Laufer began. “We wish to thank you for agreeing to take in under your roof a pigeon loft for Haganah homing pigeons. The pigeons we have brought here are four weeks old. Soon they will begin their flight training, and at the age of six months they will be yoked to a life of family and work.”
People in the crowd began to murmur. Expressions like “yoked to a life of work” were not foreign to their ears, but speaking in the plural, as the doctor did, instigated a quarrel among the veteran kibbutz members: was this
the pluralis majestatis,
the “royal
we,
” primarily the aggrandizement of the speaker, as in the Book of Genesis—“Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness”—and also the Koran, or was this the
pluralis modestiae,
the amplification of humility?
Dr. Laufer did not wait for this important matter to be clarified; he announced that this pigeon loft was “secret and important” and had been placed in the children’s petting farm so as not to arouse suspicion. “Should the English army come to make a search, one must say this is the children’s pigeon loft.” He explained: “Homing pigeons are very similar to regular pigeons, and only the discerning eye of an expert can tell the difference between them. Still, one must exercise caution. The English are certainly familiar with homing pigeons; they dispatched thousands of them at the front during the Great War. We are telling you all this so that you will know to maintain the secret and the loft and you will not reveal them to anyone.”
Now it became clear to the astonished crowd that
the pluralis
used by Dr. Laufer was a new and different kind of “royal
we,”
in fact a
plu-ralae,
a feminine plural. At once, additional arguments erupted: there were those who said this was nothing more than an erroneous use of Hebrew, just another in the list of errors made by
yekkes,
the German-speaking Jews; there were those who felt they were being presented with a certain sort of humor, the kind of joke of which
yekkes
are particularly fond; and there were those who said that Dr. Laufer spoke thus because he had grown accustomed to living among pigeons and the Hebrew language refers even to male pigeons in the feminine.
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of homing pigeons,” Dr. Laufer announced. “From the days of the pharaohs and the firstOlympic games in Athens, pigeons carried out their missions and delivered news on their wings. Many a time has a single pigeon saved an entire battalion of soldiers or a lost convoy, and on occasion has even sacrificed her own life for man. The Phoenicians brought the pigeon with them in their ships. The sultan Nur-ad-Din connected the entire Muslim empire through a network of pigeon lofts. Homing pigeons brought the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo to Nathan Rothschild three days before it reached the European capitals and their rulers, and there are those who claim,” said the veterinarian, suddenly whispering, “that he owes the beginnings of his fortune to them.
“And just last year,” he said, raising his voice again, “a homing pigeon brought along by fishermen saved three boats caught in a storm off the coast of New England, in the United States of America.”
Dr. Laufer recited a line from Ovid, declaimed a florid poem about pigeons written by a medieval Spanish Jewish poet, and added that the pigeon is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, quoting fluently and precisely two of the four versions: “And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him,” as well as “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.”
“Of course we do not need to remind you of pigeons in our own Bible,” he said. “From the Song of Songs we have ‘my dove who art in the clefts of rocks’ and
yonati tamati,
my undefiled dove of innocence. And then there is the dove
People in the crowd began to murmur. Expressions like “yoked to a life of work” were not foreign to their ears, but speaking in the plural, as the doctor did, instigated a quarrel among the veteran kibbutz members: was this
the pluralis majestatis,
the “royal
we,
” primarily the aggrandizement of the speaker, as in the Book of Genesis—“Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness”—and also the Koran, or was this the
pluralis modestiae,
the amplification of humility?
Dr. Laufer did not wait for this important matter to be clarified; he announced that this pigeon loft was “secret and important” and had been placed in the children’s petting farm so as not to arouse suspicion. “Should the English army come to make a search, one must say this is the children’s pigeon loft.” He explained: “Homing pigeons are very similar to regular pigeons, and only the discerning eye of an expert can tell the difference between them. Still, one must exercise caution. The English are certainly familiar with homing pigeons; they dispatched thousands of them at the front during the Great War. We are telling you all this so that you will know to maintain the secret and the loft and you will not reveal them to anyone.”
Now it became clear to the astonished crowd that
the pluralis
used by Dr. Laufer was a new and different kind of “royal
we,”
in fact a
plu-ralae,
a feminine plural. At once, additional arguments erupted: there were those who said this was nothing more than an erroneous use of Hebrew, just another in the list of errors made by
yekkes,
the German-speaking Jews; there were those who felt they were being presented with a certain sort of humor, the kind of joke of which
yekkes
are particularly fond; and there were those who said that Dr. Laufer spoke thus because he had grown accustomed to living among pigeons and the Hebrew language refers even to male pigeons in the feminine.
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of homing pigeons,” Dr. Laufer announced. “From the days of the pharaohs and the firstOlympic games in Athens, pigeons carried out their missions and delivered news on their wings. Many a time has a single pigeon saved an entire battalion of soldiers or a lost convoy, and on occasion has even sacrificed her own life for man. The Phoenicians brought the pigeon with them in their ships. The sultan Nur-ad-Din connected the entire Muslim empire through a network of pigeon lofts. Homing pigeons brought the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo to Nathan Rothschild three days before it reached the European capitals and their rulers, and there are those who claim,” said the veterinarian, suddenly whispering, “that he owes the beginnings of his fortune to them.
“And just last year,” he said, raising his voice again, “a homing pigeon brought along by fishermen saved three boats caught in a storm off the coast of New England, in the United States of America.”
Dr. Laufer recited a line from Ovid, declaimed a florid poem about pigeons written by a medieval Spanish Jewish poet, and added that the pigeon is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, quoting fluently and precisely two of the four versions: “And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him,” as well as “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.”
“Of course we do not need to remind you of pigeons in our own Bible,” he said. “From the Song of Songs we have ‘my dove who art in the clefts of rocks’ and
yonati tamati,
my undefiled dove of innocence. And then there is the dove
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