1952 Photo HERZL ISRAEL POSTER Jewish KKL JNF Zionist BIALIK Judaica HEBREW

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1952 Photo HERZL ISRAEL POSTER Jewish KKL JNF Zionist BIALIK Judaica HEBREW:
$75.00

DESCRIPTION : Here for sale is a vintage over SIXTY YEARS old rareZIONIST POSTER, Published 1952 ( Dated ) , A commemorative poster to HERZL and BIALIK , the two great Jews who died at following days with 30 years between them, Dr. Theodor Herzl (2.5.1860 – 3.7.1904), Haim Nahman Bialik (9.1.1873 – 4.7.1934). The richly photographed , Illustrated and decorated ZIONIST POSTER consists on numerous elements : The poster is titled with Herzl immortal motto – \"If you will it, it is not a legend\" a picture of Herzl and Bialik above their graves. Including a picture of the table Herzl wrote \"The Jewish State\" on and the library in Tel-Aviv which Bialik used to work in. The bottom pictures are displaying the fulfillment of the vision with a picture of Israel\'s declaration of independence, the sworn of the first president Chaim Weizmann, children of immigrants at school, the first harvest in the Negev and sailors of the Israel Navy parading on Independence Day. The bottom is titled with Bialik\'s famous phrase \"Last generation of slavery and first generation of redemption we are\". The poster SIZE is around 20\" x 28\" . The poster isprinted on paper .Very goodcondition. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) The POSTER will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube.

AUTHENTICITY :The poster comes from a KKL- JNF old warehouse andis fullyguaranteed ORIGINAL from1952 ( Fully dated ) . Copies of this AUTHENTIC poster were bought WHOLESALE from my store for RESELLING by the largest and well reputed POSTER GALLERIES in ISRAEL and WORLDWIDE. It is NOT a reproduction or a recently made reprint or an immitation ,Itholds a life long GUARANTEE for itsAUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : Shipp worldwide via registered airmail is $14 . The POSTER will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube. Will be sent within3-5 days after payment . Kindly note that duration of Int\'l registered airmail is around 14 days.

Eastern half of Budapest,then a separate city) to a German-speaking family originally from Zemun (now inSerbia but then in Hungary). When Theodor was 18 his family moved to Vienna.There, he studied law, but he devoted himself almost exclusively to journalismand literature, working as a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse in Paris,occasionally making special trips to London and Istanbul. Later, he becameliterary editor of Neue Freie Presse,and wrote several comedies and dramas forthe Viennese stage. As a young man, Herzl was engaged in a Burschenschaftassociation, which strove for German unity under the motto Ehre, Freiheit,Vaterland (\"Honor, Freedom, Fatherland\"), and his early work did notfocus on Jewish life. His work was of the feuilleton order, descriptive ratherthan political. In spite of his Jewish ethnicity, Herzl was an avowedatheist.As Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed theDreyfus Affair, a notorious anti-Semitic incident in France in which a FrenchJewish army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. He witnessedmass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial where many chanted\"Death to the Jews!\" Herzl came to reject his early ideas regardingJewish emancipation and assimilation, and to believe that the Jews must removethemselves from Europe and create their own state.In June, 1895, he wrote inhis diary: \"In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude towardanti-Semitism... Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of tryingto \'combat\' anti-Semitism.\" In Der Judenstaat he writes: \"The Jewishquestion persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it doesnot exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturallydrawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance theregives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so,everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—solong as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. Theunfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; theyhave already introduced it into America.