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In Hebrew. 20 pages. 243 x 170 mm. Some soiling, wrapper detached. The legends in this book are his literary reworking of legends and fragments of legends drawn from various sources, mostly written, in Hebrew, Arabic and other languages. They are appropriate for youth even though not all of them were initially written with them in mind. So this work of Bialik is a literary work, not a folkloric one. In most of the these creations Bialik used the basis and spirit of folk legends, but kept the plot rolling in a logical and continuous manner, using his own original language and style. He was thus able to successfully make the old-fashioned or archaic legends more accessible with the language and style of the youth of his era. It is for this reason that Mordechai Ben Yehezkel, in his work, Geulat HaAgadot HaIvriyot (= The redemption of the Hebrew legends/ fairy tales) compared Bialik's work with that of the Grimm brothers. Hayim Nahman Bialik (Chaim, Haim)(January 9, 1873 Ivnitsa, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire - July 4, 1934 Vienna, Austria) was a poet, journalist, writer of children's stories and translator. He wrote primarily in Hebrew but also in Yiddish and was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poetry. Though he died 14 years before Israel became a state, he was ultimately recognized as Israel's national poet. Bialk was born to Itzik-Yosef Bialik, a scholar and businessman from Zhitomir, and his wife, Dinah-Priveh. When Bialik was still a child, his father died. In his poems, Bialik exaggerated the misery of his childhood, describing seven orphans left behind for the widow to care for. In fact, there were fewer children, and some were grown up and supported themselves. Starting age 7 Bialik was raised in Zhitomir by his Orthodox grandfather, Yankl-Moishe Bialik. In Zhitomir Bialik received a traditional Jewish religious education, but he also explored European literature. At age 15, inspired by an article he read, he convinced his grandfather to send him to the Volozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania, to study at a famous Talmudic academy under Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, where he hoped he could continue his Jewish schooling while expanding his education to European literature. Bialik was attracted to the Jewish Enlightenment movement (Haskala), and he gradually drifted away from yeshiva life. There is a story in the biography of Rabbi Chaim Solevetchik that cites an anonymous student reputed to be Bialik: Rabbi Solevetchik expels Bialik from the yeshiva for being involved in the Haskala movement, personally escorts him out but asks him not to use his writing talents against the yeshiva world. Poems such as HaMatmid ("The Talmud student") written in 1898, reflect Bialik's great ambivalence toward that way of life. Bialik admired the dedication and devotion of the yeshiva students to their studies, but at the same time was troubled by the narrowness of their world. At 18 he left for Odessa, the center of modern Jewish culture in the southern Russian Empire, drawn by Mendele Mocher Sforim and Ahad Ha'am. In Odessa, Bialik studied Russian and German language and literature and dreamed of enrolling in the Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. Alone and penniless, he made his living teaching Hebrew. The 1892 publication of his first poem, El Hatzipor "To the Bird", which expresses a longing for Zion, in a booklet edited by Yehoshua Ravnitzky (1859-1944) (a future collaborator), eased Bialik's way into Jewish literary circles in Odessa. He joined the Hovevei Zion movement and became friends with Ahad Ha'am, who had a great influence on his Zionist outlook. In 1892 Bialik heard news that the Volozhin Yeshiva had closed, so he returned home to Zhitomir to prevent his grandfather from discovering that he had discontinued his religious education. He arrived to find both his grandfather and his older brother close to death. . . .
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