Edgar Aaron Hahn

(1882-1970)

My Father Allen Afterman died suddenly in Jerusalem on 14/12/1992 (י ט כסלו התשנ ג). He was 51 years old. Now more than a decade later, I wish to present a few points about Allen and his writing that may be relevant to the readers of this book.

In several his poems Allen uses the spiral as an image of growth, of evolution and intensification of life. Similarly, his own life can be seen as opening in spiral movement, spanning through different continents, different spiritual modes and activities.

He was born in Los Angeles on 21stth May 1941. His parents, Russian Jewish migrants, had arrived to the U.S.A. in their childhood. He studied at U.C.L.A. and Harvard Law School, successfully completing a graduate Law degree. Later he took a position as Lecturer in Law at the University of Auckland New Zealand, as mainly becauseone of his professors having recommended New Zealand as an exotic place to visit. From there he moved to Australia, teaching law at the University of Melbourne, and completing a Master of Law degree, his thesis for which was published as the book Company Directors and Controllers (1970), is still a standard text book in Australian universities. Another book, Cases And Materials Corporations And Associations, written jointly with Robert Baxt, was published in 1973. During this period he became a successful teacher taughtof such matters as Contract Law, and Corporate Law, in various Universities in Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand.

In 1972, faced with the option of a post as the youngest Professor of Law at that time in Australia, he decided to retire from academic life and to devote himself to writing poetry. He subsequently moved to a farm in southern New South Wales with my mother, Susan. and published two books of poetry, The Maze Rose (1974), and Purple Adam (1980). During this period he also learned many physical skills associated with farming and living on the land.
In 1980, after eight years of life in the bush, they moved on again, this time to Israel. The decision to immigrate to Israel was taken while living there for a year in 1978. In Israel, as in Australia, my parents chose to live on the land. They managed, together with a couple of friends, to buy private land in the Western Galilee, to plant olive groves, and to take part in the establishment of a beautiful place, now the successful community called Clil.

While living in Australia Allen published two books of poetry, The Maze Rose
(1974), and Purple Adam (1980). Later, while living in Israel, he published two books with The Sheep Meadow Press, Desire for White (1991), a book of poems that combined both new and previously published workpoems; and Kabbalah and Consciousness (1992), an effort to express his personal mystical world within the kabbalistic framework. These two projects were connected, and were different manifestations of his life and experience.
We who were close to him had the opportunity to experience this life and creativity in other dimensions: in his singing, in the stone walls and terraces that he built on the farm, in the taste of his olive oil.

The poems and the book on Kabbalah were influenced by certain personal mystical experiences. His relation with these experiencesm was itselfparadoxical. On the one hand he did not seek to develop or repeat them through regular meditation- related exercises or other forms of seeking.; On the other hand, he developed a tenacious and intense loyalty to them, working the exact movement that he had experienced over and over in his mind, and in his writingspoetry.
Many of the experiences and insights articulated in his poetry were derived from his singing. Allen was a Gypsy singer, like his mother, whom he learned from and performed with prior to her death. Another medium of creativity and receptivity for him was the desert, where he would take long solitary walks.
An important aspect of his spiritual activity was his individual approach. Although he sensed very much that he was part of the ancient Jewish spiritual tradition, and was specially connected to Hassidism, he was not part of any religious group or institution.

Allen studied Torah and Kabbalah with several people other the years, especially with my mother and close friends (as he acknowledges in his preface to Kabbalah and Consciousness). He acknowledged, as well, the special dialogue he had over a six-year period with the Kabbalist Rav. Y. Ginzburgh. The manner in which Rav Ginsburgh chose to learn with him is unique. Instead of reading classic Kabbalistic texts, he used Allen’s poems and experiences as a starting point that allowed them to indulge in a verbal meditation of kabbalistic material (these sessions were taped). It should be noted, however, that despite their unique connection, they haad substantial disputes regarding political issues and the value of Humanistic and Universal values. Allen’s sudden death preempted a book that he had beguan writing, part of whose intention was to present and articulate from within the Jewish mystical sources a humanistic and universal view of the role of Israel in our generation, ithe nature of its relationship with the Land of Israel and the neighbors inhabiting it.
n it’s relation with the other nations.

I wish to thank our friend Stanley Moss for his genuine friendship and commitment to my father's memory and work. A reading of both earlier and later (and until now unpublished) poems, which have been included in this edition of Kabbalah and Consciousness and the Poetry of Allen Afterman, will, I hope, add depth and help reveal the personal journey of a special man.