Es gleybt zikh — Belief from Within

There are moments when history obliges us to reconsider the words we think we understand: I believe, we believe, credimus, pisteuomen, veruyem. This year, as the Christian world marks the seventeen-hundredth anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, I find myself returning not to Greek formulas nor to the question of imperial universality, but to a quiet Yiddish murmur: ikh gleyb, “I believe,” and even more mysteriously, es gleybt zikh, “it believes itself.” Yiddish, that improbable Semitic–European hybrid, speaks belief without creeds, expresses faith without dogma, and carries an ancient biblical intuition that truth is relational rather than propositional. It is a language in which faith is never a static object but a trembling, living movement between “I” and “He” – Ani veHu – especially in times of distress and hiddenness.

Before unfolding these reflections, I offer the poem that prompted them. It is a Yiddish meditation on belief that I wrote in the shadow of wars, exile and during the Gentile Nicaean jubilee, followed by its English counterpart.

The Poem (Yiddish)

ר׳ גלײַבט זיך
״לית דבר בעלמאָ ריקן״ — ס׳איז ניט אַ פּוּסטע װאוּסטע ריק־דיקע מעשה אין דער גאָרער װעלט.
אֵית בהון — תמיד איז עפּעס מקײַם אין זײ: אמונה, מהימנותאָ — דוּכן אין גלױבן, ממש, ממושש — אױכעט אין אָפּהאַלטענישן…

מיר גלײַבן און זײַנען נאָך אױף װעגן, גלײַבן אָן פּאַפּירן, אָן סימבאָלן, אָן חתימות, אָן פֿאָרמולעס,
מיט צעשאָקעלטע הענט און שמײכלדיקע אױגן, מיט אַ טעם פֿון אַפּיקאָרסישקײַט אין יעדער שורה,
װי אַ קינד פֿרעגט און פֿרעגט — אָן סוף.

״איך גלײבט״ הייסט אַ פּסק־דין פֿאַר הײַנט; מִנְהָגִים בייטן זיך נאָך עלות השחר.
מחשבות שלינגען זיך אין די װאָלקנס. ער איז ניט קיין װיסן — ער איז דאָ, דאָרטן, און ער רופט פֿון טיפֿעניש,
״דו ביסט דאָ״, אָמן — נאָר באַהאַלט דיך אָפּ.

מיר גלײַבן אין דער אײַנגעשװײגטער שכינה, אין דער נוכחות וואָס קען זיך פֿאַרדעקן,
אָבער קיינמאָל ניט פֿאַרשוואַינדן. די חבלי־משיח דרײַדלען זיך אַרום אונדזער אָטעם: מלחמות, צרות, שװרות־הלב.
די פֿרױען טראָגן עיפֿעלעך און מעשים; מיר האַלטן די יסורים — און זײ זײַנען פֿול מיט גילה.

דער מענטשלעכער מאַכט־װילן בויט בבל־טורעמס וואָס קױלן ביידע מױער און נפֿשות.
אוּנדזער עקור איז אַ נידל פֿון מאַמע־אמונה: לשון־קודש פֿון ירושלמי, שטיקלעך פֿון תַּלמוּד אַרעא דפּלשתין
וואָס בלײַבן אױף די ליפּן — אין חרובֿות, אין קעמפֿן, אין ליידיקע בענטשערס.

דער אָמן גלײבט מיט אונדזערע מײַלן. די װעלט האָט דאָגמען;
װער גלײבט — האָט אַ ברית־הדי אָן אונטערשריפֿט.

אין יעדן קינד וואָס קרישט אָדער לאַכט, אין יעדער מאַמע וואָס זאָרגט,
אין יעדן קשיש קוּרץ־אָטעמדיק, אין קריג־טעג און שלום־טעג,
אין רײַכקײַט און אין אָרעמקײַט, אין פֿאַרלאָזנקייט און צוזאַמענהאַלט —
אין שטאַרבן און געבױרן־װערן —

הייבט זיך אַ שטילער קול: איך גלײב — ער איז דאָ.
אני־והו משכעט צװישן אונז.

ווי אַ בשורה: זי גייט פֿון האַרץ צו האַרץ — מבשר, מבשר ואומר —
גלױבן גלײבט זיך אין אונז, באמונה שלמה, צוּטרױ און מיט אַ רוּח פֿון עניוות.

English Version

I Believe

“Nothing in the world is empty” – there is no barren or hollow deed.
Something always lingers: faith, trust, the tactile pulse of believing – even in concealment.

We believe and continue on our way; without papers, symbols, signatures or formulas.
With trembling hands and quiet eyes; with a touch of heresy in each line;
like a child who questions without end.

“I believe” becomes a verdict for today, while doubts knock at dawn.
Thoughts drift like clouds. He is no ghost – He is here, present,
calling from the depths without words: “You are here.” Amen – hold on.

We believe in the silent Shekhinah; the presence that can hide but never vanish.
The birth pangs of Messiah circle the breath: wars, sorrows, broken hearts.
Women carry burdens and deeds; we carry our trials – yet they are full of joy.

Human will builds towers of Babel that swallow both walls and souls.
Our root is a nest of mother-faith, Jerusalem’s holy tongue,
and fragments of the Palestinian Talmud clinging to our lips in ruins, in battles, on empty benches.

