Yehuda Amichai

A Letter of Recommendation

A Letter of Recommendation - fact Summary

Father's Gentle Recommendation

The poem links intimate memory, religious habit, and erotic desire through images of Jerusalem and the speaker’s father. The speaker presents a paternal touch and a folded "letter of recommendation" as both reassurance and moral testimony, blending tenderness with yearning. Private ritual—prayers, a recalled wake-up stroke—frames filial love and a wish that the father be gently roused on the Day of Resurrection. The voice is personal and confessional.

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On summer nights I sleep naked in Jerusalem. My bed stands on the brink of a deep valley without rolling down into it. In the daytime I walk around with the Ten Commandments on my lips like an old tune someone hums to himself. Oh touch me, touch me, good woman! That’s not a scar you feel under my shirt, that’s a letter of recommendation, folded up tight, from my father: “All the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.” I remember my father waking me for early prayers. He would do it by gently stroking my forehead, not by tearing away the blanket. Since then I love him even more. And as his reward, may he be wakened gently and with love on the Day of the Resurrection.

TRANSLATED BY CHANA BLOCH