Bushwick Reading Series: Bible

Tuesday night I went to Goodbye Blue Monday for the Bushwick Reading Series, “a [monthly] hour-long orgy of book-related songs.” This month it was the Bible!

Perhaps the New Testament lends itself to visual artists as well as the Torah lends itself to songwriters. At least on Tuesday I think the Old T. won.

The medley of talent lasted 3 hours, covering a range of approaches from gospel to haiku Haggadah. A handful of people admitted they didn’t get past Genesis so they imagined Cain’s guilt or Adam and Eve’s bedtime bickering.

Humor served most songwriters. Sweet Soubrette basically played ukelele to one of my blog posts unknowingly. One line went something like, “It’s hard to read the Bible on the subway. The hipsters look at you like you’re crazy.” Another sweet line: “She bought a Bible because she likes things that are old.” Rachel Devlin was one of the most successfully Jewish, interpreting the laws in Numbers (including Shoftim!) as a power play by a guilty Moses trying to exempt himself of certain crimes, as most people in power are apt to do, including Nixon.

Other acts relied on the tradition of congregational singalongs and clapalongs. Debe Dalton performed “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho,” using the chorus and rewriting the verses, which included the evening’s sole political phrase, “He killed every woman, man, and child just because they were standing on his land. Why did everybody have to die?”

Finally, some described genuine emotions of suffering, sacrifice, and awe. Isaac Gillespie‘s song relayed the “history of coming into consciousness.” His lyrics were simultaneously Genesis 1 and a co-performer singing, albeit incomprehensibly, John 1. The effect was moving and reminiscent of melodies to which Torah is sung. Simple biblical phrases in song convey the basic elements of living–linguistics in this case. “Word was with God. Word was God.” His first song spoke directly about the context of reading the bible: “Don’t let them tell you how it is.”

The last band, Girls in Trouble, took the Torah seriously, obviously having read it more than everyone else combined. They write from the points of view of women characters in the Torah. Their song about Miriam almost had me crying. I’d kind of like to see their rendition of Eden and Eve made tragic, just to contrast it to everyone else’s whimsy. I was transfixed by all 3 songs (Mountain, Miriam, and Hunter). Torah stories were pared down to the elements of nature, longing, and love of God as experienced by fringe characters.  “And if your God should turn from you, wouldn’t you turn too?”  Alicia Jo Rabins and Aaron play standing bass, violin, guitar, and a looping pedal. They played again Thursday and so will get their own blog post in a couple days. Their song Mountain has been stuck in my head all week.

The Bible can make you laugh or cry. Literacy and musical ability have made it possible for laypeople to invent their own interpretations of God’s word and disseminate their lyrics in venues that don’t charge a cover, but rather, give away ribs, beef dogs, and mangoes asking for donation only. Everyone at GBM was nice that night, even when, for reasons unimportant, I became surly. No one sang about the Golden Rule; it was in effect. One guy Joe Crow Ryan did quote Confucius, another voice in an overwhelming environment of inspiration. In my notes it appears, “If the teacup is too hot, don’t eat it.” The message being: take in what suits you.

Obama Llama in Stillness is The Move

How can we get through tough times? By sticking together.

“Stillness is the Move” by Dirty Projectors accommodates many interpretations. At first listen, the female vocalist is telling her partner that she will always love him/her, that instead of longing for bigger and better things, she will remember what they’ve gone through.

On the other hand, isn’t this song urging us to employ patience with Obama?

The song starts by tracking the arc of generation-me’s political engagement. Obama’s candidacy marked the turn from “No opinion about anything” to idealism “I know we’ll make it after the wait.”

The lead singer, Amber Coffman, acknowledges his long-term economic stimulus program, even declaring her participation: taking whatever job is available for now.

Maybe I will get a job
Get a job as a waitress
Maybe waiting tables in a diner

The highest note in the chorus emphasizes the president’s can-do optimism. Echoing last summer’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can” in the contrapositive, the song goes:

There is nothing we can’t do[!]

