Loathe as I am to admit it now that I do know, I have to say that I'd never heard of Hayim Nahman Bialik until Mr. Hadari contacted us. Nor, I suspect, have many of you. This is an injustice, one that Mr. Hadari's translations can hopefully help to right.

Hayim (or Chaim) Nahman Bialik is considered the national poet of Israel, even though he died before the state was founded. He is also considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets ever. In fact, one of his achievements was to restore Hebrew as the language of Jewish poetry, rather than the Yiddish that had become more common. Bialik was born in Radi, Russia, and was raised there and in Zhitomir, by a scholarly father and, upon his father's death, by a stern and scholarly grandfather. Upon reaching adulthood he lived off and on in Odessa which, unlike other Russian cities which forbade them, had a sizable population of Jews (including fellow writers like Isaac Babel, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Ahad Ha'am, a Zionist who was one of Bialik's mentors). Bialik worked in business, as a teacher, as an editor, and finally as a publisher. He traveled in Europe and to what was then Palestine. After the Communist Revolution in Russia, when he came under suspicion for his writings, Bialik moved first to Germany and then to Tel Aviv where he was buried after dying in Vienna following an operation in 1934. Over the course of his career he translated Jewish folk tales, wrote Zionist essays and wrote his own poems (though not many after 1916). It was these last that made his name. And it was one specific poem that made him a central figure in the history of Zionism.

Living in Czarist Russia, he witnessed at first hand the brutal treatment of the Jewish people. In particular, he visited the city of Kishinev (modern day Chisinau, Moldova) after the 1903 pogrom in which 50 Jews were murdered.Ê Fueled by anger both at what had been done and at the inadequacy of Jewish response, he wrote his greatest poem, the one with which Mr. Hadari begins the collection : City of the Killings (1903). I wish I could find the whole thing on-line because it's unbelievably powerful...

From his own comments in the Translator's Note and from Dan Miron's Introduction, it sounds like Mr. Hadari has focussed more on capturing the spirit and the rhythms of the poems, than trying to artificially preserve exact rhymes and wordings :

"If a poem is mostly words--and fancy words at that--there's precious little there. What I look for is attack, as Derek Walcott would put it-- it's not enough to know what the word means, though that helps; one needs to also get a sense of the spin on the word--so that if I take liberties with the translation, to take the necessary liberty of translation that results in the flight of the new poem, I must have a sense of the bias of the material; as may be the case in the treatment by the novelist of historical material, or indeed the treatment by a historian of that same material--he uses historical material but it's the bias of his treatment that's interesting, just like the historian's choice of facts determining the portrait; so with the poem, if the feeling charging the words is absent, if the feeling in fact doesn't overwhelm the language, like a current making the touch of the actual line dangerous, there's no poem to prepare--no song that can be rephrased in English; the translator is, finally a harmonizer with the lead vocal; in the prime moments he is reproducing the singer, in the same key, with variations, in another language. That is the problem, to find the same rhythms, near the same sense, and with the right emotional current. If there's no current, how can you possibly begin to raise your voice? Let alone if the words resist comprehension, and the rhythm stutters. "

Not knowing the originals, nor any Hebrew, I've no idea how successful he's been in this task, but I do know that Mr. Hadari's translations tap into a rich emotional current and get you to raise your voice. Whether or not it's precisely Bialik's spirit, they're certainly spirited. Mr. Hadari's done a great service by making the poetry of Bialik accessible to the wider audience the great poet deserves.

Don't let the obscure name and the academic packaging put you off, Bialik is a marvelous and accessible poet. Atar Hadari has rendered these poems in a terse, beautiful language that will appeal to the modern ear. Take a look at the excerpt offered on this web site to see just how powerful a poet Bialik was. His "City of the Killings" contains images that might have influenced our current poet of carnage, Cormac McCarthy. Elsewhere in the volume, you will find poems of beauty and longing that match anything being written today.

Bialik was a provincially raised and very matter of fact, earthy,
often vulgar, frequently humorous and scabrous tongued
individual whose poetry in all its great romanticism
is sustained, in the original Hebrew, by a vivid lust
and longing for life in all its full colour. In his translations Bialik was often made
rather more holy than anyone might healthily be in
life and more so than might be healthy for keeping
their verse alive after their death. As Robert Alter
observed: "Because the educators and textbook anthologizers see
Bialik and Tchernichovsky as "national poets", the
pieces they typically choose to present to students
are generally those with obviously national content -
Bialik's hymns of praise to traditional Jewish fortitude and his songs of hope for a rebuilt
homeland... complaints by students about the"official" appearance of the two poets are nearly
universal... particularly in the case of Bialik, personal and national experience are often so
completely fused that it is impossible to make a distinction between the two."
He goes on to describe the resistance he encounters
when trying to introduce Jewish college freshmen with
basic Hebrew to the work of Bialik:"... I collided
with a student at Brandeis who refused to accept one
of Bialik's most warmly sensual love poems for what it
seemed to be. Surely, he argued, a poet like Bialik
wouldn't write about romping with a young girl in a
sunlit field - rather, the girl was the Community of
Israel, her companion was the Divine Spouse, the dark
woods were the Exile, and so forth."
Reader, the present translator's effort was to
convince you that not only was the girl a girl in a
sunlit field, but also that she was pretty, that
Bialik was hot for her and that her hair smelt nice.

In Jerusalem there is a short street called Mendele Mocher Sefarim Street. The street is in the heart of Jerusalem's bustling Jewish life. From its rooftops, one can see almost see across to the Temple Mount, the source of inspiration for Jews throughout the ages.

This volume contains within it some a critical analysis of Jewish life in 19th and early 20th century Europe. Focusing on the down-and-outs of Jewery, Mendele portrays a hypocritical society and one that is much to blame for its misery. Fishke the Lame is a heart wrenching tale. Built as a story within a story, in a manner reminisant of Kabalistic thinking, the book lambasts everything from the poor to Jewish learning and practice. Benjamine the Third is light-hearted and humorous, but the underlying themes are the same - the foolish Jews of Europe living in their insular world.

I wonder what Mendele would make of his namesake street?

For one that seemingly saw little value in the traditional life of European Jewery, would he be pleased that all around there are Jews whose commitment to the Law is unshaken by the barrage of criticism launched by the enlightened Jews of his age?

Despite its themes, this is a worthwhile volume for anyone who cares about the Jewish past and what it means for a jewish future.

This work is certainly a "must" for anyone interested in Jewish fiction. "Tales of Mendele, the Book Peddler" is a rich source of information about a Jewish life all too often forgotten and neglected, life amongst the Jewish vagabonds, rascals, the poorest of the poor. Even within the scoundrel of society you may find the deepest human feelings and faith in the values rooted in Jewish tradionts, here represented by the character Fishke the Lame. What a lovely character! The message is clear: because the Jewish community isolated itself from the rest of the world, a stigma was created which contributed to a growing prejudice against that same community. "The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third" is indeed brief! Althogh some critics rightly draw a parallel with "Quijote and Sancho Panza," no doubts this novel falls short of Cervantes classic. The initial impetus of the work promises a great journey, but soon it dwindles and the reader is left with the impression the writer gave up and went about into other matters. An "unfinished symphony..."

Great book on the fundamental theories of arithmetic and geometry. Covers set theory, arithmetic, axiomatic theories, algebraic bases of geometry, bases of Euclidean geometry, Birkhoff's axiomatic system, geometrical transformations, the Erlangen program, and Bachmann's axiomatic system.