From back in Amherst, more thoughts on the sacred practice of translation

It's always a little risky to write while jet-lagged, but I want to add some thoughts to my last posting.

We customarily refer wistfully to all that is lost in translation. Jewish text in Hebrew carries an energetic potential like a benign and sacred nuclear fusion which is lost when the same text is rendered into another language. We can mourn the loss of the multi-dimensionality of the Hebrew text. It's a mistake, though, to judge the merits of translation on the basis of this one equation, because we do not only lose through translation, we gain.

As religious and spiritual people -- and I would affirm this for all peoples -- we Jews gain dramatically and substantially through translation. And this truth needs to be upheld and celebrated. When we translate thought from one expressive medium to the next, even translate a thought or practice from one religious context into the language of another, there is a net gain. We illuminate new dimensions of wisdom, reveal or strike new sparks of the Divine.

On the JCA trip, we witnessed countless miracles of creation achieved through the process of translation. According to Webster, to translate is "to bear, remove, or change from one place, state, form, or appearance to another." Translators, artists, religious teachers are of imagination all compact. Boundaries of form have to be crossed in the process; but new boundaries are set as a result. Touring Israel, a new land with disputed, evolving, recent and ancient borders, we witnessed all manner of freshly formed and freshly revealed identities and truths.

In Shakespeare's The Winters Tale, one character responds to wondrous events with these words: "Who would be thence that has the benefit of access? every wink of an eye some new grace will be born: our absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge."

In our liturgy, we affirm that God "renews each day the deeds of creation." On this trip we had the benefit of access, it felt (exhaustingly!) as if for 10 days we didn't blink, and our presence in Israel translated directly to our increased knowledge. Israel presents a unique vantage point from which to witness the renewal of the sacred process of creation.

Baruch atah/Beruchah at '' , mekor kol ha'omanut.
Blessed are You God, the Source of All Art.