\"From April, 1896, when theEnglish translation of his Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) appeared,Herzl became the leading spokesman for Zionism. Herzl complemented his writingwith practical work to promote Zionism on the international stage. He visitedIstanbul in April, 1896, and was hailed at Sofia, Bulgaria, by a Jewishdelegation. In London, the Maccabees group received him coldly, but he was grantedthe mandate of leadership from the Zionists of the East End of London. Withinsix months this mandate had been approved throughout Zionist Jewry, and Herzltraveled constantly to draw attention to his cause. His supporters, at firstfew in number, worked night and day, inspired by Herzl\'s example. In June of1896, he met for the first time with the Sultan of Turkey, but the Sultanrefused to cede Palestine to Zionists, saying, \"if one day the IslamicState falls apart then you can have Palestine for free, but as long as I amalive I would rather have my flesh be cut up than cut out Palestine from theMuslim land.\"In 1897, at considerable personal expense, he founded DieWelt of Vienna and planned the First Zionist Congress in Basel. He was electedpresident, (a position he held until his death in 1904), and in 1898 he began aseries of diplomatic initiatives intended to build support for a Jewishcountry. He was received by the German emperor on several occasions, was againgranted an audience by the Ottoman emperor in Jerusalem, and attended The HaguePeace Conference, enjoying a warm reception by many other statesmen. In 1902–03Herzl was invited to give evidence before the British Royal Commission on AlienImmigration. The appearance brought him into close contact with members of theBritish government, particularly with Joseph Chamberlain, then secretary ofstate for the colonies, through whom he negotiated with the Egyptian governmentfor a charter for the settlement of the Jews in Al \'Arish, in the SinaiPeninsula, adjoining southern Palestine. On the failure of that scheme, whichtook him to Cairo, he received, through L. J. Greenberg, an offer (Aug., 1903)on the part of the British government to facilitate a large Jewish settlement,with autonomous government and under British suzerainty, in British EastAfrica. At the same time, the Zionist movement being threatened by the Russiangovernment, he visited St. Petersburg and was received by Sergei Witte, thenfinance minister, and Viacheslav Plehve, minister of the interior, the latterof whom placed on record the attitude of his government toward the Zionistmovement. On that occasion Herzl submitted proposals for the amelioration ofthe Jewish position in Russia. He published the Russian statement, and broughtthe British offer, commonly known as the \"Uganda Project,\" before theSixth Zionist Congress (Basel, August 1903), carrying the majority (295:178, 98abstentions) with him on the question of investigating this offer, after theRussian delegation stormed out. In 1905 after investigation the Congressdecided to decline the British offer and firmly committed itself to a Jewishhome land in the historic Land of Israel.Herzl did not live to see therejection of the Uganda plan; he died in Edlach, Lower Austria in 1904 of heartfailure at age 44. His will stipulated that he should have the poorest-classfuneral without speeches or flowers and he added, \"I wish to be buried inthe vault beside my father, and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take myremains to Palestine\". In 1949 his remains were moved from Vienna to bereburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896)written in German, was the book that announced the advent of Zionism to theworld. It is a pamphlet-length political program. His last literary work,Altneuland (in Eng. The Old New Land), is devoted to Zionism. The authoroccupied his free time for three years in writing what he believed might beaccomplished by 1923. It is less a novel, though the form is that of romance,than a serious forecasting of what can be done when one generation shall havepassed. The keynotes of the story are the love for Zion, the insistence uponthe fact that the changes in life suggested are not utopian, but are to bebrought about simply by grouping all the best efforts and ideals of every raceand nation; and each such effort is quoted and referred to in such a manner asto show that Altneuland (\"Old-New land\"), though blossoming throughthe skill of the Jew, will in reality be the product of the benevolent effortsof all the members of the human family. Herzl envisioned a Jewish state whichcombined both a modern Jewish culture with the best of the European heritage.Thus a Palace of Peace would be built in Jerusalem, arbitrating internationaldisputes—but at the same time the Temple would be rebuilt, but on modernprinciples. He did not envision the Jewish inhabitants of the state beingreligious, but there is much respect for religion in the public sphere. Manylanguages are spoken—Hebrew is not the main tongue. Proponents of a Jewishcultural rebirth, such as Ahad Ha\'am were critical of Altneuland. In AltneulandHerzl did not foresee any conflict between Jews and Arabs. The one Arabcharacter in Altneuland, Reshid Bey, who is one of the leaders of the \"NewSociety\", is very grateful to his Jewish neighbors for improving