The Faroe Islands have become known throughout the world for a remarkable engineering achievement: an expanding network of tunnels, many of them running beneath the North Atlantic itself. What appears almost improbable on a map has become an ordinary part of everyday life. Roads disappear into mountains, emerge on another island, and continue as though the sea had never stood between them. Some of these submarine passages curve beneath the ocean floor with an elegance that almost defies expectation. They are practical works, yet they also express something essential about the Faroese world: islands remain distinct, but they refuse isolation.

Jerusalem offers another geography altogether. Here, too, tunnels, caves and underground passages belong to the landscape. Some preserved water for cities under siege, others sheltered human beings, others became places of prayer, refuge, burial or conflict. Throughout biblical history and into the present day, the earth has repeatedly been opened – not only by nature, but by human necessity.

Yet there is a profound difference between walls and tunnels. Walls separate what already exists. Tunnels seek what lies beyond separation.

Languages often behave in exactly the same way.

Yiddish has never lived comfortably inside political frontiers. It has travelled with merchants, scholars, craftsmen, refugees and dreamers. It has borrowed without embarrassment and transformed without apology. Hebrew and Aramaic gave it its biblical pulse. Germanic dialects its grammatical body. Slavic languages countless colours and textures. Today it welcomes English, Scandinavian expressions, Israeli Hebrew and Arab whatever living speech proves meaningful. It remains unmistakably Yiddish precisely because it never ceases digging new passages through the mountains of history.

The following poem was inspired by the extraordinary submarine tunnels of the Faroe Islands. Yet tunnels gradually become metaphors for encounter, memory, birth, forgiveness and the mysterious passages through which words continue travelling across generations.

קשר, גשר, כשר, טונעלן

Kesher, Gesher, Kasher, Tunnels

טונעלן ־ נאָרעס פֿון דער ערד, פֿאַרװאָרפֿענע פּאַסאַזשן

קריכן בלינד, באַשיצט פֿון רעגן און שטורעם,

ביז ערגעץ געפֿינען זיך געעפֿענטע טױערן,

װאוּ ליכט װאַרט, געדולדיק װי אַ פֿײַער.

Tunnels—burrows of the earth, forgotten passages – 

crawl blindly, sheltered from rain and storm,

until somewhere they discover opened gates

where light waits patiently, like a fire.

אונטער דעם ים פֿון די שעפּסן־אינדזלען שװימט אַ קרײַצװעג,

פֿון זיבעציק לענדער קלינגען טאָג־טעגלעך מיט אַלע קולות.

שװאַרץ, געל, געמישט ־ פֿאַראינדזעלטע מענטשן

טרעפֿן זיך װידער אין דער טיפֿעניש:

Beneath the sea of the Sheep Islands, a crossroads swims;

every day the voices of seventy nations resound.

Black, yellow, mingled – islanded people

meet again in the depths.

דער ים האָט אַמאָל אָפּגעריסן די ברעגן,

און דער טונעל האָט זיי שטיל פֿאַרקשרט.

אונטערן ים בלײַבט אלץ פֿרידלעך,

מען פֿאָרט גיך, אָן צו באַטראַכטן די תחתיות,

The sea once tore the shores apart,

and the tunnel quietly bound them together.

Beneath the sea all remains peaceful.

One travels swiftly, without pondering the abyss below.

אָן צו הערן װי דאָס װאַסער איבערן דאַך.

װײַסט צי מאָרגן װעט ניט אױפֿבלאָזן אַ ים־שטורעם?

דער ים באַװעגט זיך אָן אױפֿהער,

און האָט ניט קײַנמאָל צוגעזאָגט רו.

Without hearing the water above the roof.

Who knows whether tomorrow a sea-storm will arise?

The sea moves without ceasing

and has never promised rest.

The sea remains unchanged. Storms still come. Wind still governs the islands. The tunnel does not conquer nature; it learns how to live beneath it.

Perhaps languages survive in much the same way. They do not escape history. They pass beneath it, carrying voices from one shore to another until forgotten passages unexpectedly open once again.

The image now shifts from the North Atlantic to one of the oldest passages in human memory. The Sea of Reeds did not become a bridge of stone; it briefly became a passage.

