On the anniversary of the death of the "national poet,"
Chaim Nachman Bialik, Ha'aretz decided to continue
debunking the myths that have been circulating in Israel
during recent years, and revealed problematic aspects of the
character of this national hero.
In keeping with this tradition, the newspaper published an
article in which Professor Ziva Shamir of Tel Aviv
University says that in recent years she has been interested
in what she calls "false identities of writers and poets."
This is also the subject of her upcoming book, which she is
busy writing at the Mercaz Shalom Research Institute.
Shamir presents Bialik as an enigma, far from the
authoritative and revered figure the public education system
maintains so vigilantly. She claims, for instance, that his
life story is largely an invention based on his own
imaginative fabrications. Bialik's mother was never a
peddler in the marketplace, as he writes in one of his
poems, and his father was a respected lumber trader
throughout most of his life, not a barman at a banquet hall
(a job he held for just a few months). Neither did he have
seven brothers and sisters. In fact Bialik came from an
established family of merchants, not from the lower-class
origins he tried to depict to his readers. In addition to
his literary pursuits, he sold coal at the coal warehouse he
ran and had a printing shop, which together provided him a
good living.
"Bialik was a part of the Zionist revolution. He wanted to
establish an image his impoverished, uprooted readers could
identify with, and to portray himself in the likeness of
Echad Ha'am. And he succeeded in doing so," explains Shamir.
"This seems to be the reason why he became a national
symbol. But whether he was happy with this, that's another
question."
Says Shamir, "Bialik was ambivalent by nature, at times even
reticent. The human dimension of Bialik's personality, its
complexity and internal conflict, is not presented to
elementary and high-school students."
These traits can be detected in some of his letters found
several years ago, tucked away at the Bialik House in order
to preserve the poet's image intact and to spare his
admirers from embarrassment. Shamir recommends that at high
schools, "instead of learning his poems on a superficial
level, the masks should be removed from the poet's face."
A second article published in Ha'aretz exposed other
problematic aspects of the "national poet," who the national
religious camp has venerated and often quoted on the topic
of keeping Shabbos. The newspaper printed a previously
unpublished list written by Aharon Litai that recounts an
interesting conversation he held with Bialik, "who
constantly preached about keeping Shabbos."
He recounts how Bialik told him about the "Sefer
HaShabbos" the Ohel Shem Committee was about to publish,
and once he had touched on the subject, he got excited and
revealed heartfelt secrets. "I know it can be said about me
that I speak loftily on the subject of Shabbos while my
actions are less than lofty. Particularly in terms of
smoking. (True, not befarhesia.) And I know I will
eventually have to answer for my deeds. But listen to what I
have to say anyway. I underwent what might fit into the
category of `me'uvas lo yochol liskon . . . ' "
At this point the poet launched on a long confession,
including an account of his departure from religion,
providing his listener with an extended prologue in which he
explains his warped approach, according to which he views
smoking on Shabbos as a particularly grave transgression,
worse than all of the rest of the lamed tes
melochos.
He then said, "This approach regarding the subject of
Shabbos has been forged in me since my youth, and even after
I underwent a complete change in my value system I still
made a point of not smoking on Shabbos, even in total
seclusion. I considered this mitzvah to be a matter of
importance for the Nation and for the People, a way of
connecting to the Jewish people, to the masses who carry the
yoke of Judaism and do not demand much in return. Once,
while traveling from Volozhin back to Zitomir via Odessa, I
got terribly distraught when I went for a walk on Shabbos
with a childhood friend who was also a ben Torah who
had glanced outside and been led astray. When we had entered
the thick of the forest my friend lit a cigarette and
offered me one, too, and when I declined he asked me, `What?
Do you keep all of the lamed tes melochos?' I said
no, but told him I place smoking on Shabbos in a separate
category. I explained my reasoning, and I stuck to my rule
for the next several years, until I came to Odessa for the
second time and settled there."