theeconomic condition of Palestine and sees no cause for conflict. All non-Jewshave equal rights, and an attempt by a fanatical rabbi to disenfranchise the non-Jewishcitizens of their rights fails in the election which is the center of the mainpolitical plot of the novel. Altneuland was written primarily for the world,not for the Zionists. Herzl wanted to win over non-Jewish opinion for Zionism.In his diary he wrote that land in Palestine was to be gently expropriated fromthe Palestinian Arabs and they were to be worked across the border\"unbemerkt\" (surreptitiously), e.g. by refusing them employment.Herzl\'s draft of a charter for a Jewish-Ottoman Land Company (JOLC) gave theJOLC the right to obtain land in Palestine by giving its owners comparable landelsewhere in the Ottoman empire. According to Walid Khalidi this indicatesHerzl\'s \"bland assumption of the transfer of the Palestinian to make wayfor the immigrant colonist.\"The name of Tel Aviv is the title given to theHebrew translation of Altneuland by the translator, Nahum Sokolov. This name,which comes from Ezekiel 3:15, means tell—an ancient mound formed when a townis built on its own debris for thousands of years—of spring. The name was laterapplied to the new town built outside of Jaffa, which went on to become thesecond-largest city in Israel. Nearby is Herzlia, named in honor of Herzl.Herzl\'s grandfathers, both of whom he knew, were more closely related totraditional Judaism than his parents, yet two of his paternal grandfather\'sbrothers and his maternal grandmother\'s brother exemplify complete estrangementand rejection of Judaism on the one hand, and utter loyalty and devotion toJudaism and Eretz Israel. Herzl\'s paternal grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl,reportedly attended the Sephardic Zionist Rabbi Judah Alkalai\'s synagogue inSemlin, Serbia, and the two frequently visited. Grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl\"had his hands on\" one of the first copies of Alkalay\'s 1857 workprescribing the \"return of the Jews to the Holy Land and renewed glory ofJerusalem.\" Contemporary scholars conclude that Herzl\'s own implementationof modem Zionism was undoubtedly influenced by that relationship. Herzl’s grandparents\'graves in Semlin can still be visited. Alkalai himself, was witness of rebirthof Serbia from Otoman rule in early and mid 19th century and was inspired bySerbian uprising and re-creation of Serbia. Jacob Herzl (1835-1902), Theodor\'sfather, was a highly successful businessman. Herzl\'s mother, Jeanette (n?eDiamant) was a handsome and wise woman. She took pride in her son, but did nothave a successful relationship with her daughter-in-law. Herzl had one sister,Pauline, a year older than he was, who died suddenly on February 7, 1878 oftyphus. Theodor lived with his family in a house next to the Doh?ny StreetSynagogue (formerly known as Tabakgasse Synagogue) located in Belv?ros, theinner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the Eastern section ofBudapest. The remains of Herzl\'s parents and sister were re-buried on MountHerzl in Jerusalem. In 1889 he married Julie Naschauer, daughter of a wealthyJewish businessman in Vienna. The marriage was unhappy, although three childrenwere born to it. Herzl had a strong attachment to his mother, who was unable toget along with his wife. These difficulties were increased by the politicalactivities of his later years, in which his wife took little interest.All threechildren died tragically. Pauline suffered from mental illness and drugaddiction. She died in 1930 at the age of 40, apparently of a morphineoverdose. Hans, a converted Catholic, committed suicide (gunshot) the day ofsister Pauline\'s funeral. He was 39. In 2006 the remains of Pauline and Hanswere moved from Bordeaux, France, and placed alongside their father.,Theyoungest daughter, Trude Margarethe, (officially Margarethe, 1893-1943) marriedRichard Neumann. He lost his fortune in the economic depression. He wasburdened by the steep costs of hospitalizing Trude, who was mentally ill, andwas finding it difficult to raise the money required to send his son Stephan,14, to a boarding school in London. After spending many years in hospitals,Trude was taken by the Nazis to Theresienstadt where she died. Her body wasburned.Trude\'s son (Herzl\'s only grandchild), Stephan Theodor Neumann(1918-1946) was sent to England, 1937-1938, for his safety, as raoffer Austriananti-Semitism grew. In England, he read extensively about his grandfather. Stephanbecame an ardent Zionist. He was the only Herzl to be a Zionist. Anglicizinghis name to Stephen Norman, during WWII, Norman enlisted in the British Armyrising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Artillery. In late 1945 and early1946, he took the opportunity to visit the British Mandate of Palestine\"to see what my grandfather had started.