Hayim Nahman Bialik

Hayim Nahman Bialik was born in Volhynia, Russia into a traditional Jewish family. He became attracted to the Haskalah movement while studying Talmud in Lithuania and eventually drifted away from Yeshiva life. At eighteen, he left for Odessa, where he became active in Jewish literary circles and met Ahad Ha-am, who greatly influenced in his Zionist outlook.

In 1920, Bialik was able to obtain permission for him and a group of other Hebrew writers to emigrate from Russia. Enroute to his final destination of Palestine, he stopped in Berlin and so began the extraordinary boom of Hebrew literature in Germany. More than any other event, the 1921 arrival of Bialik, the most celebrated of the Hebrew poets, underlined the new position of the German capital as the center for Hebrew culture.

Bialik immediately began the campaign for his new publishing house, which he regarded as his primary mission during his stay in Berlin. Along with the cooperation of the leading scholars of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, he created Devir and the scholarly journal of the same name. Bialik symbolically hyphenated Jerusalem or Tel Aviv with Berlin in the imprints of Devir's published works in order to underscore his emotional ties with the Holy Land while living and working in Berlin.

However, Berlin was not the only center of Hebrew literature in Weimar Germany. During his stay he commuted between Berlin and Bad Homburg, the small resort town near Frankfurt that was graced with charming parks, cafes, and the likes of SY Agnon and other Hebrew writers. After Bialik left for Palestine in 1924, Agnon soon followed, thus marking the dusk of the most productive phase of Hebrew writers on German soil.

Before Hayim Nahman Bialik, Hebrew poetry was unsophisticated and dominated by Biblical influences. He produced a new poetic idiom by introducing new devices in the Hebrew language while maintaining its link as the language of the Jewish people. During his lifetime, he was called the national poet, a title that has remained to this day. As a poet, essayist, storywriter, translator and editor, he left a profound impression on modern Jewish culture.