At this point he describes how he went through one failure
after another until eventually meeting another "national
writer" whom he blindly held in high esteem, who caused him
to abandon his rule against smoking on Shabbos. "You know, I
used to revere Achad Ha'am. I expressed my feelings towards
him in two poems that came straight from the heart.
Everything I wrote about him was honest and true. When I
began to visit him at his home on Friday nights and I would
see him smoke, I felt insignificant beside him, thinking,
`Who am I to follow in the king's footsteps?' After standing
in his shadow for several years, I realized that Achad Ha'am
was a bit too much of a rationalist for me, that he was a
bit too aristocratic, and even though he had been raised
among Chassidim and had absorbed many of the
teachings and profound ideas of the great Chassidic
thinkers, somehow the populist foundation of the their
doctrines had remained entirely foreign to him. I began to
feel strong regret for the years during which I had remained
silent on the topic of smoking on Shabbos while in his
presence, and how many times I had made a firm resolution to
quit doing this. But this proved to be one of my great
weaknesses, perhaps reflecting a defect in my character.
`Me'uvas lo yochol liskon . . . '" (The writer,
Aharon Litai, ends the article, "These were the last words I
heard him say.")
Shmuel Avneri, the archive director at Beit Bialik who chose
not to reveal this documentation of Bialik's split
personality until now, says the letters demonstrate Bialik's
distorted attitude toward religion and toward Shabbos in
particular. He says that Aharon Litai, who was one of the
poet's old friends from his Odessa period and a member of
the Ha'aretz staff since 1921, decided to consign
Bialik's confessions to the back room of the archive to
protect Bialik's image from harm (along with the image of
his mentor, Achad Ha'am). However, says Avneri, Bialik had
already been made a target for harsh critics who pointed to
this open contradiction between his elevated pronouncements
about Shabbos and the fact that he was known not to keep
Shabbos himself.
Writer and researcher Shimon Ravidovich says, "Bialik does
not have the right to don the mantle of high-minded morality
and extol the virtues of keeping Shabbos."
Bialik's reply to such criticism can be found in his
conversation with S. Shalom: "I make a complete distinction
between a man's conduct in public and his conduct in the
privacy of his own home. If someone takes away my `oneg
Shabbos' and smokes a cigarette in public view, he will
be taken by the arm and escorted away. In the privacy of his
own home, inside his private chambers, he must be allowed
the liberty to act as he pleases."
This heretical approach, which permits transgressing the
mitzvos of Shabbos in secret while sanctifying it in its
"public dimension," was already expressed by Bialik in a
speech whose highlights were printed in Ha'aretz on
January 23, 1927 under the headline, "Oneg Shabbos."
Citing this article, Shmuel Avneri writes, "At the time, its
publication brought a large number of responses and
objections. Among the protestors was the Rav of Yavniel, who
wrote to Bialik: "If proclamations delivered to audiences
restrict themselves to keeping Shabbos in public, then the
Shabbos remains with us like a body without a soul. What
kind of wretched reply would we be able to give our children
when they ask us, `What change has taken place in hilchos
Shabbos, in the marketplace and in the streets?' Is this
not a scene from the theater of the absurd?"
Yet not all religious Jews have found fault in Bialik,
writes Avneri. Whether because in their innocence they
perceived Bialik as a member of the Orthodox ranks, or
whether because they preferred to ignore his heretical
foundations, certain rabbinical and partisan circles wanted
to connect with Bialik and use him as a means of returning
lost souls to Ovinu she'beshomayim. He says letters
that have been preserved in the Beit Bialik Archive attest
to the warm ties between the poet and HaRav Avraham Yitzchak
Hacohen Kook, the chief rabbi of Eretz Yisroel at the time,
and to efforts by the World Council of Shabbos Observers
(Berlin), the Tel Aviv Rabbinate and the Mizrachi Movement
to recruit Bialik to join their campaign to preserve
kodshei Yisroel. This campaign included activities
against sporting events on Shabbos and eating treif
foods in public, and in favor of giving newly settled areas
a Jewish character. Bialik responded to the call and fought
against chilul Shabbos in his hometown of Tel Aviv
and elsewhere.
