The father who dies in the song “Met Av U’Met Elul” (“Av Has Died and Elul Has Died”) is not only the month of Av, but a real father mourning his son. Three fathers, separated by hundreds of years, joined together in this stirring work.
The song “Met Av U’Met Elul” was chosen as the best-loved song of the late Zvika Pick; it has been performed by the greatest number of singers, and Zvika Pick himself said it was his favorite song.
The opening words of the song were composed by Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid a thousand years ago. Shmuel HaNagid was an extraordinary figure in the annals of the Jewish people — a Torah scholar, a poet who also wrote secular verse, and the commander of the army of the Muslim kingdom of Spain. Alongside his extensive public activity he bore his Judaism with pride and helped Jewish communities throughout the Muslim world.
One of his secular poems deals with the relation between a person’s state of mind in the days of summer and their state of mind in the days of winter:
“Av has died and Elul has died, and their warmth has died; Tishrei too has been gathered in and died with them.
The cold days have come, the new wine has reddened, and its voice in the vessel has fallen silent.”
The months of Av and Elul, from Tu B’Av onward, are the happiest months of the Hebrew year. They held none of the fear and dread customary today in the yeshiva world. From Tu B’Av — and especially in the days of Elul — the air grows cooler, one can go outside, and the pleasant part of summer arrives. In ancient times, when the rhythm of life was agricultural, the joy was great: in the hills they harvested the grape crop with songs and great rejoicing; in the winepresses the vintners trod the grapes to rhythmic shouts of heidad (Jeremiah 48:33); in the valleys they cut down sweet dates, and onto the people’s tables came fruits and sweets not seen every day. All of nature awoke to life after the long days of scorching heat.
The Sages said of these days that “there were no days as good for Israel [as the days between] the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.” That is — the months of Av and Elul and the beginning of Tishrei. These are precisely the three joyful months that Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid chose to set against the hard months of winter.
A thousand years would pass, and another great Hebrew poet arose: Natan Yonatan.
In the month of Tishrei, in the Yom Kippur War — on Yom Kippur itself — Natan Yonatan lost his son Lior, a tank platoon commander at the Suez Canal. He fell in the first hours of the war.
His son’s death affected Natan Yonatan profoundly. Shortly after his death he wrote the poem “Ne’esaf Tishrei” (“Tishrei Has Been Gathered In”). It opens with the words of Shmuel HaNagid:
“Av has died and Elul has died, and their warmth; Tishrei too has been gathered in and died with them.”
It is a brilliant, chilling opening: this time the av that has died is not only the month of Av, but also the father himself, something in whom died together with the death of his son in the war. And the month of Tishrei, which had been a joyful month — but in this month the son fell, gathered in and dying together with the father…
From here Natan Yonatan leaves the words of Shmuel HaNagid and continues:
“Only a dim ember remains of the summer love cut short.”
The son’s joyful summer love — cut short. It has no continuation.
From here Yonatan goes on, conversing with biblical figures about pain, loss, sin, and the relationship of son and father. Like Saul, he sets out on a journey of searching — not for the she-asses but for his lost son. On the journey he finds no clear answer, only questions and obscurity:
“And a strange boy walks about searching, like Saul, for the traces of Av and of Elul,
and in the dim he seeks the clear.”
He deals with the sins of biblical figures, but between the lines the question rises — what was this young boy’s sin?
This emerges from the parallel to the sin of Jonathan son of Saul, who tasted from the honeycomb in the field in the midst of battle — a sin that in fact turned into the salvation of the people at the hands of Jonathan son of Saul! Is that a sin?!
At the end of the journey, Natan Yonatan is left without answers to his questions:
“Go, boy, go; perhaps at the end of the west, between sea and land, between Av and autumn, your ye’or will shine among his sins.”
Zvika Pick set to music the song that Shmuel HaNagid had begun writing and that Natan Yonatan continued a thousand years later (it is worth listening again to his performance after getting to know the song’s layers). His melody is nothing short of brilliant: it opens with heavy drama in the style of the harsh “U’Netaneh Tokef,” but in the chorus it returns to a happier melody, recalling the great joy of the months of Av, Elul and Tishrei, the happiest months of the Jewish year.
And Zvika Pick was gathered to his people in the month of Av. May these words honor his memory.
(Pictured: Lior Yonatan)
