The Faroe Islands have become known throughout the world for a remarkable engineering achievement: an expanding network of tunnels, many of them running beneath the North Atlantic itself. What appears almost improbable on a map has become an ordinary part of everyday life. Roads disappear into mountains, emerge on another island, and continue as though the sea had never stood between them. Some of these submarine passages curve beneath the ocean floor with an elegance that almost defies expectation. They are practical works, yet they also express something essential about the Faroese world: islands remain distinct, but they refuse isolation.

Jerusalem offers another geography altogether. Here, too, tunnels, caves and underground passages belong to the landscape. Some preserved water for cities under siege, others sheltered human beings, others became places of prayer, refuge, burial or conflict. Throughout biblical history and into the present day, the earth has repeatedly been opened – not only by nature, but by human necessity.

Yet there is a profound difference between walls and tunnels. Walls separate what already exists. Tunnels seek what lies beyond separation.

Languages often behave in exactly the same way.

Yiddish has never lived comfortably inside political frontiers. It has travelled with merchants, scholars, craftsmen, refugees and dreamers. It has borrowed without embarrassment and transformed without apology. Hebrew and Aramaic gave it its biblical pulse. Germanic dialects its grammatical body. Slavic languages countless colours and textures. Today it welcomes English, Scandinavian expressions, Israeli Hebrew and Arab whatever living speech proves meaningful. It remains unmistakably Yiddish precisely because it never ceases digging new passages through the mountains of history.

The following poem was inspired by the extraordinary submarine tunnels of the Faroe Islands. Yet tunnels gradually become metaphors for encounter, memory, birth, forgiveness and the mysterious passages through which words continue travelling across generations.

קשר, גשר, כשר, טונעלן

Kesher, Gesher, Kasher, Tunnels

טונעלן ־ נאָרעס פֿון דער ערד, פֿאַרװאָרפֿענע פּאַסאַזשן

קריכן בלינד, באַשיצט פֿון רעגן און שטורעם,

ביז ערגעץ געפֿינען זיך געעפֿענטע טױערן,

װאוּ ליכט װאַרט, געדולדיק װי אַ פֿײַער.

Tunnels—burrows of the earth, forgotten passages – 

crawl blindly, sheltered from rain and storm,

until somewhere they discover opened gates

where light waits patiently, like a fire.

אונטער דעם ים פֿון די שעפּסן־אינדזלען שװימט אַ קרײַצװעג,

פֿון זיבעציק לענדער קלינגען טאָג־טעגלעך מיט אַלע קולות.

שװאַרץ, געל, געמישט ־ פֿאַראינדזעלטע מענטשן

טרעפֿן זיך װידער אין דער טיפֿעניש:

Beneath the sea of the Sheep Islands, a crossroads swims;

every day the voices of seventy nations resound.

Black, yellow, mingled – islanded people

meet again in the depths.

דער ים האָט אַמאָל אָפּגעריסן די ברעגן,

און דער טונעל האָט זיי שטיל פֿאַרקשרט.

אונטערן ים בלײַבט אלץ פֿרידלעך,

מען פֿאָרט גיך, אָן צו באַטראַכטן די תחתיות,

The sea once........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)