Amen flickers like a candle. The world has dogmas;
those who believe have a covenant without fine print.

In every child who cries or laughs; in every mother’s worry;
in every elder’s thin breath; in days of war and fragile peace;
in wealth and street-poverty; abandonment and solidarity;
in dying and in birth –

a quiet voice rises: I believe – He is here.
Ani veHu dwells among us.

Like a gospel travelling from heart-to-heart –
proclaiming, proclaiming, and saying:
belief believes in us, with perfect faith, together,
and with a spirit of humility.

After this poetic confession, the contrast with creeds becomes more than theoretical. Jewish faith, as the poem suggests, never crystallizes into a single formula. It moves through verses, cries, questions, and the stubborn, humble “I and He” of Ani veHu. Long before the Greek-speaking bishops of 325 gathered in Nicaea to say Πιστεύομεν (“we believe”), long before Latin Christianity shifted toward the personal Credo (“I believe”) and many centuries before the Slavic Верую (“veruyu”) entered Christian liturgy, the Semitic languages of the Books spoke belief in a very different key.

Their vocabulary does not center on propositions but on relationship. The Hebrew root אמן gives us emunah/אמונה, firmness, fidelity, the steady trust that binds one heart to another. Aramaic deepens this with מְהֵימְנוּתָא (meheimnuta), a word that means trustworthiness and reliability, confidence born of lived experience rather than intellectual assent. If Judaism had ever wanted a “creed,” it might have taken form as סַהֲדוּתָא (sahaduta), testimony – not doctrine, but witness – or perhaps as a פִּתגמא דְהֵימָנוּתָא, a “word of faith.” Yet no such symbolum ever became mandatory. Faith remained קְיָמָא – a way of standing, enduring, alive, walking with God.

This older, pre-creedal world still echoes in Yiddish. Although the language was born centuries after Nicaea, it carries a Semitic grammar of trust beneath its Germanic and Slavic, Indo-European surface. Ikh gleyb/איך גלייב is not a juridical act of signing a statement; it is a momentary equilibrium between doubt and hope, a verdict “for today,” as the poem says, fully aware that dawn will bring new questions. Sometimes Yiddish even sidesteps the “I” altogether:  עס גלייבט זיך – it believes itself. Something in us continues believing even when we no longer have the strength to say “I.” No Greek, Latin or Slavonic verb quite captures that anonymous, stubborn persistence. The human person is concealed in the Divine “Self”.

The Council of Nicaea proclaimed unity in a world fractured by doctrinal conflict and imperial politics. The Greek Πιστεύομεν (we believe with faith) affirmed a communal stance. It was a theological move, tied to the fate, faith within an empire. Yet, this “we” was far from universal. In 325 there were no Slavs at the table. The baptism of their peoples would come only in the ninth century. The Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopian worlds were largely absent. And the Jews, whose Scriptures (and Oral Law, yes indeed) nourished the faith of the Church, were not asked how they understood belief.

Yiddish stands outside this entire genealogy. Its ikh gleyb is earlier than Nicaea in its Semitic root and later than Nicaea in its European experience as it walked along the Christened communities. In the poem, faith appears not as a fortress of certainty but as a quiet endurance woven into everyday life: the cry of a child, the worry of a mother, the thin breath of an elder, the work and joy of women carrying “burdens and deeds.” Faith lives among ruins and in camps, on benches left alone, in an Amen that flickers like a candle. It knows wars and fragile peace, blinding wealth and street-poverty, abandonment and solidarity, treason, abandonment and true charity, evident love of others and forgiving the enemies, though, because of this faith. Through it all, a voice continues to rise: “I believe – He is here. Ani veHu/אני והו dwells among us.”

This “Ani veHu” is not an abstraction. It belongs to the tradition of the Hoshanot feast of the Booths, to the midrashic reading that links verses where the prophet says Ani\אני — “I” among the exiles — and another passage where VeHu\והו – “and He” – appears in the chains of history, so that the Jewish ear begins to hear, in the cry Ani vaHu hoshiya na/אני והו הישיע נא, not merely a grammatical sequence but a confession: “I and He, save now.” The human “I” and the hidden-all present “He” stand together in distress. Later tradition hears the same union in Elokei avi va-anvehu/  אלהי אבי ואנוהו – “the God of my father, I will exalt Him,” (Isaiah 25:1) Faith becomes a communicated companionship: I and He, together.

Placed alongside Πιστεύομεν, Credo and Верую, this Ani veHu points to a different understanding of what it means to believe. Christian creeds, especially after Nicaea, tend to define the content of faith. Yiddish, with its mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, German and Slavic, is a natural home for this relational faith: it can say “I believe” and still leave room for irony, hesitation, humor and tears. It can hold catastrophe and tenderness in the same sentence without collapsing into cynicism.

In the year of Nicaea’s anniversary, when the word “creed” is celebrated and reexamined, Yiddish offers, somehow from an offshore stand, a quiet counterpoint. It suggests that universality come from languages and lives that have carried faith across borders and centuries, in exile and in homecoming, expressing prophetic and messianic experience and intuition. Belief is trust beyond any possible exclusion. Belief, in this old Semitic sense: “Ani maamin/אני מאמין, is always on the move, in the future.

He believes Himself in us.