Sublime

Brenner, complex though he was, was perhaps the cultural icon of the Second Aliyah. His work, still considered brilliant, surfaced issues with which Israel continues to wrestle. He would have undoubtedly done even more than he managed in his brief life, but he was murdered by an Arab mob in the 1921 Jaffa riots.

Jewish history is a living testimony to the power of ideas,

WHEN BIALIK PUBLISHED “To the Bird” in 1892, Jewish life in eastern Europe was miserable in many ways.

Zuskin once explained that “my heart is captivated particularly by the image of the person who is derided and humiliated, but who loves life, even though he encounters obstacles placed before him through no fault of his own.”

Yavetz was but one of a number of writers shaping the Yishuv. Another, who became a leading writer not only of the Yishuv but of the Western world, was Shmuel Yosef (Shai) Czaczkes,

The first book of modern Hebrew literature in the Yishuv was written by Ze’ev Yavetz, who moved to Palestine in 1887. Deeply unsettled by those immigrants who seemed insufficiently committed to re-creating the Jew, he used his sharp pen to attack those who he felt failed to appreciate that the decision to come to Palestine ought to flow from a pass