‘Loneliness expresses the pain and solitude … the glory of being alone’

RALPH GENENDE: Our Jewish community is known for its solidarity, which is why lockdowns are especially painful. After all, what is a Simcha without others to share it with?

PAUL CELAN, THE post-war Romanian-Jewish poet and translator, describes the hopes of the poet that his works be read and understood: “A poem… can be a message in a bottle, set out in the – not always greatly hopeful – belief that somewhere in sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it.” 

Celan may be describing the lonely creative process and hopes of the poet; great poems and profound ideas are born in the stillness and solitude of the heart. But it could also be applied to the aspirations of us all to be recognised and understood. It certainly has relevance for leaders who long and wish for their message to be accepted and appreciated.

Moses, great leader of the Jewish people is better known as a prophet, political leader and teacher par excellence. He was, however, a superlative poet as well. His greatest poems are the songs he composed after the crossing of the sea, the Shira, as well as his final verse at the end of his life known as Haazinu.

As a poet and leader, he was all too familiar with the pain and pleasure of solitude. He first meets God in the isolation of the wilderness at the burning bush. He later encounters God in the seclusion of Sinai as he slowly winds his way up the mountain. He is alone with God in the Tent of meeting; he pitches his lonely tent outside of the camp of Israel.

He sends out his insights and God’s words like those messages in a bottle, hoping they will touch the shores of his people, the souls of strangers. This modest man would have been amazed to know how many lands and heartlands his words have reached. 

Moses is a complex and paradoxical leader. On the one hand he is the quintessential loner, on the other, he is the great connector. He comes from a place of loneliness, a small crib in the vastness of the Nile; he creates a space of togetherness, a family, a community, a nation.