Movement Towards a National Identity Through Literature

Judaism refers to Jews as the "chosen people" - God's sacred congregation, destined to "illuminate the nation." However, in secular Europe, society marginalized Judaism; Jews were subordinated to other religions, often state supported. The Jewish nation, a bonded minority, has withstood persecution and geographic Diaspora by maintaining a strong sense of community built around common core of rabbinical attachment to the Talmudic law, a shared concept of deliverance from exile, and a profound religious devotion to the holy city Jerusalem. The origins of Jewish nationalism return to the land that had been called Palestine since Roman times, but remained the land of Israel. Jewish nationalism perseveres due to generations of Jewish descendants who were steadfast in their faith. Zionism the essence of Israel captured the idea of nationality, basing itself neither on statehood nor religion, but rather on Jewish "national feeling," (Ahad Ha-Am) the "national will to exist." Moreover, the two pillars of Zionist ideology: The return to Zion--the cradle of Jewish history--and the revival of the ancient biblical Hebrew language are undoubtedly derived from romantic sources. One person that helped support and promote this identity was Hayyim Nahman Bialik. Living long before the Holocaust and World War II he was one of the first who came under Zionist influence becoming himself a true supporter. Not only did Bialik become Israel's national poet an advocate for a Jewish national--but also the father of the Modern Hebrew verse. The nationalist movement was one of Bialik's primary inspirations for his writing, yet the Huskalah, making his poetry at once a witness to the period and a personal response to it, guided many of his poems.

Poet, translator, writer, storyteller, editor, and one of the greatest Hebrew poets of all time--Hayyim Nahman Bialik achieved much in his lifetime; yet failed to witness the birth of the State of Israel. He wrote from the 1890s until his death in 1934 and has been announced as the creator of the Modern Hebrew poetic idiom. During this life many writers were waiting for the European Jewish Enlightenment and later for Political Zionism to usher them into the modernity of the Hebrew verse; however, Bialik was able to accomplish this by being a true believer in Hebrew language and the national movement. He was considered the last link in the golden chain of the Hebrew Poetry of Yehudah Ha-levi and Shlomo Ibn-Gabirol. With might, passion, and prophetic utterance he has expressed in the living Hebrew tongue, the throbbing of the Jewish people's soul in its innermost depth, its hopes and aspiration for a creative life in the land of our fathers. Although praised today, Bialik experienced a traumatic childhood, yet these years were essential in the formation of his ideas, helping him become the poet and the leader he was meant to be.

Bialik was born in the village of Radi, near the city of Zhitomir in Ukraine. After his father's timber business failed, the family moved to Zhitomir when Bialik was about six years old. After his father's death in 1880, he was raised in Zhitomir by his learned, and sternly Orthodox grandfather Reb Yaakov Bialik. The loss of his father at an early age shaped Bialik's thoughts and later his poems about exile, echoing his personal feelings of rootlessness. Bialik's grandfather imposed a strict Jewish education on his wild and undisciplined grandchild. By the age of 13, Bialik had the reputation of an ilui--an intellectual prodigy. At 17, he left to attend the famous yeshiva at Volozhin, there he wrote his first poems and became attracted to the secular-nationalist writings of Ahad Ha'am, whose thoughts influenced his writing. Drawn to the Jewish Enlightenment movement, Bialik gradually drifted away from the yeshiva life and soon became a full-fledged Zionist. Poems such as HaMatmid ("The Talmud Student") written in 1898, reflect his great ambivalence toward that way of life: on the one hand admiration for the dedication and devotion of the yeshiva students to their studies, on the other hand a disdain for the narrowness of their world.

After leaving his yeshiva life he traveled to Odessa, the center of the new, and secular Jewish culture where he began publishing. He gave credence in his work to the emerging Zionist movement that began in the early 1880s in Russian, advocating a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. This seemed to displace the attitude of the Haskalah, which not only called for modernization of Jewish though, but also strove to enlighten European Jews by spreading modern Western culture among them. His first poem was El Ha-tzippor ("To The Bird"), a lyric of longing for Zion, which conveyed one of Bialik's most Zionist messages, carrying the national aspirations for the return to Isreal. From then on Bialik joined a Hovevei Zion group and moved around until settling down in Odessa, where he worked as a teacher and continued his activities in Zionist and literary circles. In 1903, he was appointed the joint editor of Ha-Shiloah, a Hebrew periodical founded by Ahad Ha'am. Following the first Zionist Congress of 1897, Hebrew poetry took on a new importance, and despair, the fact that most of Bialik's poems articulated not hope but grief and despair, Bialik was hailed as a prophet of Jewish nationalism.

Ahda Ha-am, Hibar Tsion's leading thinker created the ideology of spiritual Zionism, someone Biaik praised and followed closely. He systematically argued that the role of Zionism was not to solve Jewish social problem, but rather, to revive the eternal spirit of Judaism. In his mind, a Jewish state was necessary only as a spiritual center for the elite, not the entire Jewish people. He defined Jewish nationality as the unique moral sensibility and intellectual creativity, which characterized the Jews since ancient times. His concept of Zionism negated the importance of statehood, opposing military power, yet foreseeing the impeding conflict between Jews-Arabs. Many found his ideas admirable and powerful, yet supporters of Zionism critiqued him wishing to focus more on solving Europe's Jewish economic and social problems. The clash between Herzl's and Ahad Ha-Am's Zionism ideas was inventible, mainly because they believed in two different methods for solving the Jewish problem. In essence, it was a clash between the romantic and de-romanticized Zionism. Although the methods were completely different, Hebrew literature only benefited from these movements. These ideas spread through the people in the hope of triggering nationalist desires helping the Jewish community find their own state and home, developing one identity. Bialik, a romantic, primarily moved by Ahad's ideas, never stopped educating and incorporating Jewish