Recreating Jewish identity in H.N. Bialik’s poems:

The Russian Context

In his book H.N. Bialik and the Poetry of his Life (1950)  Yosef  Klausner (1874-1958), who after Ahad Ha-Am was the most influential Hebrew thinker and literary critic , wrote:

Hayyim Nahman Bialik was an extraordinary phenomenon in literature. Usually a poet who is of real talent finds at the beginning, together with admirers among his contemporaries, great opponents who attack his poetic works denying his talent, and only after a long war he becomes respected by everyone. Bialik has no opponents. (…) In this respect he resembles Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. Like him Bialik dove into the Jewish nation’s soul and raised precious pearls from it. Therefore, whoever possesses even one spark of the nation’s soul cannot refrain from kneeling before this great national talent, before the real Jewish poet who is more than a mere artist.[1]

It was Klausner who in his enthusiastic criticism of Bialik’s first collection of poetry (1902) crowned the young poet with the title “poet of the Jewish national revival”.[2] Not distinguishing between biography and the lyrical I,  Klausner claimed that Bialik  was a “poet prophet”, the inheritor of the Biblical prophets who formulated the unique Jewish identity.[3] Although later Klausner rightly found the poet Shaul Chernikhovsky (1875-1943)  to be more worthy of the title “Poet of National Renaissance” than Bialik, [4] it was Bialik who remained the exemplary  National Poet for many of his Jewish and non-Jewish readers and critics.[5]

The essence of this identity was, according to Klausner, neither  a developed intellect  nor an aesthetic  sensitivity, which are the criteria of great literature in the Western tradition,  but the intensity of moral emotions.[6]  In Bialik’s poems, even in his love poems, Klausner found this characteristic Jewish quality. Bialik’s poetry was a reflection of  Jewish identity.

Following Klauzner, Bialik’s poetry was understood as both national and “prophetic"  by many of his contemporary and later readers. Bialik’s  own attitude to this image was ambivalent: his early poems show an effort to become a National Poet, following Semion Frug (1860-1916)  and the poetry of hibat Tsion. A few years later  he  succeeded in making his deepest intimate personal experiences a symbol of the Jewish psychological and moral identity. After his acquaintance with Russian literary Symbolism (circa 1902),[7] Bialik dedicated many of his poems to the conflict between the poet’s commitment to his national mission and his wish to be a  purely personal poet, free from his national identity.[8] These  poems show that in spite of the poet’s longings for purely individual existence and personal literary creation, such a role was alien to him: he was unable to disconnect  himself from his deep involvement and identification with the nation’s fate. The difference between the Jewish people and other nations – Bialik  had in mind European Christians - was a constant  theme throughout Bialik’s poetry and thought. Bialik’s  canonical place in Zionist culture, ritual  and school curriculae[9] made his poetry a source of influence on modern Jewish spiritual and moral identity, especially for the reader of Hebrew literature. 

Against this background it may be interesting to examine the changing Jewish identities as they appear in his poetry and to trace their sources, not only for the understanding of Bialik’s  poetry but also as a map of options which Bialik proposed to his readers. The aim of this article is to show that these options were sometimes innovative; they were sometimes inspired by Russian literature and thought.

Unlike the German maskilim, who were interested mostly in the philosophical aspect of Judaism, and unlike the Russian maskilim,  who were interested mostly in the social aspect of Jewish life, Bialik’s concept of Judaism includes both the Jewish spirit and contemporary Jewish life.

While the literature of haskalah was an effort to create a Hebrew European literature, written  by and for the European Jew according to German and Russian models,  Bialik belonged to the  post-haskalah generation who – following Ahad Ha-am’s idea of “imitation through competition”[10] -  wished to strengthen the unique national character of Hebrew literature.

To what extent should Hebrew literature be a part of European culture  - this was a major apple of discord in Bialik’s time, David Frishman and Micha Yosef Berdychevsky fighting against Ahad Ha-am’s position.[11] In fact, Hebrew literature at the turn of the 20^th century, including Bialik’s poetry, was, on the one hand aspiring to become an equal member among world literature, on the other hand it was greatly influenced by the context pf Russian literature and culture .[12]  The search for the revival of Jewish roots was directed by West European and Russian contemporary ideas, namely, the selection and activation of Jewish traditional elements was inspired by contemporary non-Jewish cultural atmosphere. Thus, for example the European fashion of mysticism and literary Symbolism, which was very strong in Czarsit Russia at the end of the 19^th century,  motivated Hebrew writers (Y.L. Peretz, M.T. Berdychevsky) to revive the Hasidic story in a modern literary style.

Even the meaning of the title “poet prophet”, as it was used in Hebrew literature in Bialik’s time, had Russian roots. In the context  of late 19th century Russian literature the poet-prophet was not a poet who foresees the future or writes about contemporary national problems and aspirations, but a “national” poetor “poet of the people” (narodny poet),  who expresses the depths and the uniqueness of the nation’s soul and aspirations. His personal identity should be completely absorbed by the national inner experience, and this is why he is the best formulator of  the essence of the national identity, even when he writes personal poems.  In comparison to the poet Laureate in Western literatures, in Russia during the mid and late 19^th century the ultimate poet  was not just a very good artist, but also the voice of the national moral spirit. [13]

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1.                              1. A living nation?

