Leah Goldberg, 1911-1970
Raised in Lithuania, Goldberg settled in Tel Aviv in 1935 and became a Hebrew poet, literary translator, and author of children’s books and plays. She referenced the effects of World War II on Jews in…
Amos Oz, 1939-2018
Oz was a journalist, a novelist and one of the first Israeli intellectuals to endorse a two-state solution through his 1967 article “Land of Our Forefathers.” He was a frequent critic of Israel’s military policies…
Ephraim Urbach, 1912-1991
Urbach was a religion scholar and rabbi whose seminal work, The Sages, focused on the evolution of Jewish religious and social thought. A native of Poland, Urbach studied in Rome and Breslau before immigrating to…
A.B. Yehoshua, 1936-2022
A part of the new wave of Israeli authors, Yehoshua wrote short stories, novels and plays, including “The Lover,” “The Tunnel” and “A Tale of Two Zionists.” He received international literary awards ranging from the…
Gershon Agronsky, 1894-1959
Born in Ukraine, Agronsky immigrated to the United States. He wrote for Jewish newspapers and later for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In 1918 he joined Britain’s Jewish Legion in Palestine. He dived into Zionist politics…
Yocheved Bat-Miriam, 1901-1980
Bat-Miriam, born in Belarus, is considered one of the four “mother poets” of modern Hebrew. Her 1937 book, “Eretz Yisrael,” examines the Land of Israel as a woman. She wrote many poems about biblical women…
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, 1858-1922
Ben-Yehuda was born in Belarus and moved to Palestine in 1881. He championed the use of modernized Hebrew as an essential element of Zionism. He edited Hebrew newspapers, created the first modern Hebrew dictionary and…
Chaim Nahman Bialik, 1873-1934
Bialik, recognized as Israel’s national poet, was born in Ukraine and moved to Palestine in 1924. After interviewing survivors of the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom, he wrote “Be-Ir ha-Haregah” (“In the City of Slaughter”), in which…
Elisheva Bikhovsky, 1888-1949
Bikhovsky, one of the “four mothers” of modern Hebrew poetry, often known simply as Elisheva, wrote about Zionism and antisemitism without biblical and rabbinical references. She was drawn to Hebrew as a Russian girl and…
Nathan Birnbaum, 1864-1937
An Austrian-born journalist, activist and writer, Birnbaum coined the word “Zionism” in the late 19th century. Using the pseudonym Mathias Acher, he wrote about the sociopolitical culture of European Jewry and expanded on the ideas…
Rachel Bluwstein, 1890-1931
One of the four “founding mothers” of modern Hebrew poetry, known as Rachel the Poetess or simply Rachel, Bluwstein was born in Russia and moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1909. She wrote most of her…
Yosef Haim Brenner, 1881-1921
Born in Ukraine, Brenner emerged as the leading Hebrew literary figure in Palestine in the early 20th century. He joined the Bund, a Jewish socialist movement, as a young man and became a Zionist who…
The National Library of Israel
The first version of the Jewish National Library was founded in 1892 in Jerusalem, five years before the First Zionist Congress met; its location evolved to Mount Scopus in Jerusalem during the British Mandate and then after the 1948 war, the library’s books were moved to the Rehavia section of Jerusalem, and then in 1960 to Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University. As a visiting graduate student from The University of Michigan in the summer of 1971, I walked into the mediocrely lit yet vast reading room of the Library.
Hebrew enrichment resources that celebrate Israeli life and culture
Integrating Israeli culture into your Hebrew learning and practice is not something we need to abandon in this time of social distancing. Here are several resources and suggestions for learners to keep Hebrew language skills sharp while exploring a variety of aspects of Israeli society.
Explainer: Hebrew Revival (4:15)
An overview of the important role that Hebrew played in the Zionist movement and how the movement itself helped spur the revival of the language.
Amos Oz, “The Whole Reckoning Is Not Over Yet,” 2018
June 3, 2018 As of December 2024, Amos Oz’s last speech, “The Whole Reckoning Is Not Over Yet,” has been translated from Hebrew into Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Dutch and published as a book…
Israel and Hebrew Language: A Nation’s Choice
E-book
Explaining Hebrew language beyond religious practice and making it a spoken language of the street gave rise to a rich literary renaissance. In this curriculum, Hebrew literature excerpts demonstrate how the Hebrew language became a core element in Jewish state identity.
- Suitable for learners 8th grade and up
- Fifteen lessons (30 minutes each)
- Understand the significance of the language and how it became essential to Jewish state identity.
- Discover key Hebrew literature excerpts from rare source documents
- Perfect for individual, groups or classes
Natan Alterman, “Victory as a Scapegoat,” Maariv, 1969
One of Israel’s greatest writers, Natan Alterman, reminded Israel’s accusers in 1969 that well into the 20th century the Palestinians did not even understand themselves as a separate people with a distinctive national identity marking them off from other Arabs. His argument, if framed as a question, might be formulated along these lines: If no one else, not least the Palestinians’ ancestors, saw their distinctive nation in Ottoman Palestine, how can the Zionists be blamed for not seeing one either? Thus, to fault the Zionists for failing to see what was not yet visible to anyone else, including the Palestinians, is to fault them not for suffering from blindness, but for lacking clairvoyance.
Linguist Avraham Even-Shoshan Dies
August 8, 1984 Hebrew linguist and lexicographer Avraham Even-Shoshan dies at age 77 in Tel Aviv and is buried in Jerusalem. Born Avraham Rosenstein in 1906 in Minsk, Belarus, he attended a Jewish school run…
Writer Netiva Ben Yehuda Is Born
July 26, 1928 Netiva Ben Yehuda, a Palmach member, early Israeli feminist, acclaimed writer and media personality, is born in Tel Aviv to a father from Lithuania and a mother from Ukraine. She has two…
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Dies
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, considered the “father of modern Hebrew,” dies from tuberculosis at the age of 64 in Jerusalem. Thirty thousand mourners attend his funeral on the Mount of Olives.
Rachel Bluwstein Is Born
Rachel Bluwstein, born in Russia, makes Aliyah in 1909. Bluwstein is considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry and is one of the first modern Hebrew poets to write in a conversational style.
Zola Writes ‘J’Accuse’ Letter
January 13, 1898 Influential French writer Emile Zola publishes an open letter to French President Felix Faure under the headline “J’Accuse” (“I Accuse”), charging Faure and the French government with antisemitism in the Dreyfus Affair….
Poet Natan Yonatan Dies
March 12, 2004 Natan Yonatan, one of Israel’s greatest poets, dies at age 80. Yonatan was born in Kyiv in 1923 and soon immigrated to Palestine with his parents. A few years later the family…
