EC2Fleuves

TRANSLATIONS

There are several
English translations
to the song.
Some are closer to the original
while others are
a freer rendition.

Following is a literal translation
from the Hebrew
prepared by Yael Levine

JERUSALEM OF GOLD
by Naomi Shemer

The mountain air is clear as wine
And the scent of pines
Is carried on the breeze of twilight
With the sound of bells.

And in the slumber of tree and stone
Captured in her dream
The city that sits solitary
And in its midst is a wall.

Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.

How the cisterns have dried
The market-place is empty
And no one frequents the Temple Mount
In the Old City.

And in the caves in the mountain
Winds are howling
And no one descends to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho.

Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.

But as I come to sing to you today,
And to adorn crowns to you (i.e. to tell your praise)
I am the smallest of the youngest of your children (i.e. the least worthy of doing so)
And of the last poet (i.e. of all the poets born).

For your name scorches the lips
Like the kiss of a seraph
If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Which is all gold…

Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.

We have returned to the cisterns
To the market and to the market-place
A ram’s horn (shofar) calls out (i.e. is being heard) on the Temple Mount
In the Old City.

And in the caves in the mountain
Thousands of suns shine -
We will once again descend to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho!

Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.

A translation by Chaya Galai
is posted on the official site
of the Israel Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.

Following are
the Hebrew lyrics
to Jerusalem of Gold
in English transliteration.

JERUSALEM OF GOLD
by Naomi Shemer

Avir harim zalul kayayin
Ve-rei’ah oranim
Nissa be-ru’ah ha’arbayim
Im kol pa’amonim

U-ve-tardemat ilan va-even
Shvuyah ba-halomah
Ha-ir asher badad yoshevet
U-ve-libbah homah

Yerushalayim shel zahav
Ve-shel nehoshet ve-shel or
Ha-lo le-khol shirayikh
Ani kinnor.

Eikhah yavshu borot ha-mayim
Kikkar ha-shuk reikah
Ve-ein poked et Har ha-Bayit
Ba-ir ha-attikah

U-va-me’arot asher ba-selah
Meyallelot ruhot
Ve-ein yored el Yam ha-Melah
Be-derekh Yeriho

Yerushalayim shel zahav
Ve-shel nehoshet ve-shel or
Ha-lo le-khol shirayikh
Ani kinnor.

Akh be-vo’i ha-yom la-shir lakh
Ve-lakh likshor ketarim
Katonti mi-ze’ir bana’ikh
U-me-aharon ha-meshorerim

Ki shemekh zorev et ha-sefatayim
Ke-neshikat saraf
Im eshkakhekh Yerushalayim
Asher kullah zahav

Yerushalayim shel zahav
Ve-shel nehoshet ve-shel or
Ha-lo le-khol shirayikh
Ani kinnor.

Hazarnu el borot ha-mayim
La-shuk ve-la-kikkar
Shofar kore be-Har ha-Bayit
Ba-ir ha-attikah

U-va-me’arot asher ba-selah
Alfey shemashot zorhot
Nashuv nered el Yam ha-Melah
Be-derekh Yeriho

Yerushalayim shel zahav
Ve-shel nehoshet ve-shel or
Ha-lo le-khol shirayikh
Ani kinnor.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jerusalem Day

: יום ירושלים

Day of celebration: 28 Iyar

Friday May 22, 2009

Yom Yerushalayim is an Israeli national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City in June 1967.The Chief Rabbinate of Israel declared Jerusalem Day a minor religious holiday to thank God for the 6-day victory and for answering the 2,000-year-old prayer of “Next Year in Jerusalem”.

The day is marked by state ceremonies, memorial services for soldiers who died in the battle for Jerusalem, parades through downtown Jerusalem, reciting the Hallel prayer in synagogues, lectures on Jerusalem-related topics, singing and dancing, and special television programming. Schoolchildren throughout the country learn about significance of Jerusalem, and schools in Jerusalem hold festive assemblies.The day is also marked in Jewish schools around the world

Date: 29 April 2009

Israel was created in November 29 1947 by the majority of its members in the United Nations forum located in New York !

So gone are those 2,000 years of bitter herbs , food the chosen people had eaten in its misery..

Now , following his forefathers, following the same call as Abraham ,Moses and David..Israel returned home for good!

And so it is with a joy in my heart..

