and then worked with survivors in Displaced Persons' Camps in Europe. He lives in Jerusalem.

The ram came last of all. And Abraham did not know that it came to answer the

boy's question -- first of his strength, when his day was on the wane.

The old man raised his head. Seeing that it was no dream and that the angel

stood there -- the knife slipped from his hand.

The boy, released from his bonds, saw his father's back.

Isaac, as the story goes, was not sacrificed. He lived for many years, saw what pleasure

had to offer, until his eyesight dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his offspring. They are born with a knife in their hearts.

One of the most relentless Bible stories that we have is from chapter 22 of the book of

Genesis, and I'm talking about the sacrifice of Isaac. Artists have painted it, poets have

aimed their pens at it, and it continues to engage us as we move into the 21st century.

Haim Gouri was not living in Europe at the time of the Holocaust, he was living in Palestine,

and in this poem "Heritage" he registers his shock at the murder of European Jews. The

interesting thing about the poem, like in another famous poem by Dan Pagis, "Written

in Pencil in a Freight-car", there is no mention - no direct mention - of the Holocaust.

The main motif of this poem is connected to the name of the poem "Heritage". So the question

is what heritage do we carry from the biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac, or from the

murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust?

Now, Haim Gouri gives us his answer in the last two lines of the poem, when he uses the

word "bequeathed", and he says that the subsequent generations have been bequeathed - and "they

are born with a knife in their hearts." So this is a very difficult reading of the Holocaust,

because basically what Haim Gouri is suggesting is that people were born with some kind of

original wound. And of course everybody gives his own answer to this question, to what extent

does Jewish history create an original wound in your composite personality.