Today in 1873, Chaim Nachman Bialik was born, the great poet of the renewed Hebrew period.
Bialik was born into a religious family in the Pale of Jewish Settlement (nowdays Ukraine, the Russian Empire at the time), and received a general education alongside a serious religious education (Yeshivat Volozhin with the Natziv). He later joined the Enlightenment movement and went to Odessa, the city of progress in the empire, where he married his wife, Mania (the two did not have children). Bialik worked in Odessa for almost 30 years, where he carried out his monumental poetry factory: in his writings, There is old Hebrew intertwined with the renewed Hebrew, in short and simple lines; Bialik weathered a lyrical and poetic beauty that was unique, and led to many defining him as the greatest Hebrew poet of his time. Meanwhile, Bialik became a central Zionist activist and participated in the Zionist congresses; in 1924 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv, and was one of the most prominent figures in the Jewish community. He dies In 1934, and about 100,000 people took part in his funeral – that is, about a third of the Jewish community in the country at the time (still the largest funeral in Israels history by proportion). Among his best-known works are ‘The Agadah Book’ (gathering stories from all across Jewish writings) and ‘The City of Killing’ (writen about the Pogrom in Kishinev), along with many classic children’s songs.
Photo Source: Wikipedia