gift in question was a collection of translated poems by Yehuda Amichai, a man I'd not heard of before.

I like a lot of the poems: they're witty, down-to-earth, sometimes almost prosaic in their bluntness; many strongly objectivise women, however, in a sickeningly explicit way. Reading one poem, The Figure of a Jewish Father, I was struck by this line:

'...And at evening // he hears church bells rejoicing the plight of Jews.' (p. 97)

The idea of church bells as an instrument of Christian hegemony is not something I had considered before. This may seem odd from someone who has lived for the past couple of years in central Oxford, a city where every 15 minutes one is reminded where the nearest church is. 

But the pealing of bells is most often a call to prayer, not a mode of sonic oppression. I'm sure church bells have been used in the past to actively 'rejoice the plight of Jews': research into this would be fascinating. And I'm sure the ringing of bells at Christian festivals associated with increased anti-Jewish violence - such as Good Friday - has served as a trigger of fear for many Jews living in Christian countries for centuries. But in the context in which Amichai is writing, mid-late 20th century Israel, I'm not convinced that he is aiming to invoke the sound's symbolism; it is surely a reference, like much of his poetry, to a specific lived experience.

Nevertheless, an interesting thought, and one that reminds me to get round to writing an overview of Christian hegemony of music at the University of Oxford.

Bibliography:

Amichai, Y., Hughes, T., & Weissbort, D. (2000). Selected poems. London: Faber & Faber.