A joy deep, spiritual and fulfilled by my belief in destiny..

A  joy of thanksgiving to my Almighty G.od, the G.od of my father and his fathers,

That I am here, well and alive, to witness my personal miracle, the one we waited 2,0000 very long and terrible years,

The miracle to celebrate, enjoy and be extremely happy  to have a country for us , Jews!

A land with its blue and white flag to worship, to love, to care for, with whom we are now , finally.. complete!

To celebrate the day of Independence for the State of Israel is a miracle, a veracity of our promise, a day when the entire history of the Jews is one with the history of their G.od!

We , Jews, as a people cannot be whole without the land where we came from, without the land where our forefathers met their call , their divinity, their essence as human beings!

The Jewish people without their Erets Israel is an orphan , a people wandering without any focus!

Our destiny is the destiny of the entire earth peoples..a destiny put forward by forces beyond us, to meet the challenges of life itself; to show the better way to live a human life..

And so Israel , 61 years ago today, was declared by all his people , free , new from his past, founded by the will of all great nations, to begin a new page of human history..

We wish the State of Israel a very long journey , eternal voyage with the other nations , filled with harmony, happiness and goodwill.

e.c.

Aujourd’hui Yom Revihi “Hei Be Iyar”!

Aujourd’hui Mercredi le 5 du mois de Iyar..

Il y a soixante et une annees, des fois longues, des fois tragiques, des fois miraculeuses, des fois ou l’on pense que nous vivons encore un fabuleux reve.., a debute la phase nouvelle du peuple juif.

L’Etat moderne d’Israel existe, il est vibrant, il respire toute la vie de la planete entiere; presque toutes les differentes parties du monde y sont representees..
En un mot, la decision des Nations Unies de creer un Etat Juif pour les Juifs en ce jour extraordinaire du 29 Novemvre 1947 a ete pour les Israelites en exil depuis le temps des temps, disperses sur deux mille ans de diaspora et de galoute amere, la journee divine!
Le jour ou finalement D.ieu s’est souvenu de son peuple et l’a ramene chez lui..pour y vivre en paix avec toutes les autres nations..

Nous , aujourd’hui , celebrons cet evenement!

Nous souhaitons a Israel et a tous ses habitants, un joyeux anniversaire, un jour de celebration longuement meritee !

Commemoration de la Journee d’une Independance Nationale puissante et remplie d’espoir et de bonne route..

Le trajet d’Israel est comme la mer et sa houle..souvent calme, souvent pleine de hautes vagues, souvent bleue et magnifique, souvent haute et grise..mais toujours pleine de vie..!

Israel, cet ocean de peuples, Israel mer profonde et riche, d’azur et de couleurs, spirituelle et laique, belle , fermee mais ouverte au monde..Israel pour la Terre entiere a decouvrir et aimer..

61 ans qui nous ont ouvert une porte vers un avenir sain, nouveau ..

L’homme juif rencontre sa destinee, l’homme suit le chemin de ses peres, l’homme rentre chez lui.

Amour, prosperite, bonheur et harmonie avec tous les peuples qui t’entourent ..Israel nous te le souhaitons.

elie cohen

President Obama 100 days..

Well apparently since FDR , this mark has to be acknowledged somehow..

First 100 days presiding over 330 millions Americans in the USA is a date for reflection.

Today , thinking of president Obama one cannot stop remembering all those many trillions dollars in his budgets and stimulus packages!

The first big one was to prevent AIG , that monster of insurance company, to go belly out..Why? Simply because that smart company did in fact insured all big western countries against any losses in their sub-prime and real estate investments!

After the huge collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , basically all banks went bankrupt!

So America has to give to the major banks of Germany, France and so on..billions and billions of US Dollars, that was the deal , that was what AIG had to pay from its empty coffers!

President Obama second agenda after so much money wasted was to cover all Americans by his own Health Care insurance!

Where does he find that colossal mountain of dollars to pay for it?

He does not have it ! the USA does not have it! So let’s print it..but that will be forbidden by any rule of good governing..

What then?

According to some analysts..President Obama said last week that some adjustments have to be made in correcting some expenditures! And basically the savings in Health Care spending in an universal coverage has to come from the removal of proper medical care to OLD PATIENTS. In other words since the most expensive medical bills a person had to pay for his or her survival is in their last six months of life, the idea is to prevent or reduce those expenditures. How? Simply by extending indefinitely the waiting list for crucial tests, MRI, Scans, and preventing “unnecessary” procedures such heart, kidneys, hip transplants..type of surgery usually very costly..

