Haim Naḥman Bialik

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Haim Naḥman Bialik

Russian-Jewish writer

Also known as: Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Apr 1, 2025 • Article History

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Born:: January 9, 1873, Radi, Volhynia, Ukraine, Russian Empire

Died:: July 4, 1934, Vienna, Austria (aged 61)

Notable Works:: “Be-ʿĭr he-haregah”; “Ha brekha”; “Metey midbar”; “Yatmut”

Subjects Of Study:: Hebrew language

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Haim Naḥman Bialik (born January 9, 1873, Radi, Volhynia, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died July 4, 1934, Vienna, Austria) was a leading Hebrew poet, esteemed for expressing in his verse the yearnings of the Jewish people and for making the modern Hebrew language a flexible medium of poetic expression.

Born into poverty, Bialik was left fatherless when he was five or six years old and was brought up by his rigidly pious, learned grandfather. After an intensive education in the Jewish classics, he attended for a short time the Jewish academy in Volozhin (now Valozhyn, Belarus). These three influences—his poverty, his being an orphan, and his study of Jewish religious classics—were the wellsprings of much of Bialik’s poetry. In 1891 he went to Odessa, then the centre of Jewish modernism, where he struck up a lifelong friendship with the Jewish author Aḥad Haʿam, who encouraged Bialik in his creative writing.

The following year Bialik moved to Zhitomir (now Zhytomyr, Ukraine) and to a small town in Poland. He worked unsuccessfully as a lumber merchant, then taught for a few years in a Hebrew school. The publication of his first long poem, “Ha-matmid” (“The Diligent Talmud Student”), in the periodical Ha-shiloaḥ (edited by Aḥad Haʿam) established his reputation as the outstanding Hebrew poet of his time. The poem is a sympathetic portrait of a student whose single-minded dedication to Talmudic study is awe-inspiring, even saintly.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

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Poetry: First Lines

His writing career assured, Bialik returned to Odessa as a teacher in a Hebrew school, at the same time publishing poems and some of the most highly regarded stories in modern Hebrew literature. His poems inspired by the pogrom that took place in 1903 in the city of Kishinyov (now Chişinău, Moldova) contain some of the fiercest and most anguished verse in Hebrew poetry. In such poems as “Be-ʿĭr he-haregah” (“In the City of Slaughter”), Bialik lashes out at both the cruelty of the oppressors and the passivity of the Jewish populace.

His other poems include a fragment of an epic, “Metey midbar” (“The Dead of the Desert”), and “Ha-brekha” (“The Pool”). “Metey midbar” imaginatively builds on a Talmudic legend about the Jewish host (in the biblical book of Exodus) who perished in the desert. “Ha-brekha” is a visionary nature poem in which the body of water reveals to the poet the wordless language of the universe itself.

Bialik translated into Hebrew such European classics as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Friedrich von Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, and S. Ansky’s play Der dibek (“The Dybbuk”). An indefatigable editor and literary organizer, he was a cofounder of the Tel Aviv publishing firm Dvir (with his lifelong associate, the author and editor Y.H. Ravnitzky) and edited Sefer ha-agadah (1907/08–1910/11; The Book of Legends), a collection of traditional Jewish homilies and legends. He also edited the poems of the medieval poet and philosopher Ibn Gabirol and began a popular modern commentary on the Mishna (the codification of Jewish oral laws).

In 1921 Bialik left Soviet Russia for Germany, where Jewish writers had established a short-lived Hebrew centre, and then settled in Palestine (1924). There he devoted himself to public affairs, producing only a few poems, the most important of which was “Yatmut” (“Orphanhood”), a long poem about his childhood that he wrote shortly before his death.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Hebrew literature

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Hebrew literature

Written by Samuel Leiter, Chaim Rabin•All

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Key People:: Judah ha-Levi; Isaac ben Solomon Luria; Ibn Gabirol; Saʿadia ben Joseph; Rashi

Related Topics:: literature; Hebrew language; émigré writers

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Hebrew literature, the body of written works produced in the Hebrew language and distinct from Jewish literature, which also exists in other languages.