\" He wrote in his diaryextensively about his trip. What impressed him the most was that there was a\"look of freedom\" in the faces of the children, not like the sallowlook of those from the concentration camps of Europe. He wrote upon leavingPalestine, \"My visit to Palestine is over... It is said that to go away isto die a little. And I know that when I went away from Erez Israel, I died alittle. But sure, then, to return is somehow to be reborn. And I willreturn.\" Discharged in Britain he took a minor position with a BritishEconomic and Scientific mission in Washington, D.C. Autumn, 1946, he learnedthat his family had been exterminated. He became deeply depressed over the fateof his family and the seeming eternal and continuing suffering of the Jewishsurvivors of the Holocaust languishing in European Displaced persons camp.Unable to endure the suffering any further, he jumped from the MassachusettsAvenue Bridge in Washington, D.C. to his death. Norman was buried by the JewishAgency in Washington, D.C. His tombstone reads simply, Stephen Theodore Norman,Captain Royal Artillery British Army, Grandson of Theodore Herzl, April 21,1918 - November 26, 1946. Norman was the only member of Herzl\'s family to havebeen to Palestine. He loved the land and the people. A major Zionist effort isunderway to return the last descendant and only Zionist in Herzl\'s family to bereburied with his family on Mt. Herzl on December 5, 2007. . Hayim NahmanBialik (Hebrew: חיים נחמן ביאליק‎;January 9, 1873 – July 4, 1934), also Chaim or Haim, was a Jewish poet whowrote in Hebrew. Bialik was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poets and cameto be recognized as Israel\'s national poet.Bialik was born in Radi, Volhynia inUkraine to Yitzhak Yosef Bialik, a scholar and businessman, and his wife Dinah(Priveh). Bialik\'s father died in 1880, when Bialik was 7 years old. In hispoems, Bialik romanticized the misery of his childhood, describing seven orphansleft behind—though modern biographers believe there were fewer children,including grown step-siblings who did not need to be supported. Be that as itmay, from the age 7 onwards Bialik was raised in Zhitomir by his stern Orthodoxgrandfather, Yaakov Moshe Bialik.In Zhitomir he received a traditional Jewishreligious education, but also explored European literature. At the age of 15,inspired by an article he read, he convinced his grandfather to send him to theVolozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania, to study at a famous Talmudic academy under RabbiNaftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, where he hoped he could continue his Jewishschooling while expanding his education to European literature as well.Attracted to the Jewish Enlightenment movement (haskala), Bialik graduallydrifted away from yeshiva life. Poems such as HaMatmid (\"The Talmudstudent\") written in 1898, reflect his great ambivalence toward that wayof life: on the one hand admiration for the dedication and devotion of theyeshiva students to their studies, on the other hand a disdain for the narrownessof their world.At 18 he left for Odessa, the center of modern Jewish culture inthe southern Russian Empire, drawn by such luminaries as Mendele Mocher Sforimand Ahad Ha\'am. In Odessa, Bialik studied Russian and German language andliterature, and dreamed to enroll in the Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary inBerlin. Alone and penniless, he made his living teaching Hebrew. The 1892publication of his first poem, El Hatzipor \"To the Bird,\"which expresses a longing for Zion, in a booklet edited by Yehoshua HoneRavnitzky (a future collaborator), eased Bialik\'s way into Jewish literarycircles in Odessa. He joined the so-called Hovevei Zion group and befriendedAhad Ha\'am, who had a great influence on his Zionist outlook.In 1892 Bialikheard news that the Volozhin yeshiva had closed, and rushed home to Zhitomir,to prevent his grandfather from discovering that he had discontinued hisreligious education. He arrived to discover his grandfather and his olderbrother both on their deathbeds. Following their deaths, Bialik married ManiaAverbuch in 1893. For a time he served as a bookkeeper in his father-in-law\'slumber business in Korostyshiv, near Kiev. But when this proved unsuccessful,he moved in 1897 to Sosnowice (then in Austrian Galicia) a small town near theborder to Prussia and to Russian Congress Poland. In Sosnowice, Bialik worked asa Hebrew teacher, and tried to earn extra income as a coal merchant, but theprovincial life depressed him. He was finally able to return to Odessa in 1900,having secured a teaching job.For the next two decades, Bialik taught andcontinued his activities in Zionist and literary circles, as his literary famecontinued to rise. This is considered Bialik\'s \"golden period\". In1901 his first collection of poetry was published in Warsaw, and was greetedwith much critical acclaim, to the point that he was hailed \"the poet ofnational renaissance.