Bialik, Haim Nahman (1873-1934)

Bialik was born in the village of Radi, near Zhitomir (Volhynia). His father, who came of scholarly stock, had come down in life through his impracticality in his business affairs. For his father as well as his mother, this was a second marriage, both having been widowed previously. Despite his family's dire economic circumstances, some of Bialik's best poems recall and idealize the enchanted hours which he spent as a child romping in the secret shade of the forest. Other poems recall loneliness and parental neglect.

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 died and the destitute widow entrusted her son to the care of his well-to-do paternal grandfather. For ten years the gifted, mischievous Hayyim Nahman was raised by this stern, pious old man. At first he was instructed by teachers in the traditional heder, but later, from the age of 13, he pursued his studies alone.

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 fact, however, the curriculum of the yeshivah enabled him to immerse himself only in the scholarly virtues of talmudic studies. But in the end modernist doubts triumphed over traditionalist certainties. Bialik began to withdraw from the life of the school and lived in the world of poetry, reading Russian verse and European literature. While still in the yeshivah Bialik joined a secret Orthodox Zionist student society, Nezah Israel, which attempted to blend Jewish nationalism and enlightenment with a firm adherence to tradition. In this period Bialik was influenced by the teachings of Ahad Ha'am's spiritual Zionism.

In the summer of 1891 Bialik left the yeshivah for Odessa, the center of modern Jewish culture, in southern Russia. He was attracted by the literary circle that formed around Ahad Ha'am, and harbored the dream that in Odessa he would be able to prepare himself for entry to the modern Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin. Penniless and alone, he earned a livelihood for a while by giving Hebrew lessons, while continuing to study Russian literature and German grammar. At first the shy youth did not become involved in the literary life of the city but his first poem, a song longing for Zion, was favorably received by the critics.

When Bialik learned, early in 1892, that the yeshivah of Volozhin had been closed, he cut short his stay in the company of the writers of Odessa, and hurried home in order to spare his dying grandfather the knowledge that he had forsaken his religious studies. On returning home he found that his older brother too was dying. The atmosphere at home embodied for him the despair and squalor of Jewish life in the Diaspora.

In 1893, after the death of his brother and grandfather, Bialik married Manya Averbuch, and for the next three years joined her father in the timber trade in Korostyshev, near Kiev. During the long and lonely stretches in the forest, he read very widely. In business, however, he failed, and in 1897 Bialik found a position as a teacher in Sosnowiec, near the Prussian border. But the pettiness of provincial life depressed him, and 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 a Hebrew journal. Together with three other writers he founded the Moriah Publishing House which produced textbooks for the modern Jewish school. Throughout these years Bialik's reputation grew, and when his first volume of poems appeared in 1901, he was hailed as "the poet of the national renaissance."

Soon after, in 1903, the Kishinev pogroms deeply shocked the whole civilized world. After interviewing survivors of the atrocity, Bialik wrote "Al ha- Shehitah" ("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.

"The sun shone, the acacia blossomed, and the slaughterer slaughtered."

Bialik was a very learned man in Jewish subjects and, together with Yehoshua Hana Rawnitzki, he compiled an anthology of the aggadah (Sefer ha- Aggadah, 1908--11) which is still a standard text in Israel's schools. He was very active in public affairs had traveled all over the world in the cause of Zionism and the Hebrew language. In his later years he took an increasingly positive attitude towards Judaism and initiated the popular Oneg Shabbat, a Sabbath study project.

Bialik's literary career was a turning point in modern Hebrew literature. He had a thorough command of Hebrew and the ability to fully utilize the resources of the language. To a large degree he anticipated the Hebrew spoken in modern Israel and influenced it a great deal. Very many of his poems have been set to music and are still very popular, particularly the poems he wrote for children. In Israel, he is considered to be the national poet and his position is much the same as that of Shakespeare in English-speaking countries.

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