In other words , and it does make accounting profitable, since old men and women lifespans are short , what is the benefit to prolong it? WHY CARING FOR SICK OLD PEOPLE?

Why adding such tremendous expenses to the universal health care system? Is it “logical” for the good of the many young and healthier citizens to pay big premiums for their old people medical expenses?

Is that thinking morally acceptable?

And ..here we are ..!

A lot of old taxpayers having paid 65% of their incomes in various taxes to the State throughout their active lives, will be denied good care when they will be the most vulnerable, during their retired years!

Hope and Morality are excellent virtues!

Balancing budgets are also great virtues!

Giving hope to millions of people and not having the money to pay..that is a great problem to reconcile!

So ..100 days of change..100 days of ambiguity ..100 days that seem so long and so costly…!

Let’s hope that the next ones will be more..realistic!

Let’s the dream of the first American to settle in the USA carry on..

Let’s the freedom of choice to the American be secured.

Let’s the USA and its Allies enjoy democracy in secured borders and harmony!

e.c.

Hello to everyone,

It ‘s been a while since the election of the American President  Barack Obama and the question is: what happened to all his promises?

The financial turmoil all around the world is basically the same as it was last January and all the world big banks, except those of Canada – they performed well and achieved the best performances worldwide because of their self discipline and thorough Canadian Government controls – are in a big mess! Those American and European banks  were all rescued by huge and almost unrealistic sums of money.

In all,  quite many trillions of dollars  courtesy of their citizens, the pitiful taxpayers that don’t have a say in that matter, were wasted for the biggest financial cover-up the world had ever witnessed!

All around the USA many tea parties are taking place this week to protest against those abominable deficits imposed on “We the People..” It reminds us of those  same protests against the British crown, many years ago in Massachusetts at the eve of the American Revolution  : the Boston tea tax riots!

Nobody likes to spend money  he does not have  and certainly not  to cover the unforgivable mistakes made by so-called experts in Wall Street and in the other financial institutions  worldwide!

It is time those responsible for that immense black hole of dollars stopped being bailed out and digest the fruits of their erratic and strange financial behavior, to say the least!

So today, AIG super managers are going to be standing in front of their saviors and explain why they deserve bonuses..as if we all live in a twilight zone where bad behavior is promoted!

Anyhow, President Obama and  the American Congress are very upset and demand some action being taken towards those responsible for that monster  economic collapse we are facing now !

This new behavior of no more free lunch and free loading for  those CEO’s and Executives  that brought us  the ” Financial Fiasco of the Century ” in Wall Street and somewhere else is more than welcome and perhaps we might be seeing finally some rationale and better judgment coming now from Washington !

But when President Obama will try to fix one problem at a time and not create compounded disastrous  effects from  his fantastic mammoth projects, this planet of ours might have a chance to see better days for all its inhabitants!

So good luck and G.od bless our nations and help them .. the sooner ..the better!

Elie C.

Hello ,

So the euphoria is over! Barack Obama got elected and what happened right away?

Well… let’s see:

Wall  Street is still sinking on his foundations, the Dow Jones lost an average of -500 points for 3 days in a row!

In Israel there are waging a war in the Gaza strip between the forces of Tsahal and the forces of Hamas. The inhabitants of the city of Sderot in Israel are forced again to leave town or bury themselves in bunkers!

And to commemorate his new era of change, Barack Obama has appointed the staff of Bill Clinton to the White House : Rahm ( “Rahmbo” ) Emanuel being his White House chief of staff!

So much for the wind of Obama’s New Change! Just plain wind or as the famous song of the late French singer Dalida:

“ Paroles, des paroles, toujours des paroles, rien que des paroles..”

to describe her men lovers until she put an end to her distressed life with an overdose of sleeping pills!

Translation:

“Words, just words , always and only words emptied of meaning and substance, that’s what Dalida meant describing big charmers without borders, without an ounce of substance , without an afterthought after reneging on their promises!

A woman is now being crucified at the stake like the old Joan of Arc !

Please see my prediction in previous blog!

The fall guy for McCain defeat or fall woman is the perfect new and beautiful face , the one they call today the Diva “ Sarah Palin “

Shame on the men , shame on weak men!

