The Ashkenazi Revolution

163Gurion. Herzl was slandered as one who ignored Hebrew culture. Thisargument could not be considered as an arrow against Jabotinsky, who wasan avid admirer of Hebrew. Therefore they accused him of burnishingswords and of fostering strange mannerisms that were “foreign to the spiritof our Patriarch Israel”. Stern was represented as corrupt and he waspursued until he was murdered. Ben-Gurion was accused of distancinghimself from the literature and from its spiritual values while nurturing agross personality worship of royalty. Half-lies and half-slanders are notlacking in the quiver of the New Hebrew Literature and it chooses, forevery foe, the appropriate arrows and then fires them until he is removedfrom its path.In Hazaz’s speech at the organization of authors, there was no lack ofemphasis that the authors are the “prophets” of this generation. About thequality and identity of these “prophets”, we hear interesting, and explicit,things from the mouth of Shin Shalom in the pamphlet “Me’oznaim” thatwe mentioned earlier. This article of his, which merited many echoes, ShinShalom begins by leaning on a big tree, on Hayim Nahman Bialik, and hequotes him:Hayim Nahman Bialik once told me, about a year before his death, that ifthere existed a man who could pay him fifty Israeli Liras per month, hewould leave all the noise and tumult and seclude himself in his workroomin Ramat Gan, in order to complete his commentary on the Mishnah. Butsuch a man was not found, and there was no institution that would fund thefather of Modern Hebrew Poetry the fifty Israeli Liras that he needed forhis monthly subsistence.The panhandling nature of Bialik is quite evident in these lines. It is almostimpossible to find, within other literatures, that parallel Hebrew in thenumbers of its readers, an author as financially stable as Bialik. For Bialikwas not only an author, he was first and foremost a publisher, whopublished creations for which he was guaranteed, from the start, amonopoly in the book market and in the Hebrew educational system. But,despite this, he demanded more money, and not just a little. 50 Israeli Liras