Awake and Sing! Isaiah meets the Bergers
The first title Clifford Odets chose for the new play he wrote mid-depression in 1935 was “I Got the Blues.” But he decided to adopt the optimistic approach of one of the main characters and renamed it Awake and Sing! - a direct quote from a quizzical line in today’s chapter of Isaiah’s visions. Odets brought Isaiah’s reference to resurrection to the Bronx and to the Jewish Berger family, struggling with finances and trying to make sense of their lives in tensions between idealism and realism. It’s the restless son Ralph, encouraged by his socialist grandfather, who yearns to escape the airless domestic atmosphere and echoes the prophet’s call:
יִֽחְי֣וּ מֵתֶ֔יךָ נְבֵלָתִ֖י יְקוּמ֑וּן הָקִ֨יצוּ וְרַנְּנ֜וּ שֹׁכְנֵ֣י עָפָ֗ר כִּ֣י טַ֤ל אוֹרֹת֙ טַלֶּ֔ךָ וָאָ֖רֶץ רְפָאִ֥ים תַּפִּֽיל׃
Oh, let Your dead revive! Let corpses arise!
Awake and sing! You who dwell in the dust!—
For Your dew is like the dew on fresh growth;
You make the land of the shadows come to life.”
Isaiah 26:19
Odets takes Isaiah’s dramatic reference to what seems like an actual vision of the resurrection of the dead and turns it into metaphor. But is that what Isaiah also meant? Or was his original intent already paving the path for what will become the complicated doctrine of the dead rising back to life, zombies and all?
Scholars have debated this chapter a lot. The gist of chapter 26 is a continuation of the previous one in which the redemption will rise and Jerusalem will be saved and celebrate its continuity. Isaiah celebrates the gates that will open to welcome all who seek justice and the peace, and pauses to propose that the wicked ones who tried to trample Judah will not be allowed in - or even allowed to rise again. A few verses later he full on blasts the vision for the righteous ones - who will get to rise, and sing, like dew drops, in defiance of death.
So is there or is there not an early take here on what will become one of the many ways Jewish thinkers imagine the afterlife and what may happen at the end of time?
Robert Alter suggests that this is not about the future of dead people but an allusion to Jerusalem’s new chapter:
“The entire line of poetry flatly contradicts the declaration in verse 14 that the dead shall not live. Is the prophet introducing a doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which is generally not thought to emerge until the Book of Daniel? This is at least a possibility, and this is certainly the way this verse was later understood by communities of believers. But given the theme of national renewal that informs this entire prophecy, it may be more likely that what the poet has in mind is a rebirth of the nation, like Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones.”
How and if the dead will rise at the end of time as we know it is still, incredibly, a matter of some debate and speculation among different schools of thought - both in the Jewish world and beyond. Whatever Isaiah may mean here will keep resonating and developing in many other prophetic texts and later commentaries - from Ezekiel and Daniel to Dante - and Odets. But it is the next line in this chapter that seems to more deeply resonate with our fears of the future and the need to find solace and safety as we take on this present moment, wherever and whoever we are, always in the midst of some sort of challenge or crisis:
לֵ֤ךְ עַמִּי֙ בֹּ֣א בַֽחֲדָרֶ֔יךָ וּֽסְגֹ֥ר דְּלָֽתְךָ֖ בַּעֲדֶ֑ךָ חֲבִ֥י כִמְעַט־רֶ֖גַע עַד־יַעֲבׇר־זָֽעַם׃
“Go, my people, enter your rooms,
And lock your doors behind you.
Hide but a little moment,
Until the indignation passes.”
Isaiah 26:20
Whatever happens in the future is anybody’s guess. But there are times - for individuals as well as for families, communities, and nations, in which it’s best to close the doors, and practice patience, and to wait for the danger to pass. Perhaps the prophet is giving us here some tools for the present, for our own preservation of positive attitudes, and focus on what’s helpful, patiently part of a larger eco-system where both life and death keep dancing together, till it all comes apart?
Revival comes, it seems, in many forms, including Odets’ play that keeps coming back for more important messaging, including recent versions in Yiddish, echoing the immigrant experience and our continued commitment to all the ways we can get beyond despair, open our hearts and doors to each other, rise up, awake, and sing.
Image: Poster of Yiddish Version of “Awake and Sing” 1930’s
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