Jewish national identity was created in Europe in the context of Romanticism. Against this background the idea of “a living nation” was a main criterion of national existence. Activity, vitality and creativity were the signs of the nation’s life. 

Beginning in the late 18^th century  Hebrew writers were rewriting Biblical and  post-Biblical sources, where they could find proofs for Jewish heroic activity: poems and stories about the period of Jewish political independence, kingdoms and wars contributed to the idea that the Jewish people was and can still be “alive”. H. Weseley’s “Poems of Glory” (1789-1829), which is considered to be the first modern Hebrew literary work, is an epos on the heroic life of Moses.  The theme of Exodus often appeared in 19^th century Hebrew poetry as well as in the “national” Russian-Jewish poetry of Semion Frug.

Bialik published only three poems which rewrite the Bible,[14] all of which deal with  the Exodus from Egypt: “On the Head of Har’El” (1893) , “The Last Dead of the Desert” (1894), and the long poem “The Dead of the Desert” (1902).[15]  In these poems the desert has a symbolic meaning: the impossibility of life.[16]   In all of them immovability appears as  a  special Jewish mysterious power. In “On the Head of Har’El”  Moses is pictured as standing motionless on the mountain spreading his hands and holding the Tables of the Covenant,  while two giant enemies are trying in vain to attack him. It is implied that Moses’ immovability is a manifestation of his victorious greatness.

 In “The Last Dead of the Desert” the people of Israel while entering the Holy Land  under the leadership of Joshua look back with longing for Moses, their spiritual leader.  Instead of going further they are “standing still”, their eyes searching for the dead Moses, “their great loyal shepherd.” Their refusal to move characterizes their loyalty to their past and their preference of the spiritual rather than the political love of Zion.

In “The Dead of the Desert” the Jewish people is symbolically depicted as giants who are frozen like stones in an  eternal sleep. They are attacked by wild beasts,  but  no beast can touch them because of their mysterious power. Again, immobility  is paradoxically the secret of their power to ward off the attacks of their enemies-beasts and to continue their eternal, beautiful still life.  In this long poem the giants attempt to arise and change their situation,  but the attempt is ephemeral: their eternal power lies in their immobility, while their revolution is a futile  attempt to change the natural order of the world.

Bialik’s first attempt to write a national poem was his unpublished “Be-Ohel ha-torah” (In the tent of sacred study), written in August 1890 at the age of seventeen, while he was still studying in the Volozhin  yeshiva.[17]   The title of the poem hints at the Biblical characterization of Jacob as “a sitter of tents” (Genesis 25, 27), in contrast to Esau who was a hunter and a warrior. The poem describes a yeshiva student at night, studying the Talmud, “silent as a stone”, not in the customary movements and loud reading of Talmud study. The poem ends with the lines: “Here is your power for God/ Yaacov son of grandfather Israel”, namely, the Jewish powers are spiritually very active, although they are externally immovable.

This does not mean that Bialik was against Zionist activity. On the contrary, in many of his poems he mocks and chides the laziness of his contemporaries’ attitude toward  the Zionist project. His encouragement of activity is, however, accompanied with the advice to do things not in a revolutionary way, but little by little. “Who is mocking at the trifles? Fie upon the mockers!”, he wrote in “Birkat am” (A blessing for the people, 1894). He was skeptical, however,  of dramatic political moves, and especially of the idea of revolution, which filled the air of his time.[18]

 As is well known, Bialik was a disciple of Ahad Ha-Am’s “Spiritual Zionism”, which based the Jewish renaissance and its identity on moral and spiritual, not political grounds. Poems that describe Jewish vitality as paradoxically immovable can be understood as supporting Ahad Ha-am’s ideas. It is noteworthy, however, that Ahad Ha-am never spoke in praise of immovability. On the contrary, he argued that in order to activate history an extreme power (of the “prophet”)  should be initiated, so that its conflict with reality (which is the contrasting extreme) will produce the middle practical (“priestly”) results.

Bialik chose an image that reminds one of L. N. Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace (1869), where the Russian victory over Napoleon’s well-equipped army is achieved by the sleeping General Kutuzov, a personification of the mysterious Russian superiority over other nations. In the long poem “The Dead of the Desert” (1902) the people of Israel is frozen in an eternal sleep, which is the secret of  their survival. For both Tolstoy and Bialik sleep is a symbol of the nation’s tendency to solve its historical problems by patience, not by aggression or revolution. It also expresses their belief in the mysterious, magical powers  of their nations.