She is clearly in a supporting role, a woman/citizen who takes pride in her loyalty.

I’ll see you along the way baby
The stillness is the move

Despite the urgent need for change, for an “even higher mountain,”  Dirty Projectors advocate endurance. We’ve already experienced many crucial moments, but this is yet another, when the most important action is to vigorously support. Being still needn’t imply a return to apathy but rather steadfastness and perseverance. Indeed, with a farseeing perspective there is movement in stillness.

Recently, many of us have conversed with a mouthful of criticism regarding President Obama. Where’s my healthcare? Why so slow on Guantanamo? What the hell Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? The song is a rebuke of Kevin Baker’s harsh article in this month’s Harper’s:

Obama’s failure would be unthinkable. And yet the best indications now are that he will fail.

In Brooklyn yesterday, Dirty Projectors played at a Pool Party. And, Jewishly speaking, this is well timed because the haftorah portions of recent weeks bring home the same point: that we as a people should pause the bickering, look beyond temporary difficulties, and believe in the cause: another even higher mountain.

Finally, let’s consider the line, The question is a truth.

We can’t arrive at a truth without first asking a question, nicht wahr? There is no certainty without doubt as there is no stillness without movement. Obama represents, for the first time in 8 years, a clear choice by America. To the question, Who do you want as president? we answered “Obama,” while we originally didn’t have a genuine opportunity to answer “W. Bush.” Hence, Obama, by being linked to a question, is a truth.

A truth must be preceded by a question, doubt, uncertainty. That’s why “Isn’t life under the sun just a crazy crazy crazy dream?” resounds more than “Life under the sun is a crazy crazy crazy dream.” The listener feels empowered by the Socratic method, and brings his own answer, a truth far more powerful than one foisted upon him.

This importance of doubt underlies God’s decision to make the Jews wander for 40 tribulating years. Their loyalty both to God and Moses comes from deep within. For nomadic people wandering the wilds, ownership is immaterial. What you own most of all is your own set of beliefs. From hipsters to Hebrews, woodlands to deserts, SLOUCHING TOWARDS BUSHWICK.

Jerusalem of Gold and/or Empty Cisterns

“Yerushalayim shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) is a popular Israeli song, written by Naomi Shemer in 1967, the year of The Six-Day War in which the State of Israel captured the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai and East Jerusalem. Its title refers to an expression found frequently in the halachic discourse which described a “golden diadem surrounded by turrets in the shape of the walls of Jerusalem with which women used to adorn themselves.” (http://www.jerusalemofgold.co.il/jewishsources.html)

Whether the laws of Shabbat permitted women to wear such a crown is subject to much debate in the Talmud (i.e. can you trust a woman to simply wear the jewelry or will she almost certainly remove it to show it off to a friend? Rabbi Eliezer’s answer: No, for only classy ladies wear crowns of gold, and classy ladies simply exude class and will feel no need to brag).

Jerusalem of Gold "Kosher Compass"

Beloved Rabbi Akiva was a fan of such jewelry and gave a crown to his wife when he (finally!) grew rich. In the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Nedarim, it is written: 

The daughter of Kalba Savu’a betrothed herself to Rabbi Akiva. When her father heard thereof, he vowed that she was not to benefit from any of his property. Then she went and married him in winter. They slept in a straw bin, and he had to pick out the straw from her hair. He said to her: If I had the means, I would give you a Jerusalem of Gold.

Rabbi Akiva's Shitty Tomb in Tiberias (see below)

Anyway, despite the fact that Naomi Shemer stole the title from the Talmud and the tune from Pello Joxepe, a Basque lullaby (for which she felt bad and was forgiven), it is a lovely song and has been performed over the years by numerous artists, Israeli and otherwise (Phish, par example). Here is Ofra Haza, a famous Israeli singer who died of AIDS in 2000, performing a version of the song at Israel’s 50th Anniversary Celebration:

And here is Shuly Natan’s rendition (the original from 1967, I believe, see the long hair)

I’ve pasted the lyrics below. Though their description of pines and mountain air does capture some of Jerusalem’s magic, they also perpetuate a fallacy from early Zionist narratives about the land of Palestine, namely that it was a vacant wasteland, void of human presence and civilization. Herzl summarized the premise of Zionism as “a people without a land for a land without a people.” Note that Ofra Haza performed the piece in a model of the Old City while standing just next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque… Here is a post from The Lede, the NYTimes blog, about how politicians, even today, use Mark Twain’s descriptions of the land of Palestine in the late 1800′s as an empty backwater of the Ottoman Empire when making arguments about the legitimacy of the Palestinian nationalist narrative.