This distinction is significant. Throughout Scripture, crossings are rarely permanent. The Jordan is crossed, deserts are traversed, caves become places of refuge, mountains become places of revelation. Human life advances not by possessing the landscape but by passing through it. The Hebrew Bible continually remembers movement more than settlement.

The poem therefore arrives naturally at one of Hebrew’s most remarkable words: nekevah/. נקבה. In ordinary usage it denotes the feminine. Yet its older linguistic meaning points toward an opening, a cavity, something hollowed out. The same word allows geology and birth to meet without forcing either image. A passage through the earth unexpectedly becomes a passage into life.

Yiddish inherited that delight. It never abandoned Hebrew inside the synagogue while speaking Germanic grammar outside. Instead, it allowed both worlds to converse naturally. A single sentence may carry biblical Hebrew, Talmudic Aramaic, medieval German and a Slavic expression without the speaker noticing any contradiction. The language has always trusted that meanings, like tunnels, eventually find one another.

דער ים־סוף האָט זיך אַמאָל צעשפּאָלטן,

װאַסער־װענט פֿון בײדע זײַטן,

און אַ פֿאָלק איז דורכגעגאַנגען צװישן די כװאַליעס.

Once the Sea of Reeds was divided,

walls of water on either side,

and a people passed between the waves.

אין מזרח לױפֿט אַ נעץ פֿון גענג,

נקבה ־ אײן װאָרט, צװײ װעלטן:

אַן עפֿענונג אין דער ערד ־ אַן עפֿענונג צום לעבן ־

אַלײן די אותיות גראָבן זײערע אײגענע טונעלן,

In the East runs a network of passages.

Nekevah—one word, two worlds:

an opening in the earth, an opening into life.

The very letters dig their own tunnels.

טראָגן קשר און גשר

און זוכן נאָך כשר װי שלומדיקע בריקן

אונטער יבשה, געזעלשאַפֿט און טעטיקײטן.

נ״ק״ב״ב״ה ־ בױען, דורכלעכערן, אױסברעכן אַ װעג,

Bearing kesher and gesher,

seeking kosher—fit, whole and sound – like peaceful bridges

beneath the land, through society and every human endeavour.

N.K.B.H – to build, to pierce, to break open a way.

אַ שײַנער אונטערװאַסערדיקער דורכגאַנג,

װי די פֿרױ עפֿנט זיך צו קשר און לידה ־ אַ פּתח.

A beautiful underwater passage,

as a woman opens herself to connection and to birth—

a doorway.

The title reveals the inner movement. Kesher/קשר : connection, relationship, the willingness to encounter another. From that connection grows a gesher/גשר, a bridge capable of carrying people across separation. Only then comes kosher/קשר – not merely “ritually fit,” but sound, whole, capable of fulfilling its purpose.

Long before human beings excavated mountains or laid submarine roads, animals had already mastered the art of hidden passageways. Bears seek caves, foxes and jackals follow familiar tracks beneath the brush, fish move through invisible currents, and countless creatures inhabit worlds that remain almost entirely concealed from human sight.

Creation is full of tunnels.

Electricity, speech, images and memory now travel through fibres hidden under seas that only a generation ago seemed to separate continents. Increasingly, what connects humanity is invisible.

The poem notices that a tunnel may also be a wire.

That image reaches beyond technology. Every language carries unseen threads stretching backwards through time. Words seldom arrive alone. They bring forgotten journeys, neighbouring cultures, borrowed expressions and ancient beliefs. We pronounce them without noticing how many generations have carried them toward us.

Yiddish has never feared lexical hospitality. Wherever Jews settled, the language listened first. It absorbed sounds, reshaped them, and allowed them to live alongside Hebrew and Aramaic without anxiety. This openness became one of its greatest strengths. Like an underground network, it expanded because it remained connected.

דער בער האָט זײַן הײל, זײַן שוצפּלאַץ, זײַן הײם.

פֿוקסן און שאַקאַלן קריכן

דורך אײגענע שליאַכעס.

פֿישן שװימען בלינד

The bear has its den, its shelter, its home.

Foxes and jackals creep

along their own paths.

Fish swim blindly

אין לאַנג אױסגעגראָבענע רערן.

דער טונעל איז אױך אַ דראָט,

דער נעץ פֿאַרבינדט

װאוּהין גרײַכן זיך די טונעלן?

through long-excavated channels.