The image of The Sleeping Beauty, a popular motif in Russian folklore  appears in Bialik’s uncanonical long poem “On my Ancestors’ Grave” (1891),[19] and in his long poem “The Lake” (1904). In “On my Ancestors’ Grave” the people of Israel is compared to a sleeping princess who was buried and seems dead, but in fact she is just sleeping and will come back to life. In "The Lake” Bialik compares the lake to a sleeping  sacred princess surrounded by knightly guards one of whom is the poet himself, her chosen one. In this poem the lake is the source of sacredness and creative vitality. It is clearly influenced by Vl. Solovyov’s poems “[The lake] Saima” (1894) and “At Saima in Winter” (1894), where the sacred spirit of the world is found in the woman-like sleeping lake.[20]

Like his predecessors in Hebrew literature and thought Bialik constructed the image of the living nation. However, he paradoxically found the hidden Jewish vitality lying in the Jewish refusal to change, in the loyalty to the Jewish past. This idea was characteristic of Russian anti-Western ideologies and especially to Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

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2.                              2. A people of which book?

The Bible was the foundational text of modern Jewish identity during the period of haskalah.  In contrast, the Talmud was considered to be a production of a legalistic, emotionless mind. Such an attitude to the Talmud was characteristic of Christian Romantic  thought during the 19^th century and was absorbed by German maskilim. Therefore, they made great efforts to revive the Bible’s language and to base modern Jewish identity on it , while skipping the Talmud and its interpretations. Similar ideas were reformulated at the turn of the 20^th century by M.Y. Berdychevsky (1865-1921), whose thinking was close to Nietzsche’s.  Bialik rejected the maskilic and neo-romantic tendency to base modern Jewish identity on the Bible or even on pre-Bible Jewish culture, while skipping the Jewish culture created in the Diaspora with the Talmud at its core.  This innovative attitude had also innovative stylistic  results: not the Bible but post-Biblical sources serve as main intertexts of Bialik’s poems. Even his few biblical poems are also based on post-Biblical sources. 

Already in “Be-ohel ha-torah” Bialik defined the differentia specifica of the Jewish people in contrast to non-Jewish nations: dedication to studying the Talmud. The poem describes a young student sitting on his Talmud book at midnight in the home of study, carried away by his almost ecstatic experience,  which makes him indifferent to the needs of his body and to the outer  world. Here, as well as in many other of Bialik’s poems, study of the Talmud is the vital seed from which the Jewish spirit has been sprouting for many ages. It is interesting that while in his “El ha-agada” (1892) Bialik glorifies the Talmudic legend  as a source of creative inspiration for the Jewish soul, both in “Be-ohel ha-torah” and in the long poem “Ha-matmid” (1894) it is the Talmudic legalistic text which inspires the yeshiva students. 

Bialik refuted the accepted Romantic idea that the study of the Talmud was a dry intellectual activity; he discovered and showed the Talmud’s spiritual vitality and its power to inspire the Jewish soul with enthusiasm and ecstasy, even when the text is legalistic. He explicitly explained this view in his essay “Halacha ve-agada” (Talmudic law and legend, 1915). In this essay Bialik argues that Talmudic laws should be understood symbolically. He shows the noble principles of moral philosophy which are hidden behind the dry, practical, detailed laws of the Talmud. He also speaks of the great vitality of spirit which was invested in the Talmudic discussions.[21] 

Thus Bialik turned the direction of search for a modern Jewish identity from the Bible – a text which represented the dream of another Jewish life  - to the Talmudic and Jewish mystical literature -  the texts which were studied in Beit Hamisdrash and were part of traditional cultural life in the shtetl.

Beit Hamidrash, the place where the Talmud and its interpretations was the main object of study, appears in Bialik’s early poems as a symbol of Jewish roots. This is the place where  Jewish identity is forged.  In “If You Want to Know”, he glorifies the Beit Hamidrash  as the fountain of Jewish spiritual powers, and says that here he received intellectual, emotional and moral supplies for his whole life. In “Alone”, Beit Hamidrash  is the last shelter of the Shechina, the Jewish spirit. When Bialik speaks of national revival he describes the resurrection of the Beit Hamidrash, not the Temple in Jerusalem. The Beit Hamidrash, not the synagogue, which was the place of religious ritual, is for him the central symbol of Jewish spiritual identity. For Bialik, not the performance of the religious ritual and law (including the prayers!), but  the enthusiastic study of Jewish texts  kept Judaism alive in the Diaspora and protected its innermost identity.

As mentioned above, in the 1890s Bialik wrote only two poems in which he engaged the story of the Exodus,  and one more in 1902 where he already used post-biblical materials. Bialik was the first Hebrew poet who turned to Jewish mysticism both as an intertextual source and as a characterisic of Jewish identity. Thus, in “Tikkun Hatsot” (1898) he describes the shtetl as a terrible place of darkness, where the only light seen is from a lonely window behind which a Jew says the tikkun hatsot (a midnight prayer in memory of the destruction of the Temple). Jewish mystical ritual represents here the only remnant of Jewish spiritual life. Bialik’s move from the Bible to post-Biblical texts created an additional option for modern Jewish identity, which does not reject the post-Biblical and the Diaspora Jewish spiritual existence as a basis and source for modern Jewish revival.

