This past month I had the pleasure of visiting the house of one of Israel’s greatest modern Hebrew poet’s C. N. Bialik in Tel Aviv. It is located on Bialik Street off the well known Allenby St. close to the fashionable Sheinkin Street and the famous Carmel market. The street has many wonderful buildings in the Bauhaus tradition and like Tel Aviv in general the old buildings are being renovated while keeping the integrity of the façade.
Chaim Nachman Bialik died on July 4, 1934 (21st Tammuz). He was one of the greatest Hebrew poets of the Modern Era.
He wrote, “…the fit bodies of our young people breathe life into everything they touch. He who sacrifices his life to the land – he gives it life. Everyone who labors in the Land of Israel – he creates Jewish life, Hebrew culture, and there is no basis for faulting it as artificial. Those who labor in the Land of Israel occasionally forget that we are Zionists, in as much as a man, proficient in the language, sometimes forgets the grammar. When an organ is healthy you do not feel it.”
(Bialik, from “The Revival of Culture in the Land of Israel”, a lecture given in Kovana, 19 Elul, 1930).
On a Summer’s Day | Chaim Nachman Bialik
When high noon on a summer’s day
makes the sky a fiery furnace
and the heart seeks a quiet corner for dreams,
then come to me, my weary friend.
A shady carob grows in my garden –
green, remote from the city’s crowds –
whose foliage whispers secrets of God.
Good my brother, let’s take refuge.
Pleasure and tenderness let us share
in the sweet hidden prime of noon,
and the mystery golden rays reveal
when sunlight pierces the rich shade.
From Blessing of the Nation
May all our brothers’ hands
Who grace the dust of our land,
Wherever they are, be strong.
Do not give up, in joy and song,
Come together to the nation’s aid!
(1894) (C.N. Bialik “Selected Poems” In Hebrew and English
Enjoy the pictures that I took of the house and the interior rooms.
