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Bialik Hayim Nahman (1873-1934)
Bialik Hayim Nahman (1873-1934) was a great Jewish poet who wrote mostly in Hebrew. From the age of 13, he had studied the holy books of Judaism. Influenced by the Jewish Haskalah and literary enlightenment movements, he enrolled in the Yeshiva of Volozhin in order to receive a general education. However, general subjects were not taught in the yeshiva, and so Bialik, after a brief interest in theology, took up self-education and, in particular, began to study Russian by himself. Bialik considered Ahad-ha-Ama (Hebrew: 'One of the People', real name Ginzberg Asher Hirsch; 1856-1927), an ideologist of 'spiritual Zionism', his teacher, who called for Palestine to become the spiritual and cultural centre of the Jewish people. At the yeshiva Bialik was inspired by Palestinophile ideas and formed a secret society, whose aim was the 'promotion of Jewish settlement in Israel' and criticism of assimilation, which Bialik described as national treason. In 1892, he made his debut with a poem called 'El ha-tzipor' (To the swallow), which set two main themes in Bialik's oeuvre - a description of the degraded lives of Jews in Eastern Europe and an expression of longing for Zion. According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopaedia (early 20th century), it was “the first national-Zionist poem. From 1893 Bialik taught Jewish subjects in a school in Sosnowice, Lublin province. At that time, he wrote his first denunciatory poem in the style of the prophets of the Bible, 'Akhen hatsir ha-am' (Like dry grass), which opened the famous 'Songs of Wrath' cycle. The poem became popular and Bialik moved to Odessa. In 1902, Bialik's first collection of poems was published. In 1903 the Odessa Public Committee sent Bialik to Kishinev to collect first-hand evidence about the atrocities committed during a pogrom. Inspired by what he saw, he wrote the poem 'Be-ir ha-harega' (Tale of the Pogrom, published as 'Massa Nemirow' for censorship reasons), which inspired young Jews to organise self-defence groups and fight for the renewal of Jewish life. In 1911, a collection of Bialik's 'Songs and Poems' in translation by W. Jabotinsky was published in Russian.