Bialik’s “rehabilitation” of the Talmud and of Jewish mysticism had a basis in contemporary post-Romantic Russian culture. It took place in a historical cultural context which, although often called “Neo-Romantic”, was in fact an atmosphere of disappointment with the optimistic populist ideas[22]  and a turn to political and existential pessimism, mysticism, and the study of esoteric texts. This turn was taken by the “early symbolist” writers (sometimes also called “the Decadents”), especially by D. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, and Nikolay Minsky (Vilenkin).  Interest in esoteric traditions and cults flourished in Russia toward the end of the 19^th century.[23]

 Again,  Vladimir Solovyov’s influencail personality and ideas should be mentioned:  Solovyov began his academic career by showing the bankruptcy of  Positivism. A former student of the Moscow theological academy, he turned to Spinoza,  Hellenistic Gnosticism and Jewish Kabala in order to formulate his vision of Russian and universal redemption.   In 1896 he published an article where he refuted the attacks on the Talmud and defended the moral beauty implicit in the Talmudic laws.[24] As a result, in 1910 parts of the Mishna and the Tosefta were translated into Russian by N. Pereferkovich. In 1896 Solovyov wrote an introduction and footnotes to David Ginzburg’s article on Kabbala which he (Solovyov) brought to publication in Voprocy filosofii and psikhologii.[25]  Solovyov’s interest in Kabbala[26]  was part of a general “epidemic” interest in mysticism in Russia and other European countries (especially Germany) towards the end of the 19^th century.[27]  This background could have been a source of inspiration for Jewish writers and intellectuals – including Bialik - who turned to post-Biblical Jewish texts for the redefinition of modern Judaism. 

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3.                              3. A suffering victim?
 

During the nineteenth century Jewish literature dealt either with the glorious Jewish past or with its mournful present, in that very chronological order, namely: during the first half of that century it dealt mainly with Biblical history, while contemporary Jewish suffering was a dominant  theme during the second half. The feminine  image  of the nation - a widespread topos in both Jewish and non-Jewish cultures – appeared as a suffering woman, a symbol of the Jewish nation and its mournful fate in the Diaspora,  in the Hebrew poetry of hibat tsion (Love of Zion) during the 1880s-1890s.  This was the situation in non-Hebrew Jewish literature as well: Semion Frug wrote poems in Russian about the constant sufferings of the Jews.[28]  Mendele Moicher Sforim bravely laid bare the Jewish suffering from anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia in his Yiddish novel The Nag (1873).[29] A vast Jewish literature and folklore in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian  mourned the sufferings of the Kantonists (Jewish children who were recruited to the Russian army for 25 years during 1827-1855).[30] The identity of the suffering nation had a special apologetic appeal in the context of Russian culture, where suffering was highly valued as a sign of moral purity and even of sacredness .[31]   Idealization of suffering  as a characteristic of Christian-Russian roots was a dominant theme in Dostoevsky’s writings, which became idolized by the Symbolist poets at the turn of the 20^th century. Russian poetry during the 1880s tended to lachrymose sentimentalism, and the Hebrew poetry of Hibat Tsion, which flourished during the same period, adopted this tendency. In this poetry the suffering of the Jewish people, often allegorized by the image of  a suffering woman, became a focus of Jewish identity, replacing the model of the enlightened new Jew.

Bialik in his earliest published poems continued this tradition, sometimes changing the feminine image of the nation into the image of an old man or  a semi-autobiographical lyrical I. In “To the Bird” (1891), “Back from the Distance” (1892), “In the Field” (1894),  “A Small Letter” (1894) and “To the Legend” (1894) the poet complained about the distresses of the Jewish people  in Russia, implying the need of a radical change of the Jewish situation.. In these poems the image of the Jewish nation – with whom the poet identified his  fictional  self – was that of  a suffering, oppressed, choked, despised, tortured human being. The rhetoric here is much more energetic and full of revolt than the melancholic tone of Bialik’s  predecessors, but the idea is the same: to be a Jew means to belong to a suffering nation,  victim of unjust persecutions. The strongest image of the Jewish people as a victim – here without any hope of change - is to be found in Bialik’s “On the Slaughter” (1903), written a short time after the Kishinev pogrom.

Side by side with such poems, the young Bialik also wrote poems about the special powers of Judaism, enabling the Jews to survive in spite of  their external sufferings, and even to be superior over other nations. This idea  can be traced in “Shirat Israel” (The poetry of the Jewish people,1894),  “El Ha-agada” (To the Legend, 1894), “On the Threshold of the Beit Hamidrash”  (1894),  and especially in the long poem “Metei Midbar” (The Dead of the Desert, 1902). According to these poems the Jewish people possess mysterious eternal powers. In contrast to other nations, whose powers are measured by victories in wars, Jewish power is spiritual and moral. Judaism  and/or the Jewish people are contrasted with other nations and are found to have a superior power, which enables them to continue its existence in spite of difficulties.

