JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

pupils were such outstanding rabbis of the following generation
as Akiva *Eger, Isaiah *Berlin, and Mordecai *Halberstadt.
He refused to publish his novellae on the grounds that
through the continual publication of works by aḥaronim, students
would neglect the rishonim, but glosses and responsa by
him can be found scattered in various works of his contemporaries.
His works, which were published only after his death,
are Ateret Ẓevi (1804), comprising responsa, sermons, eulogies,
and novellae; Kos Yeshu’ot (1902), Part 1 novellae on Bava
Kamma and Shevu’ot, Part 2 on Bava Meẓia and other material.
He preferred to penetrate deeply into the understanding
of the sources, stress the plain meaning of the Talmud, and
avoid excessive pilpul. Five of his children were rabbis: Solomon
Dov Berush in Glogau; Naphtali Herz in Dubno; Abraham
in Rawicz; Samuel in Halberstadt; and Simḥah in Dessau.
His brother, Israel b. Naphtali Herz (d. 1744) lived in Cleves,
Offenbach, and Hanau. His talmudic novellae are contained
in his brother’s Ateret Ẓevi.
Bibliography: Michaelson, in: Ẓevi Hirsch Ḥarif, Kos
Yeshu’ot, 1 (1902), appendix (Toledot ha-Meḥabber); Israel Moses b.
Ḥayyim Joshua, ibid., 2 (1910), appendix (Toledot ha-Meḥabber); B.H.
Auerbach, Geschichte der israelitischen Gemeinde Halberstadt (1866),
64–70; S. Buber, Anshei Shem (1895), 196, 240, 247f., I.T. Eisenstadt
and S. Wiener, Da’at Kedoshim (1897–98), 141f.; Loewenstein, in: JJLG,
14 (1921), 19; Frankel, in: Naḥalat Ẓevi, 7 (1937), 321f.; Meisl, in: Reshumot,
3 (1947), 190; Sefer Biala-Podlaska (1961), 19, 270.
[Yehoshua Horowitz]
BIALIK, ḤAYYIM NAḤMAN (1873–1934), the greatest
Hebrew poet of modern times, essayist, storywriter, translator,
and editor, who exercised a profound influence on modern
Jewish culture. Born in the village of Radi, near Zhitomir
(Volhynia), Bialik’s development as a poet was influenced by
his environment – the simplicity and fervor of a folk spirituality
– which characterized Volhynian Jewry, and the ḥasidic
ambience, alive with mystic lore, in which it was steeped. His
father, Isaac Joseph, came of scholarly stock and had been engaged
in the family timber trade and in flour milling before
coming down in life through his impracticality. For his father
as well as his mother, Dinah Priva, this was a second marriage,
both having been widowed previously. Despite his family’s dire
economic circumstances, Bialik retained many happy memories
of the first six years of his childhood in Radi. In some of
his best poems, “Zohar” (“Radiance,” 1901) and “Ha-Berekhah”
(“The Pool,” 1905), attempting to recapture the lost paradise of
childhood, he idealizes the enchanted hours which he spent
romping in the dazzling light of the fields and in the secret
shade of the forest. Others have fewer happy references and
are marked by loneliness, parental neglect, and the almost
narcissistic withdrawal of a sensitive, artistic child, e.g., the
prose poem “Safi’aḥ” (“Aftergrowth,” 1908).
Childhood Period (1880–1890)
When Bialik was six, his parents moved to Zhitomir in search
of a livelihood and his father was reduced to keeping a saloon
on the outskirts of town. Shortly thereafter, in 1880, his father
bialik, Ḥayyim naḤman
died and the destitute widow entrusted her son to the care
of his well-to-do paternal grandfather, Jacob Moses. For ten
years, until he went to yeshivah in 1890, the gifted, mischievous
Ḥayyim Naḥman was raised by the stern old pietist. At
first he was instructed by teachers in the traditional ḥeder and
later, from the age of 13, pursued his studies alone. He was a
lonely figure in the almost deserted house of study on the edge
of town, for the expanding modernization of Jewish life had
restricted the traditional study of Torah to a secluded nook.
Passionate and solitary dedication to study shaped traits of
character that Bialik was to exalt: “A fertile mind, lively logic,
a trusting heart when the knee falters.” From this experience
of his adolescence stems the sense of vocation of the chosen
individual who dedicates his life to an ideal, sacrificing youth
and the delights of the world in order to remain faithful to the
last. This theme of vocation was to become central to Bialik’s
thinking and his poetry is a spiritual record of the paradoxical
struggle to free himself from his calling and at the same time
to remain faithful to it. During this period too his reading of
medieval theology and Haskalah works stimulated ambitions
for secular knowledge, moving him to seek a more comprehensive
education. He dreamed of the rabbinical seminary in
Berlin, and of acquiring the cultural tools that would give him
entrance to modern European civilization.
Volozhin Period
Convinced by a journalistic report that the yeshivah of *Volozhin
in Lithuania would offer him an introduction to the humanities,
as well as a continuation of his talmudic studies, Bialik
persuaded his grandfather to permit him to study there.
In Volozhin, a center of Mitnaggedim, his hopes for a secular
academic training were not fulfilled since the yeshivah concentrated
only on the scholarly virtues of talmudic dialectic
and erudition. For a short time Bialik immersed himself in the
traditional disciplines. In some of his poems the image of his
stern grandfather merges with the image of the uncompromising
rosh yeshivah, becoming a symbol of the burning imperatives
of traditional Judaism. In the end, however, modernist
doubts triumphed over traditionalist certainties. Bialik began
to withdraw from the life of the school and lived in the world
of poetry. At this time, he read Russian poetry and started his
acquaintance with European literature. During the following
year in Volozhin and later in Odessa, he was deeply moved
by Shimon Shemuel Frug’s Jewish poems, written in Russian,
and many of Bialik’s early motifs echo him. His first published
poem, “El ha-Ẓippor” (“To the Bird”), was written in Volozhin.
In the yeshivah Bialik joined a secret Orthodox Zionist
student society, Neẓaḥ Israel, which attempted to synthesize
Jewish nationalism and enlightenment with a firm adherence
to tradition. Bialik’s first published work (in Ha-Meliẓ, 1891) is
an exposition of the principles of the society and reflects the
teachings of Aḥad Ha-Am’s spiritual Zionism.
Aḥad Ha-Am’s Influence
*Aḥad Ha-Am, whose thinking had a profound impact on
Bialik and his generation, first began publishing his essays
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