Twain wrote, of Palestine under the Ottomans:

These unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of bareness that never, never, never, do shake the glare from their harsh outlines…; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village* of Tiberias, slumbering under six funereal palms… Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago.

I wonder if Naomi Schemer read Twain (or one of the many people who have quoted these ellipsis-heavy passages). I also wonder if Joyce did. He wrote this of the Land of Palestine, in Ulysses:

A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Though it is true that the fully-articulated idea of Palestinian Nationalism as such did not exist until the late 1920s or early 1930s, it is certainly not true that the land of Palestine was a wasteland, or that, as Shemer writes, there was no one to visit the Temple Mount (uhhh where did that Big Mosque and Dome come from???). There were, of course, many Arabs living in Jerusalem, and though I imagine that most Jews vacated the city between ’48 and ’67, there were plenty of Jews living in the city throughout the 19th century. The way they lived, pulling carts laden with odd foods through narrow winding streets while wearing dirty clothing, was disturbing to the Western Jews who immigrated during the Mandate Period (if you want to learn more about that I am happy to print and bind a copy of my thesis for you), but that they lived there is without question.**

This is Cairo

*Tiberias, based on my experiences, is still stupid, though perhaps less of a village than it was. Its tacky, near-vacant storefronts and the way Akiva and Maimonides’ tombs have crumbled certainly serves to undermine its position as one of the four holy cities. As did the lipstick-kiss covered walls of the hostel room there, in which I struggled to make out the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics on its tiny staticky tv.

** Wikipedia tells me that, as I assumed, the Jews living in the Old City of Jerusalem were expelled when Jordan took control of it in ’48, and that furthermore, contrary to agreements, Jews (Israelis?) were not allowed access to any of the holy sites in the Old City from ’48 to ’67.

Click here to download one of my favorite versions of the song, by The Sabras, who are American.

Heschel and Short Stories for the 70s

Yesterday, I read The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. It’s about the importance of  the eternal, divine qualities of time that we reconnect with on the Sabbath. For a short Jewish book by an eminent scholar published in 1951, there’s a lot more psychedelic philosophy than I expected. Heschel proposes the antidote to a fleeting, work-driven existence is a weekly celebration of the Sabbath, ie. abstaining from work and anxiety, and orienting our minds towards our authentic selves.

Today, reading the introduction (titled “Vile and Imaginative Things”)  to Innovative Fiction: Stories for the Seventies edited by Jerome Klinkowitz & John Somer, I observed striking parallels! The alarmist essay outlines the necessity of cutting-edge fiction to provide clarity amidst the chaos of 1972. They claim that Einstein, the 2 World Wars, and possible Nuclear annihilation are responsible for displacing “man from his traditional notion of self.”  Therefore, we look for a new epistemology, a new perspective, so we may recognize reality and begin to experience it.

Heschel takes a longer-range view, asserting that the origin of life’s misery is embedded in the creation of the universe. Ever since God created the universe, three dimensional space has conflicted with eternal time by dividing it into a series of moments. Our lives repeat the rhythm of the universe’s first week: 6 days of labor in the physical realm and, thankfully, during our 1 day of rest in the Sabbath realm we experience the actual nature of time.

Both Heschel and Klinkowitz/Somer see people as estranged from reality save for a few saving moments of reorientation–welcoming the Sabbath bride and reading stories by Coover, Barthelme, Barth, Malamud, & Borges. They link the confusion of daily life to the ambiguity of time and provide similar utopic visions. To that end, mini ideal worlds must be built so our minds and souls have opportunities to adjust their orientations.