In “Shirat Israel” Bialik makes clear his distinction between the powers of other nations whose mission is war and the Jewish nation whose mission is spiritual: “God did not call me to fanfares of war./ Even its smell frightens me./ I quiver when I hear the trumpet aloud / Violin or sword – give me a violin”.[32]   This poem is perhaps an echo of  two poems, both entitled “The Dagger”, one by  Pushkin (1821), the second by  Lermontov (1838). Both poets mythologize the dagger and praise  its power. In Lermontov’s poem  the dagger  - the  poet’s best friend  -  embodies the  ancient, primitive values of freedom, the right for vengeance, love and loyalty.[33] 

In “On the Threshold of the Beit Hamisdrash” the poet stresses the difference between the aggressive, lion-like Nietzschean  utopia  which was spreading among the non-Jewish contemporary nations and even among Jewish intellectuals[34] and the Jewish mission of justice, truth and spiritual purity. Unlike the pessimistic tone of the above mentioned early poems this poem ends with a vision of the  resurrection  of “the tent of Shem”, namely, the renaissance of the unique Jewish spirit and culture. Here the present Jewish suffering is part of its sacred mission to all the nations -   a Biblical Messianic idea (Isaiah 2, 2-4),  which was deeply rooted in Russian thought.[35]  In this context the Russian people had a “prophetic” mission – to redeem itself and Western Europe from sin and evil by its suffering. The Russian idea of the people-prophet was adopted by Ahad Ha-am and by Bialik.

In Bialik’s poem the “prophetic” role of Judaism is different from the Biblical original meaning: in the Bible the Temple in Jerusalem will  be a center of knowledge and wisdom for the nations, while in Bialik’s poem the Jews, doomed to be eternal wanderers,  will purify the nations of their sins.  This view of the national prophetic role shows the clear influence of the Russian model.

In Russia, beginning with Gogol and culminationg in Dostoevskii and Vl. Solovyov, this image of the poet was tightly connected with the idea of the Messianic role of the nation, the poet being an incarnation of the national pure, authentic  spirit. Russian literary tradition attributed to the National Poet the title of “a poet prophet”. This role was first attribute by Gogol and Belinsky to Pushkin, especially to his poem “The Prophet” (1826),  [36] where Pushkin metaphorically describes the poet (himself?) as a Biblical prophet (in the Romantic vein), who abandons all earthly interests and dedicates himself to the sacred mission, fighting against social mediocricy.[37] In this famous poem Pushkin, writing in the first person,  describes the revelation of God to him according to the description in Isaiah ch. 6: like Isaiah Pushkin’s prophet sees a “six-winged Seraph” who (unlike the biblical text) tears out his tongue and puts instead a snake’s tongue. The Seraph also puts a burning coal instead of the prophet’s heart (in the biblical text one of the Seraphs touches Isaia’s lips with a burning coal). This poem, well known to every Russian reader, created a Russian model of the Prophet.

In his early poems Bialik, following Ahad Ha-am, Bialik chooses Moses as the model of the prophet, while later he  refers Isaia  as a prophetic model.He cites from Isaia in his prophetic poems “Achen Hatsir Ha-am” (1897) and  “Davar” (1904). He uses images from Isaia 6 also in his “I have not Gained Light from Nowhere (1902) and in his long poem “The Scroll of  Fire” (1905). Of course, Bialik knew the book of Isaia before he knew Pushkin, but his choice of Isaia  could be motivated by the Russian model, which was already well known to Hebrew readers as well.   

Dostoevsky in his obituary on Pushkin (1881) foregrounded the understanding of Pushkin as both “A National Poet”  and  “a Poet Prophet”. He established these titles as essential for the true Russian writer, whom he described as a national Messiah. Dostoevsky’s understanding of “prophet” was more nationalistic than Pushkin’s. These ideas became a common place in Russia towards the turn of the 20^th century. The great poet was expected to dedicate his life to the mission of watching and ensuring the moral purity and the authenticity of the nation’s soul against alien cultural powers which endanger the national future existence.   The title “Prophet” seemed to be a matter of Jewish reclaiming of Jewish sources, however, in the modern Hebrew context the meaning of the word “prophet” kept its Russian contents.

Sacred, not humiliating suffering,  was a part of the Russian image of the poet-prophet and the nation-prophet.  The image of the suffering prophet who is a voluntary victim on the altar of his people bears Christian traces, which were absorbed in the Russian literary tradition. The Russian poet-prophet is traditionally a poet of the people who attacks the ruling powers.  Only in this sense he is “in the desert”, an outsider from society.  In contrast, the Jewish Biblical prophet is living among his people, with whom  he is in constant tension. His wrath is directed against the people’s sins no less than against the ruler.