\" Bialik relocated to Warsaw briefly in 1904 asliterary editor of the weekly magazine HaShiloah founded by Ahad Ha\'am,a position he served for six years.In 1903 Bialik was sent by the JewishHistorical Commission in Odessa to interview survivors of the Kishinev pogromsand prepare a report. In response to his findings Bialik wrote his epic poem Inthe City of Slaughter, a powerful statement of anguish at the situation ofthe Jews. Bialik\'s condemnation of passivity against anti-Semitic violence issaid to have influenced the founding Jewish self-defense groups in Russia, andeventually the Haganah in Palestine. Bialik visited Palestine in 1909.In theearly 1900s Bialik founded with Ravnitzky, Simcha Ben Zion and ElhananLevinsky, a Hebrew publishing house, Moriah, which issued Hebrewclassics and school texts. He translated into Hebrew various European works,such as Shakespeares Julius Caesar, Schiller\'s Wilhelm Tell Cervantes\'Don Quixote, and Heine\'s poems; and from Yiddish S. Ansky\'s The Dybbuk.Throughoutthe years 1899-1915 Bialik published about 20 of his Yiddish poems in differentYiddish periodicals in Russia. These poems are often considered to be among thebest achievements of modern Yiddish poetry of that period. In collaboration withRavnitzky, Bialik published Sefer HaAggadah (1908-1911, The Book ofLegends), a three-volume edition of the folk tales and proverbs scatteredthrough the Talmud. For the book they selected hundreds of texts and arrangedthem thematically. The Book of Legends was immediately recognized as amasterwork and has been reprinted numerous times. Bialik also edited the poemsof the medieval poet and philosopher Ibn Gabirol. He began a modern commentaryon the Mishnah, but only completed Zeraim, the first of the six Orders (in the1950s, the Bialik Institute published a commentary on the entire Mishnah by HanochAlbeck, which is currently out of print). He additionally added severalcommentaries on the Talmud.Bialik lived in Odessa until 1921, when Moriahpublishing house was closed by Communist authorities, as a result of mountingparanoia following the Bolshevik Revolution. With the intervention of MaximGorki a group of Hebrew writers was given permission by the Soviet governmentto leave the country.Bialik then moved - via Poland and Turkey - to Berlin,where together with his friends Ravnitzky and Shmaryahu Levin he founded the Dvirpublishing house. Bialik published in Dvir the first Hebrew languagescientific journal with teachers of the rabbinical college Hochschule für dieWissenschaft des Judentums contributing. In Berlin Bialik joined a community ofJewish authors and publishers such as Samuel Joseph Agnon (sponsored by theowner of Schocken Department Stores, Salman Schocken, who later founded SchockenVerlag), Simon Dubnow, Israel Isidor Elyashe (Ba\'al-Machshov) Uri Zvi Greenberg,Jakob Klatzkin (founded Eschkol publishing house in Berlin), MosheKulbak, Jakob-Wolf Latzki-Bertoldi (founded Klal publishing house inBerlin in 1921), Simon Rawidowicz (co-founder of Klal), Salman Schneur, NochumShtif (Ba\'al-Dimion), Shaul Tchernichovsky, elsewhere in Germany ShoshanaPersitz with Omanuth publishing house in Bad Homburg v.d.. and Martin Buber.They met in the Hebrew Club Beith haWa\'ad ha\'Ivri ביתהועד העברי (in Berlin\'s Scheunenviertel) or in Café Monopol, whichhad a Hebrew speaking corner, as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda\'s son Itamar Ben-Avirecalled, and in Café des Westens (both in Berlin\'s more elegant westernboroughs). The then still Soviet theatre HaBimah toured through Germany,renowned by Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr and Max Reinhardt. Bialik succeededSaul Israel Hurwitz after his death (8 August 1922) as Hebrew chief editor at Klalpublishing house, which published 80 titles in 1922. On January 1923 Bialik\'s50th birthday was celebrated in the old concert hall of the Berlin Philharmonicbringing together everybody who was anybody. In the years of Inflation Berlinhad become a centre of Yiddish and Hebrew and other foreign language publishingand printing, because books could be produced at ever falling real expenses andsold to a great extent for stable foreign currency. Many Hebrew and Yiddishtitles were also translated into German. Once the old inflationary currency (Mark)was replaced by the new stable Rentenmark and Reichsmark this period ended andmany publishing houses closed or relocated elsewhere, as did many prominentpublishers and authors.In 1924 Bialik relocated with his publishing house Dvirto Tel Aviv, devoting