A tunnel is also a wire.

The network connects.

Toward what place do all tunnels reach?

זײ פֿירן, מישן, אָטעמען, פֿאַרדײַען דעם שטראָם פֿון לעבן ־

לױפֿן סײ דורך אַ נקבה ־ סײ דורך אַ מחילה

דער ים מערט זיך, יאַמערט ־ דאָס מער פֿאַרגיט.

They carry, they mingle, they breathe, they digest the current of life—

whether through a nekevah (tunnel), or through a meḥilah (pardon).

The sea grows, laments, and grants forgiveness.

אין נעפּל, אין היץ,

אונטער ים און אונטער יבשה

באַהאַלטן די אַװירות:

די שאָף גראָזן ־ די שאַקאַלן פֿרעסן סקעלעטן,

In mist, in heat,

beneath sea and beneath land

living creatures remain concealed.

The sheep graze; the jackals consume skeletons.

Alongside  appears nekevah : a passage, an opening through which life emerges. meḥitah is also a passage, but it leads toward forgiveness. Hebrew allows these resonances to coexist without forcing them into a single definition.

The Yiddish adds another discreet resonance. The sea (meer) mert zikh – it grows, enlarges itself – before it almost yamert, laments. From that movement of sound the poem slips to dig a tunnel from abundance to lament, and from lament toward forgiveness.

The tunnels no longer run merely beneath mountains or seas. They descend beneath continents themselves, into the hidden geography where landscapes, memories and languages seem to meet. This is no longer geology alone. It is an anthropology of Creation.

The Faroe Islands offer a striking lesson. A visitor sees dramatic cliffs, waterfalls and the open Atlantic. Invisibly, the tunnels transform an archipelago into a living community without altering the islands themselves.

Languages perform the same miracle.

Yiddish has survived not because it remained enclosed within nostalgia, nor because it became a museum of vanished Europe. It has survived because it continues to travel beneath visible history, opening passages wherever Jewish life, learning and encounter continue. New words arrive; older words acquire fresh meanings; biblical Hebrew, rabbinic learning and everyday conversation remain in dialogue.

Perhaps that is why the poem finally turns away from landscapes toward faces. Tunnels exist so that people may meet. Bridges are not built for themselves. Languages are not spoken for dictionaries. Every hidden passage ultimately seeks another human being.

דער בער שלאָפֿט דאָ אין װעלדער, דאָרטן אױפֿן אײַז.

דער טונעל באַקשרט, פֿאַרגשרט, פֿאַרכּשרט

די אַנטפֿרעמדטע ברעגן.

דער טונעל שטרעקט זיך װײַט אַהין.

The bear sleeps – here in forests, there upon the ice.

The tunnel makes connection, becomes bridge, becomes fit.

Between shores long estranged.

The tunnel stretches far away.

די טונעלן טונקלען דורך די בױכן פֿון קיומער,

זײ דערגרונטעװען זיך אין דער תחתיות,

במצולות־ים אין לאַבירינטישע סבֿובֿות.

The tunnels darken through the bellies of continents,

boring ever deeper into the underworld,

into the labyrinths of the ocean depths.

אין פֿאַראָער־צפֿון װי אין מזרח,

זוּכט מען שטענדיק פּנימער, אָנקוקן:

צ׳איז דאָס דער דרך פֿון דער בריאה?

קודם קשר, דערנאָך גשר, און תמיד כּשר.

In the Far North as in the East,

faces are always being sought – faces to behold.

Is this the way of Creation?

First kesher, then gesher, and always kusher.

אַזױ רשי.

That’s Rashi. Understood from learning.

The poem concludes with a familiar Yiddish expression: “Azoy Rashi.” Literally, it invokes the great medieval commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzḥaki. In Yiddish, however, the phrase has acquired a broader meaning. It simply says: this is the understanding; this is how learning has come to express the matter. It points to a shared habit of reading the world through words. Rashi becomes a way of recognizing that language teaches those willing to listen.

That ending returns us to the beginning. Indeed, the poem is about the hidden passages that make human life possible. They channel how languages borrow from one another. People continue searching for faces rather than frontiers.

Tunnels do not abolish distance. It patiently renders distance passable. Perhaps Creation itself still proceeds in that way – first kesher, then gesher, and always kosher.