In his prophetic poems Bialik combined the two traditions. Sometimes, as in his “Lo zachiti ba-or min ha-hefker” (I have not found light in unclaimed property, 1901) the poet-prophet sacrifices himself on the altar of his readers, endowing them with his sacred light: “And when my heart bursts/ under the hammer of my troubles/,  a spark will fly to my eye/, and from my eye – to my rhyme// And from my rhyme it flies to your hearts/ disappears in your fire which I set/ and it’s me with my flesh and blood/ that will pay for the fire”[38].  More often, however, the poet-prophet’s listeners – contemporary Jewry – are pictured as a lazy, corrupt, decadent, hollow,  demonic band. Thus, in “Al levavchem she-shameim” (On your deserted heart, 1902) modern Jews are symbolically described as band of jesters and vain idlers, who are incessantly making wild parties in a ruined  temple, but their joy will soon be driven away by the “beadle of ruined temples” – Despair –and on the Jewish heart, which used to be a sacred altar,  now bored cats will sit  and miaw.

In Bialik’s  “prophetic” poems   - “Achen hatsir ha-am” (Indeed this people is just dry hay, 1897, originally titled “From the vision of Isaiah”),  “Al levavchem she-shameim” (On your deserted heart, 1902), “Davar” (The Word,1904), “ Ve-haya ki ya’archu ha-yamim” (When the days go by, 1929) and in his long poem “Be-eer ha-hareiga” (The city of slaughter, 1903) - Jews appear as petty, sly merchants, cowards and beggars, even in their greatest suffering. Bialik’s severe criticism of his contemporary Jewish life is part of his general anti-sentimental, sometimes anti-Romantic, approach to reality.

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4.                              4. A Jewish Revival?

The Romantic idea of national revival guided Jewish haskalah from its very beginning and throughout the nineteenth century. It was based on the belief in the emotional and moral vitality, even in the moral superiority,  of the Jewish people. The emergence of Hebrew literature was considered to be a manifestation of such a revival and a proof of the nation’s living spirit. The Hebrew writer was expected to serve this goal by reflecting the living Jewish reality.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Romantic belief in national revival was endangered by Decadence-oriented European literature and thought.[39]  Decadent historical thought was deterministic and pessimistic: races, nations and cultures, like organic entities, have a limited period of life; when they become old and overloaded with culture they begin to decay, disintegrate  and die. During the second half of the 19^th century the idea of decadence extended to include psychological phenomena as well.  It implied the supposition that modern, urban human beings, suffer from genetic degeneration. The symptoms of modern decadence are physical, emotional and moral alike. Modern anti-Semitism was partly based on the idea that modern Jews were on the list of decadent races. Russian literature and culture absorbed the ideas of Decadence during the 1890s.

Fin de siècle pessimistic moods and ideas penetrated modern Jewish culture together with the Jewish “decadent” identity. [40]  The belief in the moral superiority of the Jews over gentiles was shaken. In his cycle of stories Me’eeree haktana (From my small town, 1899), M.I Berdychevky depicted the life in the shtetl as absorbed with decadence, and in his novels Mahanayim (Two camps, 1899) and Orva Parakh (Nonsense, 1900)  the main heroes are decadent Jews. The decadent image of the Jewish people was exposed in Max Nordau’s Zionist writings and in Otto Veininger’s  Sex and Character (1903).

Bialik was a Zionist. Beginning from his first published poem, “To the Bird” (1891) he expressed the longing of the Jew in the Diaspora to live safely and proudly in his motherland. The ending of ”Basadeh” (In the field, 1894)  is a warm blessing to the Zionist pioneers in Eretz Israel. In “Birkat Am” (Blessing the People, 1894) and “Lamitnadvim ba-am” (1900) Bialik enthusiastically called his brethren to come to the Zionist project’s help.

However, in poems written between 1896 and 1906  the image of contemporary Jewish life might raise the question: can such a people revive itself?  Contemporary Judaism is sometimes viewed by Bialik as the embodiment of Decadence. In “Bitshuvati” (Coming Back, 1896?) the Jewish youth, coming back to his home founds there only degeneration.  Everything is  hollow, mechanical, monotonous, evil and lazy. In this poem Judaism is not  a loving home, but a dangerous, destructive death trap.  In “al levavkhem sheshamem” (On your deserted heart, 1902) contemporary Jewry is a desecrated temple where a band of semi-demons is  still wildly feasting, but they will soon be driven out and nothing will remain but complete decadence (symbolized by the miawing , impotent cat). In “Davar” (The Word, 1904) the prophet sees his people as a band of “villains” who have no other interest but their hedonistic pleasures, utterly indifferent to the remnants of their nation’s sacred mission (indifference being the characteristic decadent mood) . Desert is the symbolic image of Judaism in a few poems. Thus, in the long poem “Megilat ha-esh’ (The Scroll of fire, 1905) and in “Kir’u lanehashim” (Call the serpents, 1906)  the Jewish spirit is wandering in a self -made desert, where nothing can grow, leading itself to annihilation.  In “Al kef yam mavet zeh” (On this cape of death, 1906) Judaism is an island, which once had a castle, a navy of battle ships and a lighthouse, but now this island is completely dead.  How could the national poet write such pessimistic pictures of the Jewish situation? These pessimistic depictions of the Jewish situation were usually  interpreted as warnings of the “Poet-prophet”, aimed to awaken the national energies. However, it is also possible to read these poems as reflecting the decadent image of the Jewish people, which was popular in Bialik’s time.

