der bal-tekie, The Shofar Blower

by Larry Rosenwald

In recent years, I’ve often led the musaf service on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and whenever I do that, and come to the shofarot service, I recite Kadye Molodowsky’s poem der bal-tekie, The Shofar Blower. It’s heartbreaking, and might seem at odds with the joy we often feel hearing the shofar, and especially at the end of Yom Kippur, when the tekiah gedolah calls us back out of the fast to our amended lives. For me, though, the poem’s melancholy and the joyousness of the sound are in counterpoint, each reinforcing the other.

​Which is enough from me.  Here’s the poem, transliterated Yiddish and my translation side by side.

​der bal-tekie yomert oys a nign,
an altn nigun tsu got.
iber im -
a himl on shtern,
khoyshekh in khoyshekh farloyrn,
der bal-tekie yomert oys a nign:
tekie, terue, shevorim.
 
di fintsterkeyt – a vint, a moyer,
es iz keyn eyde,
keyn minyen nishto.
der bal-tekie yomert oys a nign:
haleluya.
 
lebn im a farloshener dorn,
in khoyshekh nokh fintsterer shtart,
der bal-tekie yomert oys a nign,
an altn nign,
un vart –
der dorn zol onheybn brenen,
oyf a vant zol a flam ton a shrift.
iber im a himl on shtern,
un khoyshekh,
un toytlekher gift.
nor s’iz nisht mafsik,
es shtilt nisht der horn:
tekie,
terua,
shevorim



 -- ​Kadye Molodowsky

​The shofar blower wails out a tune,
an old tune, to God.
Above him –
a sky without stars,
darkness lost in darkness
the shofar blower wails out a tune,
teki’ah, teru’ah, shevorim.
 
The darkness – a wind, a wall,
there is no congregation,
no minyan.
The shofar blower wails out a tune:
halleluyah.
 
Near him an extinguished thorn,
in still obscurer darkness stares,
the shofar blower wails out a tune,
an old tune,
and waits –
for the thorn to begin to burn,
for a flame to put words on a wall.
Above him a sky without stars,
and darkness,
and deadly poison.
But there is no pause,
the horn does not fall silent:
teki’ah,
teru’ah,
shevorim

(Translation by Lawrence Rosenwald, with admiring acknowledgment of Kathryn Hellerstein’s beautiful earlier translation, from which he learned much.)