Uri Zvi Greenberg


Uri Zvi Greenberg was an Israeli poet, journalist and politician who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Widely regarded among the greatest poets in the country's history, he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1957 and the Bialik Prize in 1947, 1954 and 1977, all for his contributions to fine literature. Greenberg is considered the most significant representative of modernist Expressionism in Hebrew and Yiddish literature.

Biography

Uri Zvi Greenberg was born in Bilyi Kamin, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and received a traditional Jewish religious education.
He was drafted into the Austrian army in 1915, and fought in World War I. While fording the Sava River under heavy Serbian fire, many of his comrades in arms died, or were severely wounded. The experience deeply affected him, and appeared in his writings for years to come. He deserted towards the end of the war in 1918, and fled to Lemberg. After returning to Lemberg, he was witness to the pogroms of November 1918. Greenberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers celebrating their victory over the Ukrainians, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the “Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation.
He moved to Warsaw in 1920, where he wrote for the radical literary publications of young Jewish poets. After a brief stay in Berlin, he made aliyah to the Land of Israel in 1924. He went back to Poland in the 1930s, working as a Revisionist-Zionist activist until World War II erupted in 1939, when he returned to Israel. His parents and sisters remained behind and were subsequently murdered during the Holocaust.
He married Aliza in 1950, and had three daughters and two sons. He added "Tur-Malka" to the family name, but continued to use "Greenberg" to honor family members who were murdered in the Holocaust. Greenberg was a resident of Ramat Gan. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1957 for contributions to Hebrew literature, and the Knesset held a special session to honor him on his 80th birthday in 1976.

Literary career

Young Greenberg was encouraged to write by Shmuel Yankev Imber, a Yiddish neo-romantic poet, and Tsevi Bikeles-Shpitser, the Yiddish theater critic who edited the local newspaper Tagblat. Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published when he was 16. His first works were published in 1912 in the Labor Zionist weekly Der yidisher arbayter in Lemberg and in Hebrew in Ha-Shiloaḥ in Odessa. His first book, in Yiddish, was published in Lwów while he was fighting on the Serbian front. In 1920, Greenberg moved to Warsaw, with its lively Jewish cultural scene. He was one of the founders of Di Chaliastre, a group of young Yiddish writers that included Melech Ravitch. He also edited a Yiddish literary journal, Albatros. In the wake of his iconoclastic depictions of Jesus in the second issue of Albatros, particularly his prose poem Royte epl fun veybeymer. The magazine incorporated avant-garde elements both in content and typography, taking its cue from German periodicals like Die Aktion and Der Sturm.
The journal was banned by the Polish censors, and in November 1922 Greenberg fled to Berlin to escape prosecution. Greenberg published the last two issues of Albatros in Berlin before renouncing European society and immigrating to Israel in December 1923.
In his early days in Israel, Greenberg wrote for Davar, one of the main newspapers of the Labour Zionist movement. His works represent a synthesis of traditional Jewish values and an individualistic lyrical approach to life and its problems; he drew on Jewish sources such as the Bible, the Talmud and the prayer book, but was also influenced by European literature. In the second and third issues of Albatros, Greenberg invokes pain as a key marker of the modern era. This theme is illustrated in Royte epl fun vey beymer '''' and Veytikn-heym af slavisher erd.
In his poems and articles, he warned of the fate in store for the Jews of the Diaspora. After the Holocaust, he mourned the fact that his terrible prophecies had come true.

Political activism

Greenberg predicted and warned in the decades before, of the coming destruction of European Jewry. He believed that the Holocaust was a "tragic but almost inevitable outcome of Jewish indifference to their destiny." He became more militant after the 1929 Hebron massacre and joined the Revisionist camp in 1930, representing the movement at several World Zionist Congresses, and in Poland. He founded Brit HaBirionim with Abba Ahimeir and Yehoshua Yeivin, a faction of the Revisionist movement, which adopted an activist policy of violating British mandatory regulations. Members of the group disrupted a British-sponsored census in the early 1930s, sounded the shofar in prayer at the Western Wall despite a British prohibition, held a protest rally when a British colonial official visited Tel Aviv, and tore down Nazi flags from German offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The British arrested hundreds of its members and the organization effectively ceased to exist.
Following Israeli independence in 1948, Greenberg joined Menachem Begin's Herut movement. He was elected to the first Knesset, but lost his seat in the two years later. After the Six-Day War, he joined the Movement for Greater Israel, which advocated Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. Scholar Dan Tamir considers Greenberg's ideology among the most prominent historical examples of "Hebrew fascism."

Awards and recognition

  • In 1947, 1954 and 1977, Greenberg was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.
  • In 1957, Greenberg was awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to literature.
  • In 1976, the Knesset held a special session in honor of his eightieth birthday.

Works

In Yiddish:
  • Evening Gold : collection from Grinberg’s early Neo-Romantic period.
  • Mefisto : a long poem engaging with the “Faustian” world, influenced by its depictions by Oswald Spengler.
  • In the Kingdom of the Cross : a long poem drawing on Grinberg’s experiences from the 1918 November Pogroms, intimately engaging with Christian Theology.
In Hebrew: