Discussion+Questions+Week+7

Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, “A Night”


 * 1) Where do you see messianic motifs? Christian motifs?
 * 2) How does the poem use Christian and Jesus imagery to respond to the experience of violent antisemitism?
 * 3) To what extent is the speaker a messiah-figure? What kind of messiah-figure is he? Parodic? An anti-messiah?
 * 4) How does the “little man” respond to the horrors and tragedies of contemporary Jewish history? of the speaker and his family?
 * 5) What is his relationship to poetry and art in section VI?
 * 6) What is the relationship between the “little man” and the speaker?
 * 7) In section XVII, speaking of the “little man,” it says: “It seems a prophet speaks.” What kind of prophet is the little man?
 * 8) What episodes from Jewish history are described in section XIX? How are the presented, transformed?
 * 9) In what ways is the poem resonant with Marc Chagall’s “White Crucifixion”?