Passing by "the frowning face of Bethel," a Salvation
Army hostel in Lombard Street, Bloom deciphers the
significance of its name, recalling the bits of Hebrew that he
learned from his father: "El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth." As
he seems to recognize, "Beth" is both the second letter of the
Hebrew alphabet (aleph, beth, gimel, daleth) and a word
(bet) meaning "house of." He also seems to know the
meaning of "El"—God—but does not articulate it.
Lotus Eaters narrates Bloom's crossing of Townsend
Street, which runs east-west, in order to turn south on
Lombard Street. In 1904 the Bethel Salvation Army Hostel stood
at 19-20 Lombard, near the intersection with Townsend. It has
since been replaced by another building. Slote observes that,
according to the 1892 edition of Thom's directory, the
Salvation Army hall was originally a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
and "Sailors' Bethel." The OED, he notes, documents
that the word Bethel "was used by some Methodists and Baptists
to designate a chapel or meeting house."
The ancient Israelite sanctuary of Bethel, several miles
north of Jerusalem, is mentioned frequently in the Hebrew
Bible. The place received its name from Jacob after he dreamed
there of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven (Genesis
28:12-17), and later the ark of the covenant was kept there
(Judges 20:26-27). If Bloom is thinking of the name's
religious significance, the "frowning face" of the
Bethel building may convey a dyspeptic view of the deity, much
as "Trinity's surly front," in Lestrygonians,
conveys a dyspeptic view of the Protestant elite. Slote offers
a different reading of the phrase: "The arrangement of the
windows on the building's façade suggests a frowning face
(with thanks to Gerry O'Flaherty)." It seems possible that
both readings could be correct.
In a personal communication, Steve Chernicoff points out that
Bloom's Hebrew learning is sound: bet means not simply
house, but "house of." The uninflected Hebrew word,
Chernicoff observes, is bayit. The form bet
is known as the construct state, similar to the genitive case
in other languages: "It’s kind of a Latin genitive in reverse:
where Latin would say domus Dei ('house,'
nominative; 'of God,' genitive), Hebrew says bet El ('house
of,' construct; 'God,' nominative). In Latin, the possessor
(in this case, God) declines to the genitive; in Hebrew, the
thing possessed (house) declines to the construct. Bloom has
his grammar exactly right."