himself to cultural activities and public affairs. Bialikwas immediately recognized as a celebrated literary figure. He delivered theaddress that marked the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was amember of its board of governors, and in 1927 he became head of the HebrewWriters Union, a position he retained for the remainder of his life. In 1933his 60th birthday was celebrated with festivities nationwide, and all theschoolchildren of Tel Aviv were taken to meet him and pay their respects tohim.Bialik wrote several different modes of poetry. He is perhaps most famousfor his long, nationalistic poems, which call for a reawakening of the Jewishpeople. However no less effective are his passionate love poems, his personalverse or his nature poems. Last but not least, Bialik\'s songs for children area staple of Israeli nursery life. From 1908 onwards, he wrote mostly prose.Bywriting his works in Hebrew, Bialik contributed significantly to the revival ofthe Hebrew language, which before his days existed primarily as an ancient,scholarly tongue. His influence is felt deeply in all modern Hebrew literature.The generation of Hebrew language poets who followed in Bialik\'s footsteps,including Jacob Steinberg and Jacob Fichman, are called \"the Bialikgeneration\".To this day, Bialik is recognized as Israel\'s national poet. BialikHouse, his former home at 22 Bialik Street in Tel Aviv, has been converted intoa museum, and functions as a center for literary events. The municipality of TelAviv awards the Bialik Prize in his honor. Kiryat Bialik, a suburb of Haifa,and Givat Hen, a moshav bordering the city of Raanana, are named after him. Heis the only person to have two streets named after him in the same Israeli city- Bialik Street and Hen Boulevard in Tel Aviv.Bialik\'s poems have beentranslated into at least 30 languages, and set to music as popular songs. Thesepoems, and the songs based on them, have become an essential part of theeducation and culture of modern Israel.Bialik wrote most of his poems using\"Ashkenazi\" pronunciation, while Hebrew in Israel uses the Sephardipronunciation. In consequence, Bialik\'s poems are rarely recited in the meterin which they were written.Bialik died in Vienna, Austria, on July 3, 1934,following a failed prostate operation. He was buried in Tel Aviv: a largemourning procession followed from his home on the street named after him, tohis final resting place. **** Poet, translator, essayist, storyteller,editor, one of the greatest Hebrew poets of all time. Bialik is consideredIsrael\'s national poet, although he did not live to witness the birth of theState of Israel. Several of his poems have been set to music and gained widepopularity as songs. Some of his works Bialik wrote in Yiddish but most of hisimportant writings are in Hebrew. In many poems Bialik depicted the sufferingof his people, but he also could ridicule the weakness and passivity of hisfellow intellectuals. Youhave not changed, you\'re antic old, There\'s nothing new I think; Friends, letme join your club, well rot Together till we stink. (from \'OnMy Return\')Hayyim Nahman Bialik was born in Radi, in Volhynia, Russia. He wasthe youngest of seven children of Reb Yitzok Yoissef Bialik, a scholar andunsuccessful businessman, and Dinah (Priveh) Bialik. After his father\'s deathin 1880, he was raised in Zhitomir by his learned, sternly Orthodox grandfatherReb Yaakov Moishe Bialik. The loss of his father at an early age and life innew surroundings shaped Bialik\'s thought and later his poems about exile alsoechoed his personal feelings of rootlessness. Bialik received a traditionalHebrew education, but was also influenced by his mother\'s interest in Russianand European literature. At the age of eleven he read the Kabbalisticliterature of the Middle Ages. Some years later he began to study the Talmud,and spent much time in the beth hamidrash, the traditional house of learning.In 1890 he moved to Volozhin in Lithuania to study at its famous TalmudicAcademy (yeshiva). Next year he went to Odessa and devoted there himself to thestudy of Russian and German. During this period he composed poems whichreflected the themes and styles of the Jewish enlightenment (haskalah). Amonghis friends and mentors was the early Zionist ideologist Ahad Ha\'am(1856-1927), whose thoughts influenced his writing. In 1892 Bialik returned toZhitomir and married Mania Averbuch. His business venture in the lumber tradewith his father-in-law failed and he moved in 1897 to Sosnowice, a small townnear the Prussian border. There Bialik worked as a teacher and tried to earnextra income as a coal merchant without much success. However, Bialik\'s fame asa poet had started to grow and he returned to Odessa, a center of Hebrewliterature. At a time when most Jews were forofferden