Even in the long poem “Be’eer ha-hareiga” (In the city of slaughter, 1904), which is a reaction to the terrible Kishinev  pogrom, the Jewish behavior is depicted as morally corrupt. In this long poem Bialik did not mention Jewish self  defense and other facts which could have made the picture of the Jewish mentality less dark. Captivated by contemporary Decadent view, he conferred decadence upon Jews even when they were victims of cruel anti-Semitism.

The decadent mood of inner death – indifference, cynicism, depression, death wish -  appear as a personal experience in Bialik’s “Beit Olam” (A Graveyard, 1901) and in  “Kokhavim metsitsim vekhavim”, (Stars sprout and die, 1901). Characteristic of Bialik’s poetry is the complete harmony between personal and national experiences, including decadent mood and Jewish decadence. Thus Bialik  gave literary expression to the ideas of Jewish Decadent identity, an idea which Brenner, Gnessin, Y. Stienberg, D. Vogel, a. Reuveni, D. Kimhi and others  continued to develop in their writings.

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5.                              5. The Jewish spirit - justice or love?
 

In his poem “To Ahad Ha-am” (1903)  Bialik wrote: “Accept our blessing, Teacher, our loyal blessing/ For all that we have learnt and will learn from you”.[41]  In fact, Bialik was loyal follower of  Ahad Ha-am’s “Spiritual Zionism”. Ahad Ha-am formulated new definitions of Judaism, especially vis-à-vis Christianity, not on the basis of religion, but on what he considered to be the unique Jewish moral attitude.  In his essays “The Quality of Justice and the Quality of Mercy” (1891), “Moses”  1904) and “At the Crossroads” (1910) Ahad Ha-Am argued that Jewish ethics is based on justice, which is a higher moral value than mercy and altruism, which are the declared moral basis of Christianity.

 Echo of this view can be heard in  Bialik’s early poem “On the Threshold of the Beit Hamidrash” . Speaking of  what the Jew receives in the Beit Hamidrash  the poet mentions “productive thought, vivid intellect”. [42] Further the Jewish voice says: “I have not taught my hand to hit with my fist,/ nor was I exhausted by alcohol and whoredom;/ I was born to sing the song of God in the world,/ my spoils are of justice, - my loot is of judgment”.

Later, however,  Bialik redefined his understanding of the Jewish spirit. Instead of justice he saw merciful, motherly, chaste love. The first signs of this turn are to be found in “Bat Israel” (The daughter of Israel, 1903), which begins as an ode to love. The speaker makes great efforts to convince his listener that love is a spotless, sublime idea, then suddenly he turns to tell him about his own mother, saying that she taught him to bear love in the deepest part of his heart. He says that from her he inherited his conception of  love as reflected in the quiet, modest, sacred light of Shabbat candles.  Here Bialik distinguishes Jewish love from all others. He also deletes the difference between the Jewish mother, Jewish love and his own Jewish self.

In contrast to “Ha-einayim ha-re’evot” (The hungry eyes, 1897?) where love was a threat to the poet’s moral purity, in “Ayekh?” (Where are you?, 1904) the beloved woman and the Talmud are equated in the poet’s soul: love becomes sacred.  The  feminine image of Judaism appears in “The Scroll of Fire” (1905)  as  Morning Star, a Divine woman of mercy and love, the opposite of the vengeful, destructive God. She appears in heaven after God in his fury has destroyed both the earthly  and the heavenly Temple. In contrast, she toils to save and safeguard the remnants of Jewish sacredness. The poet-prophet, who is the hero of this symbolist long poem, follows her. 

Here Bialik rejects severe justice, revenge and revolution (symbolized by God and by the boy with the angry eye-lashes) as well as  contemporary Christian ecumenist ideas which attracted many Jewish intellectuals and writers of his time (symbolized by the group of naked girls) . Instead he chooses the light of the Morning Star, the feminine symbol of quiet, modest and responsible love as  the real light of Judaism.

This choice, which is a far cry from Ahad Ha-am’s view of Judaism, seems to be a result of Bialik’s acquaintance with Russian symbolist poetry[43] and with

members of the  golgoftsy (Golgotha’s) group in Odessa, who were followers of Vladimir Solovyov.[44] Sophia , an ancient Gnostic symbol of all-unifying love, is a main pillar of Solovyov’s mystical and ecumenistic teaching.[45]  In Bialik’s  poems which were written during 1904-1905 (“Where are you?”, “Come Out”, “Take me under Your Wing” “The Lake”, “The Scroll of Fire” ) we find a divine feminine image which resembles Solovyovian Sophia, sometimes as a symbol of  the Jewish spirit (especially in “The Scroll of Fire”).[46]  In these poems love or the beloved  is depicted, like in Solovyov’s   poems on Sophia,[47] as  a divine feminine being, hiding in a secret abode, which is expected to bring redemption to the man-poet. The woman here is sometimes a Shechina and sometimes a queen or a princess whose dedicated knight is the man-poet.