Literature in Hebrew has been produced uninterruptedly from the early 12th century bc, and certain excavated tablets may indicate a literature of even greater antiquity. From 1200 bc to c. ad 200, Hebrew was a spoken language in Palestine, first as biblical Hebrew, then as Mishnaic Hebrew, a later dialect that does not derive directly from the biblical dialect and one that gained literary status as the Pharisees began to employ it in their teaching in the 2nd century bc. It was not revived as a spoken language until the late 19th century, and in the 20th century it was adopted as the official language of the new State of Israel. The latter event gave impetus to a growing movement in Hebrew literature centred in Israel.

Hebrew literature is not synonymous with Jewish literature. Some Hebrew writing was produced by the Samaritans and in the 17th century by Protestant enthusiasts. Jews also produced important literatures in Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), Yiddish, and a number of other languages. Apart from the Aramaic writings, however, such literatures always served only that part of Jewry using the language in question. When the community ceased to exist, the literature produced in that language was forgotten (or, in the case of Greek Jewish literature, became part of Christian tradition) except for whatever part of it had been translated into Hebrew and thus became part of Hebrew literature.

The Hebrew language, though not spoken between c. ad 200 and the late 19th century, has always adapted itself to the needs of changing literary tastes. In the Bible it develops from a simple and earthy idiom to a language suitable for the expression of sophisticated religious thought without losing the poetic force and rhythmic fullness that characterizes it. Mishnaic Hebrew is pedestrian and exact, and yet it can reach heights of irony or of warmth. In medieval poetry Hebrew allows extravagant displays of verbal artistry but also, in northwestern Europe, a simplicity equal to that of the spoken languages of its milieu. One generation of translators in the 12th century created a scientific Hebrew that is not inferior to contemporary Arabic or Latin in precision or syntactic refinement. The 17th–19th centuries saw the formation of a stately, rigid, classical style based on biblical Hebrew, but at the same time eastern European mystics made the language serve the expression of their love of God. Literary Hebrew in the 20th century draws upon ancient literature to a marked degree, with styles often modeled upon ancient predecessors. The modern period has also evolved a new type of language for nonliterary writing, while in novels the style is often based upon the spoken language.

Ancient Hebrew literature

Preexilian period, c. 1200–587 bc

All that is preserved of the literature of this period is slightly more than 20 of the 39 books included in the Old Testament (the remainder being from the next period). Poetry probably preceded prose. Biblical poetry was based on the principle of parallelism; i.e., the two halves of a verse express the same idea, either by repeating it in different words or by stressing different aspects of it. Examples are found in the book of Psalms: “But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues” (Ps. 78:36); “He turned their rivers to blood, so that they could not drink of their streams” (Ps. 78:44). To this form was added a simple rhythm, consisting mainly in having each half of a line divided into an equal number of stressed words. There were also folk songs, to which belonged perhaps large parts of the Song of Solomon, dirges, epic chants, and psalms. The use of various forms of poetry in the work of the prophets appears to be a later development.

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Poetry: First Lines

The earlier prose texts were still very close to poetry in structure and language. The first real prose may well have been some of the laws recorded in the Pentateuch. In Jeremiah and Deuteronomy a high standard of prose rhetoric was achieved: some of the conversations in the historical books were attempts to reproduce in writing the style of ordinary speech. (See also biblical literature: Texts and versions.)

Period of the Second Temple, 538 bc–ad 70

The literary output of this period was large, only part of it belonging to the biblical canon. The biblical Hebrew of the writings was artificial because it had ceased to be spoken and had been replaced by Aramaic, a related Semitic language, and Mishnaic Hebrew. Works that are included among the Dead Sea Scrolls belong to this period. Some of these works provide evidence of a new kind of writing, the homiletic, or sermonizing, commentary to the Bible called Midrash. The only work of real literary merit among the scrolls is the fervent personal poetry of the Hymns of Thanksgiving.

Parts of the biblical books of Ezra and Daniel and certain works among the Dead Sea Scrolls are in an early form of Aramaic. This period also began to provide translations (called Targums) of most of the Hebrew Bible into a slightly later Aramaic.