to live in Moscow or St.Petersburg, Odessa had many times more Jews than any other city in the Russianpart of the empire. Later the people of its famous ghetto, the Moldavanka, wascelebrated in Isaak Babel\'s Tales of Odessa (1931). Bialik worked inOdessa as a teacher, and continued his activities in Zionist and literarycircles. Bialik\'s first volume of poetry appeared in 1901 in Warsaw. He visitedPalestine in 1904 and 1908 and also spent some time in Warsaw (1903-05),editing the magazine Ha-Shiloah, which had been founded by Ahad Ha\'am.In the early 1900\'s Bialik founded with Y.H. Ravnitzky (1859-1944) a Hebrewpublishing house, Moriah, which issued Hebrew classics and school literature.He translated various European works, such as Shakespeare\'s Julius Caesar,Schiller\'s Wilhelm Tell, Cervantes\' Don Quixote, and Heine\'spoems. In collaboration with Yehoshua Hana Ravnizsky Bialik published SeferHa Aggadah (1908-1911, The Book of Legends), a three-volume edition of thefolk tales and proverbs scattered through the Talmud. For the book theyselected hundreds of texts and arranged them thematically. The Book ofLegends was immediately recognized as masterwork and has been reprintednumerous times. Bialik also edited the poems of the medieval poet andphilosopher Ibn Gabirol and began a modern commentary on the Mishna, theoral law. Bialik\'s first long poem, \'Ha-Matmid\', published in Ha-Shiloah,established his fame as one of the most important Hebrew poets of his time. Itpresented the Taldumic student as a heroic force of Judaism and depicted therapidly vanishing life of traditional orthodox Jewish past. Bialik\'s earlypoems often dealt with the gap between modern life and religious faith, and thebitterness of exile. He used biblical language and images, but did notslavishly imitate earlier writings. Although his best-known poems are about thetragedy of the Jewish people and national and individual redemption, he alsoproduced passionate love poems. Apathy and inability to act he mocked in suchpoems as \'On My Return\' and \'Summer is Dying\', in which he wrote: \"Theheart is orphaned. Soon a rainy day / Will softly tap the pane.\" The poemcontinues with another voice, which wakes up the day-dreamer: \'\"Look toyour boots, patch up your coats, go fetch / The potatoes again.\"\' Withhis call for a reawakening and modernization of language Bialik deeply influencedthe Renaissance period of Hebrew literature on its way from Europe toPalestine. Rise and go to the town of the killings andyou\'ll come to the yards and with your eyes and your own hand feel the fenceand on the trees and on the stones and plaster of the wall the congealed bloodand hardened brains of the dead. (from \'City of theKillings\', trans. by Atar Hadari) \'City of Killings\' concerned the KishinyovPogrom, during which about 50 people were massacred. The poet guides the readerthrough the horrible sights of the slaughter and asks: \"And who else islike God and earth and can bear this in silence?\" It is said that Bialik\'scastigating passivity against anti-Semitic violence furthered the idea offounding Jewish self-defense groups in Russia, and eventually the Haganah inPalestine. His other famous poems include \'Metei midbar\' (Dead of the Desert),\'Ha-Berekhah\' (The Pool), and \'Mgilat haesh\' (1905, The Scroll of Fire), set inthe time of the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem. From 1908 Bialikwrote more prose than poetry. After the Bolshevik Revolution the Communistauthorities viewed with suspicion Bialik\'s work for the Hebrew culture, and thepublishing house Moriah was closed. With the help of Maxim Gorky, Bialikreceived a permission to emigrate. He moved in 1921 to Germany, where heestablished the Dvir publishing house. In 1924 he moved to Tel Aviv - at thattime Palestine was administered by Britain under a League of Nations mandate.During the last decade of his life, Bialik participated in a number of culturalpursuits. He delivered the address that marked the opening of Hebrew Universityin Jerusalem, was a member of its board of governors, visited the United Stateson behalf of the Palestine Foundation Fund, toured in Poland, and founded theweekly philosophical and literary discussions in Tel Aviv, which he called\"Oneg Shabbat\" (Enjoyment of the Sabbath). Bialik died in Vienna,Austria, on July 4, 1934, following a surgery. He was buried in Tel Aviv.Bialik\'s poems have been translated into some 30 languages. His home, designedby Yossef Minor at 22 Bialik Street in Tel Aviv, was later opened to the publicas a museum. Bialik\'s poems - and songs based on them - have become anessential part of the education and culture of modern Israel. They are read atschools, and his verses and expressions are frequently recited in festivals andall kinds of public events.