Interesting for us is the dialogue between Bialik and Solovyovian ideas  in e “The Scroll of Fire” (1905), whose main theme is the true way of redemption versus the false one. Can love be redemptive? is a central question raised in this symbolist long poem. Bialik rejects the Solovyovian idea of redemption through love, as well as the idea of apocalyptic redemption achieved in catastrophe and evil, which was accepted by most Russian symbolists. Three seemingly parallel feminine figures appear in the long poem’s plot: the first is Ayelet ha-shahar (the female morning star, or Aurora, literally: the doe of dawn, a term with rich Kabbalistic overtones); the second is the beloved girl (who appears naked to the hero wandering in the desert), and the third is the collective image of naked girls. All three possess clear Sophiological traits: they seem to be merciful, pure, and motherly. But while the protective and responsible Ayelet ha-shahar takes care of the sacred fire, the girls are sleepwalking, hands spread, with constant smiles fixed on their faces. They look as if they were suspended on the spider-web-like rays of the moon. Called Alamot (virgins), which carries Christian connotations, they symbolize the illusion of false redemption. The resemblance between them and Ayelet ha-shahar is specious: only she represents the Jewish spirit, while they symbolize the neo-Christian ideas of redemption through love and through total unity rejected by Bialik.

“The Scroll of fire” tells about personal and public destruction as a result of blindly following false visions of redemption, inspired by the new Solovyovian Christian ecumenism, to which Bialik himself was formerly attracted. The poet uncovers the cruel, inevitable split between the fire of sexual passion and the clame of dedication to a mission. According to Bilaik, such dedication, which is the real poet’s way, demands uncompromising moral purity and a readiness for life of loneliness. While rejecting Solovyovian theosophy, Bialik adopts his feminine symbolism, albeit Judaizing it by the use of Kabbalistic terms.

Solovyov’s idea of Sophia was partly influenced by Jewish Kabbalah, which he read in his youth in Latin translation.  In his Hebrew poems Bialik gave the Solovyovian Sophia a complete Jewish face.  However, the contemporary Jewish reader  could  have had the impression that the Woman in Bialik’s poems had a Madonna face, the face of  A. Blok’s prekrasnaia dama (The Beautiful Lady).[48]   Bialik’s concept of Judaism as a nation of love and mercy, although influenced by current moods in Russian literature, did not express his sympathy to Christianity, but his opposition to extreme Jewish revolutionary and nationalistic trends, which became popular  in Odessa at the beginning of the 20^th century.  

Bialik’s view of Judaism as a tradition of love and mercy, which opposes aggression and bloodshed, became stronger during the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. [49]   This stance might raise the question: how does this view of Judaism as a tradition of love and mercy reconcile with his call for arms in the poem “ ein zot ki rabat tsrarunu” (You must have long hated us, 1899? First published in 1903) and with his  critique of Jewish passivity in “The City of Slaughter” (1903)? In “You must have long hated us”   Bialik says that anti-Semitic hatred and cruelty transformed the Jewish people into hateful beasts, and that they should now fight for their life. F. Lachover wrote that this uncharacteristic poem was written under the influence of Tchernikhovsky’s  poems of revenge in his Hezionot u-manginot (1899), while D. Miron doubts that the poem was written in 1899, and suggests that it was written like “On the Slaughter”, in 1903,[50]  under the shock of the Kishinev pogrom. In “On the Slaughter”, however, Bialik rejects human revenge and envisions a natural revenge which will take place by itself. Bialik was criticized for his disregard of Jewish self defence in Kishinev in his long poem “The City of Slaughter”, which according to the usual interpretation expresses Bialik’s criticism of Jewish passivity. It is time to notice that in this poem Bialik does not criticize passivity, but Jewish disgrace and shame. He criticizes Jews who accept this state of shame and do not show any dignity.  The poem does not suggest military activity as a solution. In fact, it ends with total despair.

The image of the nation as a sacred woman was shared by Hebrew writers who followed Bialik, e.g. A. Shlonsky,  U.Z. Greenberg and N. Alterman. However, they did not view Judaism as a loving, merciful mother. Nathan Alterman, who in his The Joy of the Poor (1941) followed Bialik’s “The Scroll of Fire” by writing a symbolist long poem about the fate of Judaism, contrasted the traditional image of the suffering woman with a new image of a vital, wild, fighting woman, thus presenting the difference between Judaism in the Diaspora and in its Zionist metamorphosis.

 To sum up, Bialik’s poetry is a rich source for the understanding of modern Jewish identities, which were being created in Jewish literature and thought at the turn of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century. Bialik’s poems show a series of views on contemporary Judaism and on the Jewish spirit. His views of the Jewish spirit and his contemporary Jewish life are innovative, sometimes revealing the “dark” side of his world view. However, his concept of Judaism was not idiosyncratic: it was inspired by Hebrew, Yiddish Jewish-Russian literary traditions as well as by his contemporary Russian literature.

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