In Jerusalem, for example, Bialik tried to have a
photographer by the name of Arushkas keep his downtown store
closed on Shabbos and apparently his efforts were met with
success. Neither did Bialik spare the kibbutzim and
moshavim, which he held in high regard, from his criticism.
"Shabbos, and not the orange or potato culture, is what
protected our people throughout their long wanderings, and
now that we have returned to the land of our forefathers,
shall we discard it like a unwanted vessel?" he writes in a
letter to M. Koshnir of Kibbutz Geva and adds, "Eretz
Yisroel cannot be built up without Shabbos, but rather will
be laid waste, and all of your labors will be for naught.
Am Yisroel will never give up the Shabbos, which is
not only the foundation of Israeli existence, but is also
the foundation of human existence. Without Shabbos the world
remains devoid of the image of G-d and the image of man."
Therefore, writes Avneri, despite his forceful remarks
against chilul kodshei Yisroel befarhesia, Bialik
himself did not always stand up to the standard he set for
others. Hapoal Hamizrachi activist S. Z. Shragai, later
mayor of Jerusalem, who was among the passengers aboard the
Washington when Bialik sailed to Austria for special
medical treatment, was surprised to find that "the national
poet, the warrior for Shabbos and kodshei Yisroel,
was sitting bareheaded and eating treif."
Avneri writes that Shabbos was indeed just one revelation of
Bialik's complex and twisted attitude toward religion. S. Y.
Agnon says, for example, that Bialik confessed to him about
his painful efforts to carry out his decision to put on
tefillin and daven every day.
The director of the Beit Bialik Archive offers a solution
for all of these blatant discrepancies. Perhaps Bialik
suffered from the pangs of guilt occasionally felt by those
who were porek ol. But in terms of establishing a
"public Shabbos heritage" he presents a whole theory that
stands as a sharp departure from the understanding of the
Jew who believes in the mitzvos of Shabbos. The national-
religious circles that clung onto the "national poet"
refused to discern the wide gap separating Bialik's
"national Shabbos" and the Shabbos delineated in the Torah
which stands as a testimony of faith, and thus were
captivated by his proclamations, which they failed to
interpret and analyze correctly.
Like many of his generation's intellectuals, Bialik also
discarded his ties with traditional Judaism, which is
entirely rooted in the Shulchan Oruch. Therefore he
developed a vision of a "new Judaism," which Avneri
describes as "a heritage and culture based on creating the
new out of the ruins of the old," adding, "This is the
essence of Bialik's approach to Shabbos, sifrei
kodesh, the values espoused in the Torah and values in
general: expropriating them from religious sanctification
and re- establishing them on literary, cultural and national
foundations that show respect for tradition."
He says the "conference" programs set up by Bialik and his
projects in the areas of mikro, aggodoh and
halacha were all executed in this spirit, "which were
established as secular emblems, but aimed to build a bridge
to the age-old tradition." This is what Bialik planned to do
and also served as the outline for Sefer HaShabbos,
in which he wanted to survey "the meaning of Shabbos, its
value, its revelations and its impact on the lives of Am
Yisroel and literature, from time immemorial to the
present." This is the book he mentioned in his conversation
with Litai and which only appeared after his death.
He would often quote the famous saying of his mentor, Achad
Ha'am, "More than Yisroel kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos kept
Yisroel." (Ironically the director of Beit Bialik says that
many people in his circles who quote this saying assume that
it was originally said by Chazal.) Achad Ha'am emphasized
the national, historical side of Shabbos rather than its
religious foundations, and Bialik later sought Shabbos "as
the most refined symbol of the social ideal and the equality
of human value, etc."
This was Bialik's true perspective on Shabbos. A "national
symbol" or a "social ideal" that does not obligate the
individual, but serves only as a popular symbol.
