The Ashkenazi Revolution

Uri Zvi Grinberg is, to a large extent, the complete political opposite ofBialik. Just as the latter was motivated by money and business profit, sostood Uri Zvi Grinberg above all concerns of money and currency. He wasa typical Bohemian man, who paid a heavy price for his talent in that hewas unable to go out and make a living as other men do. This curse, whichis the other side of the literary blessing, in a way condemned Uri ZviGrinberg, from the very beginning, to eat the bread of public patrons andrulers, and to pay them, for this bread, through verses of flattery. Manypeople, and great people, have gone this route but this was not the casewith Uri Zvi Grinberg, who was hungry for bread all those years andrefused to bend the knee. This poet related to his verse as if it was a holything and all the millionaires in the world could not buy even one line fromhim. Moreover: Uri Zvi Grinberg was an exemplary political poet whohad a sharp political eye, a Modern Man and a true representative of theEastern European masses. He had all the qualities that would make himsuitable to be a unique and grandiose personality. But the curse of a smallpersonal stature, that pursued the creators of Hebrew Literature, caughteven Uri Zvi Grinberg. He fell in love with himself, ceased viewinghimself as the trumpet of the Messiah, a trumpet that was fitting for himeven if it broke, as long as one big blow was gotten out of it, but instead hesaw himself as the redemption itself. His personality, his verse and hisbody, in his eyes, turned into the substance of a holy and lofty redemption,worthy of preservation, at all costs, from excessive danger. Uri ZviGrinberg succeeded in every measure in war against Jews and betweenJews, but fear of the British prison broke his spirit. Outside of Israel, inWarsaw, (as told me by a reliable man) he dwelt in a messianic atmosphereand he had plans to return to the Land of Israel in order to establish a groupof “true” tough men but, when he arrived to the shores of his motherland,and when he came face to face with the British police his spirit wasimmediately broken. I remember participating, with Uri Zvi Grinberg, in aparticular social function of the movement at the home of a Revisionistorganizer, in the mid 1930’s. Somebody brought up a plan to distributeflyers. (In the atmosphere of tension and pride of those times, these planscame up now and then). Uri Zvi Grinberg immediately burst out loudly:“Don’t do anything as long as I’m here!” This cry echoes in my ears to this154