Sarah is a wonderful person, a woman I can trust. She deserves all the respect due to a decent human being!

And so what else is new?

No! Obama cannot cannot change anything!

No miracles the day after the euphoria and that’s the state of our economy!

That’s the situation in front lines!

That’s what to-morrow is going to be. Another Bill Clinton administration in disguise!

As the French like to say:

“Plus ca change , plus c’est la meme chose!”

“More it changes..more and more it is the same song, the same old faces of old politics!”

Change?

What change?”

To all of you :”Thank God It’s Friday!”

Have a nice week-end.

elie, montreal

So the people have spoken and elected their new President yesterday!

My favorite candidate John McCain did not get the votes necessary for that task and nevertheless managed to get 49% of the popular vote!

51% of Americans able to vote had chosen the democratic nominee!

I must confess that since my young adult years in Paris , in the early seventies, after reading that best seller written by Irving Wallace, I had lost hope that an African-American man could be sitting at the White House!

Of course in the novel of Irving Wallace, published in 1964, “ The Man” , Senator Douglass Dilmann, the President pro tempore of the Senate became the first American black President according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947…and was to become a true very good President of all the USA!

But yesterday ,44 years after that book was written , a Man of african descent was elected President of the USA by popular vote for the first time!

And so I congratulate him !

After the euphoria of that victory will settle, a lot of things will be waiting for President elect Obama to handle and the challenges are huge. Will he deliver all the goods he promised during his fantastic campaign ? that will be a miracle!

…because the opposition from abroad in terms of breaking the free trade agreements, the removal of all NATO peace keeping troops and Americans GI’s from combat zones, the entire restructuring of financial markets and investors confidence will be there confronting his new Presidency.

Those international challenges waiting in the Oval Office will be tantamount! they will certainly give him gray hair like all Presidents before him!No doubt about that!

Does Obama have the spine to withstand so many challenges, time will tell. I,for one,hope so because the USA need to have a very good and strong leader for the rest of the free world!

John McCain could not master the formidable Tsunami of financial collapse in Wall Street and all subsequent  tremors afterwards. He did fight as usual and he did behave like a man of honor!

One thing for sure, I am glad it is over!

But I wish it did not have to come with such a price tag: two billions dollars, that’s a lot of money to spend for a seat of ultimate leadership, the man elected must be worth that price.

40 millions poor Americans could certainly use that kind of money.

Anyhow, God bless America and his newly elected president, Barack Obama.

Elie, mtl

So here we are! Few more hours and the elections in the USA will be over!

I must say I am happy!

Sarah will be in the news this coming week and for a long period. Sarah Palin will be coming from a far away land, Alaska, to re-install the old fabrics that made America, America!

To Washington she is coming! And her mentor will be with her.

John McCain is going to win this election!

The reaon is simple. Obama made a mistake!

His rush to be president made him commit an error!

He forgot that the American people is an intelligent people and not Europeans of XX th century. They are not kind to demagogues!And so Obama the leftist will let that driving seat of leadership for the whole free world to be occupied by an experienced politician and war hero, John McCain!

Americans always like heros!

Americans always will be capitalists and will reject socialism, this is the fabric of that country since its birth!

Polls do not vote!

People vote!

Polls are what they are, an abstract view of an immediate feeling, something like I think I love you , kind of ? But to-morrow will be a different story! A flirt is a flirt, a brief affair is just what it is! But family is family, women need not drastic changes, old fellows need stability for their sunset years, and patriotic people will always go for a strong America, no matters what!

And so from the Right America , the Republican America, John McCain will come safe again as he did from Viet Nam, Smiling again with Sarah Palin as his team mate to lead his country!

This is in the order of things!

This is what dozens of millions of hands casting their votes will accomplish.

This is what over fifty states going to vote, not pundits, not abstract maps and obscure figures will produce!

Not the result Warren Buffet is expecting; this great rich man that could not see the tsunami of financial abuse and disaster coming to his own shores, so much for his acumen!

And Americans this week will follow the same pattern as France , that old ally from 1760, from the days of Benjamin Franklin, Lafayette and comte de Rochambeau!they will vote for the Right. Sarkosy was elected and so many others of the same brand!The world today is not the 1980′s of Francois Mitterand and 1990′s of Labor party in England, not even the mean communist regimes of the old USSR and communist China. Those countries like capitalism and require America to stay the course established by Wall Street , Bay street and Keynesian Economics.