Includes Malamud’s “Jewbird”

On time:

Sabbath: “In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, the Sabbath, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as of attachment to the spirit” (20).

Innovative Fiction quoting Ken Kesey (focusing on effects of LSD, which informs literature’s epistemological questions): “In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down in a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian that the trickle became most pale and thin. It is efficient for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man’s potential experience without his even knowing it. We’re shut off from our own world” (xxii).

On an ideal world:

Innovative Fiction: “When our intuitions have absorbed the vastness of the universe, they will allay the fears of our intellects, and we may slowly immerse ourselves into the fourth dimension and experience there the ultimate initiation. In that moment the entire Earth would be as one tribe. Reality, time, personality, God, and even plot would be revitalized, and harmony would reign” (xvii).

The Sabbath: The Sabbath “is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world” (xvii).

“Time is otherness, a mystery that hovers above all categories. It is as if time and the mind were a world apart. Yet, it is only within time that there is fellowship and togetherness of all beings…Through my ownership of space, I am a rival of all other beings; through my living in time, I am a contemporary of all other beings” (90).

Action:

Innovative Fiction:”Fiction, a way of looking at the world, is also, as art, mans’ statement of a favorable rapport with it” (xxvi).

“Thus our literature may be even more important to us than eating or lovemaking. Through the epistemological act of reading and writing, we create a world that our intuition can comprehend” (xviii).

Sabbath: “The Sabbath is a day in which we abandon our plebeian pursuits and reclaim our authentic state, in which we are what we are…It is a day of independence of social conditions” (20).

“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments” (xiii).

Heschel Sun-Thurs

Klinkowitz all of the time

Exodus Pillows

(Click image for full size and details)

Top Left:At dawn the sea returned to its normal depth.Exodus 14.27

Top Right: And from the day after the sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation offering, you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the LORD.Leviticus 23.15-16

Bottom Left: And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Exodus 4.21

Bottom Right: Moses cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. Exodus 15.25.

Gail Hareven’s “The Slows” in May 4 New Yorker

This week’s New Yorker fiction selection is The Slows by Israeli writer Gail Hareven, whose only novel translated into English is The Confessions of Noa Weber (Melville House).  Some internet voices seem to advocate reading it because almost no Israeli (women) writers get into the New Yorker. Others don’t like it. I think “The Slows” is pretty good and only 4 pages.

[Spoiler Alert]

It’s  set in a future where humans have established colonies on the planets. The narrator lives on Earth, in the Preserves, where he studies a dwindling minority of the human population, the Slows, who raise their children naturally instead of giving them Accelerated Offspring Growth, which enables babies to reach adulthood in 3 months instead of 18 years.

The story is a tense conversation between the researcher and a “dark-eyed savage woman” taking place the morning after he finds out the authorities have decided to shut down the Preserves.  She brings her “larva,” breaks into his office, and pleads her case to sustain her culture. Don’t take our babies away. Warn us before an invasion. Give us time.

His responses are laconic though sweet. He offers her coffee or water three times. He wants to console her and hide the truth, that the Slow culture is under more threat than she knows. He spends most of the story defending that tension to himself — his rationale for his sweetness towards her versus his rationale for supporting the policies of the missionaries and the police: taking the larva away.

The story’s climax comes when he elicits a hostile reaction from the woman while touching her shoulder. It’s the man, seemingly so self-aware, who is cut off from life, not the victimized woman. He experiences trace glimmers of emotion, tenderness, and physicality, but utterly lacks any language to express desire or to articulate a positive physical experience.

(On the way to his office that morning, “as often happens in this season, the revolting smell of yellow flowers went straight to [his] temples.”)

Because of her reaction he realizes that she fears a sexual come-on. He is offended that she reads animalistic impulses into his gesture. Instead of seeing her as a pitiful sheep manipulated by authorities, he compares her to a sinister Biblical beast.

