JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

prophetic visions. While biblical themes were not uncommon
in the period, Bialik’s unequaled mastery of the prophetic
diatribe added a dimension of authenticity to his utterances,
and he began to be considered the national poet. Other poems
indicate his preoccupation with the implications of the
First Zionist Congress. Welcoming the high tide of national
enthusiasm, as in “Mikra’ei Ẓiyyon” (“Convocation of Zion,”
1898), he was at the same time faithful to Aḥad Ha-Am’s
spiritual ideology and wrote a satire against Herzl’s political
Zionism, “Rabbi Zeraḥ” (1912), which, because of its tone of
levity, Aḥad Ha-Am refused to print in Ha-Shilo’aḥ. “Al Levavkhem
she-Shamem” (“On Your Desolate Hearts,” 1897), his
most profound response to the Zionist Congress, gives vent
to Bialik’s despair with contemporary Jewish life. In it he develops
his own set of symbols which were to recur throughout
his poetry; the cat, which first appears in “Levadi” (1902), as a
symbol of boredom and despair; the sanctuary as the symbol
of tradition; and the spark of fire, appearing in many poems
in various forms (a burning coal or candle, a twinkling star,
or flaming torch), representing the true ideal. “Ha-Matmid”
(“The Talmud Student,” 1894–95), his first long poem, apparently
begun in Volozhin, was an immediate triumph. In the
poem Bialik traces the inner struggles of the dedicated student
who represses his natural inclinations and sacrifices life,
movement, change, nature, and family for the ascetic study of
Torah. This was an ideal figure who captured the imagination
of the reader. He embodied the moral qualities that build societies
and preserve cultures. The ability to sublimate for the
sake of higher values was a basic idea in Bialik’s conception
of vocation. The key metaphor of the poem is, characteristically,
the twinkling light.
Settling in Odessa
In 1900 Bialik finally succeeded in finding a teaching position
in Odessa where he lived until 1921, except for a year’s stay
in Warsaw (1904), where he served as literary editor of Ha-
Shilo’aḥ. He was drawn into the circle of writers and Zionist
leaders that gathered around Aḥad Ha-Am, *Sholem Yankev
*Abramovitsh, and Simon *Dubnow. Other members of the
group were Mordecai (Ben-Ami) Rabinowicz, Ḥayyim *Tchernowitz,
and Alter Druyanov. As Bialik gained a reputation,
young poets such as Zalman Shneour, Jacob *Fichmann, and
Jacob *Steinberg went to Odessa to meet him. Working with
Mendele, he translated the latter’s “Fishke the Lame” into Hebrew
from the original Yiddish. He had tried his hand at Yiddish
poetry before leaving Sosnowiec and now his work with
Mendele, a master in Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, turned
him to Yiddish again. His realistic stories in Hebrew, “Aryeh
Ba’al Guf” and “Me-Aḥorei ha-Gader” (“Behind the Fence,”
1909), were influenced by Mendele’s realism of style – indeed
they came into being because Mendele had forged a new and
pliant Hebrew idiom. Bialik’s poetry, however, including the
prose poem “Safi’aḥ,” was relatively free of his mentor’s influences.
Together with Rawnitzki, Simḥah *Ben-Zion, and
Elḥanan Leib Lewinsky he founded the Moriah Publishing
bialik, Ḥayyim naḤman
House which produced suitable textbooks for the modern Jewish
school written in the spirit of Aḥad Ha-Am’s educational
ideals. In his dark rooms in Odessa Bialik created nature poems
that evoke a childhood intoxicated with light (e.g., “Zohar,”
1901). During this period also a self-imposed challenge to cast
folk expression into Hebrew, only a literary language then,
led the poet to write the first of a series of folk songs. In his
first decade in Odessa he wrote poems of wrath in Yiddish
(“Fun Tsa’ar un Tsorn” (“Of Sorrow and Anger”), 1906) and in
Hebrew (“Ḥazon u-Massa” (“Vision and Utterance”), 1911).
Both were products of that critical period in Jewish life when
the initial impetus of Zionism was retarded and other movements
and ideologies, such as Yiddishism and territorialism,
offered different solutions to national problems. When
Bialik’s first volume of poems appeared in 1901, Joseph Klausner
hailed him as “the poet of the national renaissance.” In
1902 he wrote “Metei Midbar” (“The Dead of the Desert”), a
long descriptive poem whose motifs are taken from the legend
that the generation of the Exodus did not die but slumbers
in the desert. Gigantic in stature, they awaken from
time to time to utter defiance against the divine decree which
consigned them to their state of living death, and to fight for
their own redemption. It may also reflect the universal predicament
of modern man whose struggle for the right to determine
his own destiny involves the desperate rejection of
the divine imperative.
Kishinev
The Kishinev pogroms in 1903 deeply shocked the whole civilized
world. Bialik, on behalf of the Jewish Historical Commission
in Odessa, went to Kishinev to interview survivors
and to prepare a report on the atrocity. Before leaving he
wrote “Al ha-Sheḥitah” (“On the Slaughter,” 1903) in which
he calls on heaven either to exercise immediate justice and, if
not, to destroy the world, spurning mere vengeance with the
famous lines “Cursed is he who says ‘Revenge’/Vengeance for
the blood of a small child/Satan has not yet created.” Later he
wrote “Be-Ir ha-Haregah” (“In the City of Slaughter,” 1904), a
searing denunciation of the people’s meek submission to the
massacre, in which he is incensed at the cowardliness of the
people, bitter at the absence of justice, and struck by the indifference
of nature – “The sun shone, the acacia blossomed,
and the slaughterer slaughtered.”
Influence of Warsaw
In 1904 Bialik became the literary editor of Ha-Shilo’aḥ and
moved to Warsaw, where, among the members of the circle
of Isaac Leib *Peretz, he found a lighter mood. They were less
cautious and less involved with higher principles than the
Odessa group. In Warsaw he wrote several memorable love
poems. The symbolist emphasis of Peretz may have influenced
the poem “Ha-Berekhah” (“The Pool,” 1905), most of which
was written during the Warsaw stay. The pool, guarded by
the forest, reflects the changing moods of nature and the observer,
meditating on the “riddle of the two worlds,” objective
reality and reality as it is reflected in the pool, ponders which
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 563