The democratic candidate with all his past is so contrary to the values of America that in spite of whatever breaks he did benefited from, pure coincidence in world affairs but not permanent so-called earth disasters , he will not be the name Americans will cast in those secret ballots. Obama was the candidate of the past , may be when America did not dominate the world. For 63 years people are looking to the States for guidance and prosperity and military force. Those are facts of habit!And not one man can change it!

John McCain represents the quintessential image of America at his best, 72 years of that , and Sarah Palin is definitely the ultimate American woman in power!

And so it will be happening this week!

God Bless America!

elie

Hello to all my decent and knowledgeable friends and concerned North Americans!

So after 25 months of campaigning it’s official ! The sad truth is  finally out in the open!

Obama blew it and revealed to our new hero “Joe the Plumber” what’s in store for Americans iif he governs for the next 4 years!

SOCIALISM !

Yes my fellow Americans !

Obama’s secret for America is Socialism!

The same demon and poison that killed millions of Soviet citizens during the Gulag, the same kind of regime that killed thousands of East Berliners! The same ideology that was the catastrophe of Western Europe of the fifties and sixties!

It’s a farce that what Ronald Reagan’s revolution  finally wiped out from the surface of this planet ie: the worst kind of political dogma  is what Obama’s platform is all about!

Remember the Communes in France of 1848!

Remember the massacre of the Ukrainian famine in the 1920′s and 30′s by Stalin!

Remember that the fuhrer in Berlin, the same Berlin that Obama went to glorify by his so-called charisma , was were Hitler revealed his National Socialism!

Well friends…

De Gaulle himself, having fought 5 long years that plague in 1939-1945, warned his fellow Frenchmen not to go that path after they found their new freedom from the Nazis thanks to American , British and Canadian young blood spilled in Normandy beaches!

France repudiated Socialism totally after Francois Mitterand, Canada repudiated Liberal politics totally this week and unequivocally! Great Britain is on the verge to vote Conservatism after so many years of Labor government!

Socialism is a FIASCO and a Socialist White House under Obama is bound to follow those same failures.

It is going to be the end of the American dream, the end of this beautiful country, the beginning of standing in line in front of empty bakeries! Wal Mart will move out of the States , disappearing like all other success stories to capitalist new Russia and China!

And all that thanks to myopia or the blinding of Americans by demagogue Obama and his bag of dreams!

Wake up America !

Wake up from collective delusion and stand up for your values!

Those values that your forefathers fought for!

So many turncoats nowadays – Powell, David Frum, all major liberal newsmedias !

So much Obama’s money being paid to those networks of democratic friends CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC  for unnecessary advertising! Where does that money comes from? Buffet? TV millionaires? Certainly NOT from  Joe the Plumber and small businesses! They do not like Obama policies! And certainly not from all those poor fellow Americans and homeless people, the ones that do not bother to vote anyway! So from who then? From what very special interests are those millions pouring into Obama’s campaign coffers coming from?

Obama is the new challenge to American dilemma!

How to disconnect oneself from those tsunami waves of propaganda and democratic politics “a la Obama”?

Well think twice, think much more than twice because once Obama gets his dream fulfilled you will have no other choice but to endure his new political face in Washington! And tough it will be!

And what should John McCain and Sarah Palin be doing now?

They must rally the sanity back to the collective America and stop this nonsense of Obama’s call to SOCIALISM! Stop the unsane idea to spray all those budget deficits around the nation for the next 4 years!

I know quite a lot of those failed policies. I lived enough time in Europe to suffer from it!

We always pray, back in the old continent, to come to America to become free!

Free from government interference, free from  being  overtaxed! Free  from overregulation imposed by big socialist government!

Free to choose FREEDOM!

You must vote for John McCain. You must vote for the REPUBLICAN ticket! You just cannot trust Obama, believe me! His ideas are as old as1917 in Moscow. His ideas are as old as Das Kapital! His ideas of spreading the wealth to all Americans will have  the fortunes of America going north of your border to Conservative Canada and Conservative Europe!

Socialism is the end for entrepreneurship and socialism is an incentive for  lazy overprotected labor. The end of all  productivity , the end of profit and thus the end of rich America !

Good Luck America, you will need it!

Elie