Nitzan Shlomo (1922-2006)

Nitzan Shlomo (Shlomo) (formerly Meisel; 1922, Liepāja, Latvia – 2006, Tel Aviv) — Israeli writer.

From an early age, Shlomo Nitzan was associated with the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa‘ir movement and studied Hebrew. In 1933, he moved with his parents to Eretz Israel; the family lived in Rishon LeZion, and from 1938 in Tel Aviv. Over the years, he pursued a variety of occupations, including carpenter, plasterer, waiter, proofreader, and literary editor. He served in the Palmach and subsequently in other units of the Haganah, and took part in the War of Independence as well as in three subsequent wars of Israel. From 1944 to 1984, he was the editor of the children’s supplement Mishmar la-Yeladim of the newspaper Al Ha-Mishmar.

His first publication was the short story Ha-Ḥag ba-Ḥolot (And He Circles in the Sands, 1944), which appeared in the journal Maḥbarot le-Sifrut. This story and subsequent ones, later collected in Ḥagim ba-Ḥolot (1949), address the theme of existential loneliness among settlers engaged in the Zionist enterprise in Eretz Israel.

The trilogy Beino le-Veinam (He and They, 1953), Tsav bi-Tsav (Tongs Made with Tongs, 1956; the title is taken from the Mishnah, Avot 5:6, and is close in meaning to the saying “the apple does not fall far from the tree”), and Yated la-Ohel (A Tent Peg, 1960; reissued under the collective title Tsav bi-Tsav, 1990) is devoted to the relationship between fathers and sons in the early years of the State of Israel. Nitzan contrasts two brothers: a “prodigal son”, who has distanced himself from the ideals of the founding fathers of the Jewish “national home”, and a son who remains loyal to those ideals. The development of the plot leads the reader to recognise the latter as being in the right; however, the sympathies of both the reader and the author are largely with the former. Nitzan’s prose of the 1940s–1950s is characterised by restraint in description and precision of detail; he seeks to reconstruct the inner world of his characters through their actions.

The stories collected in Be-Sogrim (In Parentheses, 1964) and Me-Reḥov el Reḥov (From Street to Street, 1968), set mainly in Tel Aviv in the 1960s, are written in a different manner, typical also of Nitzan’s later prose: an abundance of minor descriptive details, extended interior monologues, and authorial reflections on the motives behind the characters’ actions. In the novella Sha‘a Gnuva (The Stolen Hour, 1972), which depicts the destinies of two brothers and their father, Nitzan makes no secret of his affinity with the individualist protagonist.

In the novel Ha-Imperya ha-Pratit shel Zmiri Picasso (The Private Empire of Zmiri Picasso, 1982), Nitzan presents two contrasting worlds: Jewish youth of the so-called post-Zionist era seek to free themselves from imposed ideology and collectivism, striving above all to define themselves as individuals; Arab terrorists, by contrast, act in an organised and cohesive manner. Implicitly, the author accuses Jews of knowing nothing about the Arabs with whom they live side by side, a failure for which they pay in blood.

Nitzan published more than fifteen books for adults and was involved in the publication of some thirty books for children, including as an author and as a translator of children’s literature and folk tales from English, French, Swedish, and other languages. His work was recognised with a number of literary awards, including the Holon City Prize (1972), the I. H. Brenner Prize (1973), the Prime Minister’s Prize (1982), and the H. Talpir Prize (1984). His works have been translated into many European languages.