“Her eyes, like snakes, penetrated my thoughts and fed them her abominable vision, the visions of a lower animal.”

In the end, after promising that no harm will come to the children he presses the panic button, summoning guards who will confiscate the baby.

Earlier, he raises a question about the Slows preference to raise 2 generations of progeny instead of his 17 but clarifies his main deficiency: an inability to satisfy his own needs.

“What purpose is there for the hard labor of parenthood if not to send forth an independent, productive adult who can satisfy his own needs?”

He ends the story with an explicit lie, the final denial. After she “spat out” “Don’t touch me!”  he says, “No one’s touching you” in a deluded and defensive tone, emphasizing the levels of denial that his society foists on him: denial of physical experiences and truth-telling. Not only has he just touched her but the guards are on their way. But her vision of him as a sexual creature immediately eradicates his sympathy for her. If his superior sense of self as a person without needs, emotionality, and desires is threatened, he shuts down, loses composure, and hastens the immolation of something he values.

Hareven characterizes a person in power with wavering, not depraved, morality. The quality of his disdain, empathy, and repulsion is fleshed out, explicitly contradictory, hard to pin. “Why do you hate us so?” she asks. He gives a brief explanation to the reader, a “key to understanding the Slows’ culture” that does not consider the culture on its own terms but, of course, compares it to the dominant culture. Although her physical territory is threatened at the level of her body and geography, the researcher is isolated. He replies to her, “Hate? Hate is a strong word.”

Englander is Jewish

“Radically secular” Jewish fiction writer, Nathan Englander, wrote a reminiscence of Passover for the NYT that came out last week.  His Long Island upbringing was religious but as an adult he has been secular. A year ago someone asked him to do a new translation of the Haggadah, sparking a renewed intellectual and personal interest in the seder.  It’s interesting that Englander, whose first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, which is about a Jewish family in Argentina’s Dirty War, who is pretty much always referred to as a Jewish-American writer, identifies as secular. I guess that’s the same as Philip Roth or Saul Bellow..but still. Now, he is translating the Haggadah including the Song of the Sea which certainly benefits from a contemporary translation and which he quotes in his op-ed.

Were it our mouths were filled with a singing like the sea,

And our tongues awash with song, as waves-countless,

And our lips to lauding, as the skies are wide,

And our eyes illumined like the sun and the moon,

And our hands spread-out like the eagles of heaven,

And our feet as fleet as fawns,

Still, we would not suffice in thanking You, Lord God-of-us…

In his research he came across Haggadahs that span the gamut of traditional fidelity. He mentions but doesn’t link to the Facebook Haggadah which made me lol.

This dude is famous for “being Jewish” and his op-ed explores his feelings about “doing Jewish.” As a literary type and a “fallen Jew” he found himself faithfully and happily following the text.

The Haggadah advises us to venture-off and learn but when it comes to choosing a liturgy, I don’t venture far. I came to discover that there’s no one more fiercely traditional than a fallen Jew, and found myself recoiling in horror when an ancient Hebrew word-puzzle was absent from the text I’m using as a guide (don’t worry, I put it back).

Through this process I too have felt most comfortable when referring to the Bible and other Jewish texts. New Release tables at bookstores are awash in books about the Bible, urging people to remember its profound and entertaining literary qualities.

Ladies and Gentleman, The Bible! - Goldstein funnies up Bible classics

Plotz brings Slate's Blogging the Bible to paper and summarizes every chapter with a contemporary eye

Englander, however, whose op-ed came out the first day of Passover, reveals his sweet feelings towards a Jewish boyhood.  Even though he has spent years being secular, no one or amount of time can alter his nostalgia for walking to shul with his late father or listening to his uncles endlessly read the Haggadah. The return each year to the seder table helps keep those memories present.  That personal attachment  is a primary difference between his tone and that of Goldstein, Plotz, or A.J. Jacobs, although his piece still hinges on the recent change from utterly secular to textually engaged and nostalgic. (The opening line is : “My life has turned Talmudic.”)

