WEBVTT

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This next poem is a quatrain.

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And this afternoon one
class at the University,

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I explained to the
students at the quatrain

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is actually a very old both--

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a form both for Hebrew
and the Arabic literature.

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It's four lines,
very concentrated.

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It's something like the sonnet
in European literatures.

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And so you have to
really say, in four lines

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with similar rhymes at the
end, a very concentrated thing

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of emotion and philosophy
and a lot of other things.

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It's a kind of challenge.

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I've written quite
a lot of them.

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I want to read you
one which is, again,

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based on a very famous
biblical story of Rachel

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and her sister Leah
and Jacob, יעקב.

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You know he went to
his uncle לבן, Laban,

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and said he worked for seven
and seven and seven years

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for these two sisters.

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And he actually wanted to have
only one, רחל, because she

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was a more beautiful one.

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But her father told him you
can't do a thing like that.

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First you take the elder sister
and then the younger one.

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And so he had to
work more and more.

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So finally he worked and the
night of the wedding came.

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And as it happens in the Bible--

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the Bible has a great
sense of humor itself.

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Sometimes the Bible even
as some kind of slapstick

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humor because it's always the
little one who gets most of it.

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And always the
underdog who becomes--

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The Bible is filled
with that kind of humor.

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And so לבן gave him רחל.

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And it's written in
the Bible, ״ויהי בבוקר והנה-היא לאה״

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And lo, in the
morning, she was לאה.

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So he went to bed with רחל and
woke up with her sister לאה.

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Which of course, I think is
quite impossible in our well

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illuminated wedding nights.

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And so-- But anyhow I've
used this story to--

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for a very personal poem,
which is actually very sad.

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I'll read first in
English translation then

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this four-lined poem in Hebrew.

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It's morning now
and you are Leah.

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Last night you were Rahel.

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It's not that Lavan cheated
me in the dark of the night.

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It will always be like that.

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That's the world's way.

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Now you are Leah yet last
night you were Rahel.

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״בוקר עכשיו והנה את לאה, אמש היית רחל.

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״לא לבן רימה אותי בחושך הליל.

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״זה תמיד כך יהיה.
זו דרך תבל:

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עכשיו את לאה ואמש היית רחל.״