…a little boy standing in a darkened basement at my father’s side, a lighted candle aloft, a feather in hand, ready to sweep up any crumbs missed along the way.

…walking to our suburban Long Island synagogue in a yarmulke and tiny suit, and waving up at the Easter Bunny perched atop one of the town’s fire trucks, the volunteer-fireman Bunny

I remember the egg served in salt water (a family tradition).

And I remember all the sweet wine drunk, and a drunk little boy sliding under the table, which I retell here but don’t recall.

Of course, the piece ends with a second quote from his translation of the Song of the Sea, a personal take on the text– the other one thing no one can shake a stick at. It endures and will not ask after your years of avoidance.

Hardened Heart

Exodus 4.21

And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Trip to Art Store

Elise’s thumbs down on Artist and Craftman’s Supply on Metropolitan and Graham. Some  prices seemed inflated but it’s  super convenient if your employment status doesn’t bring you to Manhattan, has a wide selection, and is open on Shabbat.

I got this passage on Hiddur Mitzvah from Gates of the Seasons: A Guide to the Jewish Year, a book  Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco gifted me on my Bat Mitzvah (Jan 30, 1999, Beshalach) that I brought with me to Brooklyn so I could be more knowledgable about the origins of holidays. The book is short and user-friendly with nary a long paragraph or small font. Each chapter is on a different holiday and lists the mitzvot associated with celebrating each one. Under Pesach I found Hiddur Mitzvah, which is very exciting because it talks explicitly about making and having beautiful ritual objects.

The concept of Hiddur Mitzvah is derived from Rabbi Ishmael’s comment on the verse, “This is my God and I will glorify Him” (Exodus 15:2):*

“Is it possible for a human being to add glory to his Creator? What this really means is: I shall glorify Him in the way I perform mitzvot. I shall prepare before Him a beautiful  lulav, beautiful sukkah,beautiful fringes (Tsitsit), and beautiful phylacteries (Tefilin).” [Midrash Mechilta, Shirata, chapter 3, ed. Lauterbach, p. 25.]

(The original article is here.)

It sounds like Rabbi Ishmael is arguing about the word “glorify,” in the sense of some of its meanings:  “to cause to be or seem to be better than the actual condition” and “to elevate to celestial glory.”

It’s not our job to make the Creator seem even more Awesome, but rather to take aesthetic care in the way we carry out commandments.

The Midrash suggests that not only are mitzvot enhanced by an aesthetic dimension but so is the Jew who observes it: “You are beautiful, my love, you are beautiful, through mitzvot . . . beautiful through mitzvot,beautiful through deeds of loving kindness, . . . through prayer, through reciting the “Shema,” through the mezuzah, through phylacteries, through Sukkah and lulav and etrog…” [Midrash Song of Songs Rabbah 1.15].

It’s a pretty good deal. Use beautiful ritual objects to observe (all) the laws of the Torah, and you shall become beautiful.  It’s also a nice indulgence vs. some religions that spurn ornamentation.

ANYWAY, that’s why we went to the art store, or why Birthright might have liked our grant, which is why we went to the art store. We are becoming beautiful and still eating carbs (though not during Pesach)!

When the jalapeňo-cheddar bagel with creem cheese appeared there wasn’t time to get the camera out of my pocket before it was too late. Which is to say the Bagel Store across from the Art Store can’t be appreciated visually anyway. Check it.

*”This is my God and I will glorify Him” (Exodus 15:2)  comes from the first verse in the Song of the Sea (Hello, Beshalach, my Bat Mitzvah Torah Portion!)  that Moses and the Israelites sang to the Lord after crossing the Sea.  The song Mi Chamocha comes from this.  Other translations of 15:2 use the word exalt, enshrine.

עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָהּ וַיְהִי־לִי לִישׁוּעָה זֶה אֵלִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי וַאֲרֹמְמֶנְהוּ׃

According to this multilingual Bible site, the word in question is “ruhm” (resh, final mem). When you enter that into GoogleTranslate you get Mr.