Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life 9780804793131

Citation preview

Yo s e f H a i m B r e n n e r

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture ed i ted by

Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein

Yosef Haim Brenner A Life Anita Shapira translated by Anthony Berris

stan f ord u n iversit y press stanf o rd, calif o rn ia

Stanford University Press Stanford, California English translation © 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book was originally published in Hebrew in 2008 under the title Brenner: Sippur hayim © 2008, Am Oved, Tel Aviv. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shapira, Anita, author. [Brener. English] Yosef Haim Brenner : a life / Anita Shapira ; translated by Anthony Berris. pages cm -- (Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture) “Originally published in Hebrew in 2008 under the title Brenner: Sippur hayim.” Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-8527-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Brenner, Joseph Hayyim, 1881-1921. 2. Authors, Hebrew--Biography. 3. Zionists--Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture. pj5053.b7z83413 2014 892.43'5--dc23 2014029030 isbn 978-0-8047-9313-1 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/14 Galliard

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Prologue

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1. The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

3

2. In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

37

3. London, 1904–1906

53

4. London, 1906–1908

100

5. Lvov, 1908–1909

134

6. In Palestine, 1909–1911

167

7. The Jerusalem Years, 1911–1914

237

8. Wartime, 1914–1918

282

9. Under British Rule, 1918–1921

309

10. Days in May, 1921

360

11. De Mortuis

371

Notes Index

401 461

Acknowledgments

It seems that with the exception of Agnon and Bialik, no Hebrew writer has captivated literary scholars as Brenner has. Dan Meron, Gershon Shaked, Menachem Brinker, Avner Holtzman, Nurit ­Govrin, Boaz Arpali, Ada Zemach, Dov Sadan, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, and ­Michael Gluzman have all written about Brenner’s work. All of them are s­cholars whose works I read and learned from in the course of writing this biography, and although I have not had occasion to quote from them, they all have my gratitude. I beg forgiveness from the many other scholars whose names are also not mentioned. Every biographer of Brenner owes a debt of gratitude to Yitzhak Bakon. Bakon strove to collect all the material relevant to Brenner and publish his biography of the writer. He did not complete the work and mainly focused on the periods before Brenner’s immigration to Palestine. His was the first attempt to deal with the historical material pertaining to Brenner, and for that I am indebted to him. I availed myself of Haim Be’er’s works touching on the history of both the London and Palestine periods. He reached new sources that shed light on some obscure aspects of Brenner’s life. To understand Brenner’s complex personality, I felt I needed the help of psychiatrists’ insights. Avner Elitsur taught me about the manifestations of depression. ­Samuel Klagsbrun revealed the uniqueness of Brenner’s condition to me. Amos Oz directed my attention to the yurodivy phenomenon and its significance in understanding the mystical element in Brenner’s character. This book could not have been written without their advice. Nurit Cohen-Levinovsky was my research assistant in this project, and her wisdom, industriousness, and resourcefulness were vital in ­locating the material that shaped the book. Shulamit Gera placed at

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Acknowledgments

my disposal the photographs collected by her late husband, Gershon Gera, and Michal Sela-Brenner sent me photographs that she had collected. The staff at the Lavon Institute Archive, at Genazim (Archive of the Hebrew Writers Association), the Israel State Archives, the Central Zionist Archives, the Herzliya Gymnasium Archives, the Aviezer Yellin Archives of Jewish Education in Israel, and the Yad Tabenkin Archives, as well as private individuals, all came to my assistance. A sabbatical spent at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Judaic Studies, headed by David Ruderman, accorded me both the time and peace of mind I needed to write the book. Special thanks are due to my research group colleagues, from whom I learned so much, and to the Center’s library staff, who helped me find bibliographical items. I finished the book while at Columbia University, New York, where I drew on important material for the book’s final chapter. Having the book published in English by Stanford University Press was the brainchild of my friend Steven Zipperstein. Anthony Berris produced a wonderful translation of my Hebrew text. I am greatly indebted to both of them. And last but not least, thanks are due to everyone at Stanford University Press involved in the publication of this book.

Yo s e f H a i m B r e n n e r

Prologue

Yosef Haim Brenner’s life story encapsulates the drama of twentiethcentury Jewish life: the transition from faith to atheism, from tradition to crisis; the wandering and migration from country to country; the transition from a profound connection with Russian culture to the discovery of Western culture; vacillation between Yiddish and Hebrew, between the first buds of the Zionist enterprise and an attraction to the big world. Brenner’s murder in an Arab-owned orange grove near Jaffa during the 1921 riots, when he was only forty, made him the great ­martyr of the Jewish rejuvenation project in Palestine and, subsequently, an icon of Hebrew culture. Each decade, he is rediscovered by young writers seeking not only a literary model but also an exemplary figure, a guide and mentor for the afflictions of the time. Brenner is not easy to read, but in his writing his young admirers discover an abrasiveness and authenticity and the striving for truth that they seek. He delves into the soul’s deepest recesses; he favors no one; he shouts the pain of the hopeless, uprooted Jewish individual and of the Jewish people who have yet to find solace. Brenner’s wailing was later interpreted as predicting the great calamity that was to befall the Jewish people in the twentieth century. In addition to being revered as a man of God and a guide to truth in literature and life, he was also hailed as a prophet. In the new Jewish Yishuv (community) in Palestine, Brenner—with his Hasidic rabbi image of a miracle worker possessing moral authority and capable of speaking the unvarnished truth to anyone—met the needs of the young secularists. His charisma shone through his shabby clothes and the heavy coat he wore even in the scorching summer heat. There was something mysterious and inscrutable about him that attracted and repelled, that aroused admi-

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ration and awe. He was thought of as a great rebel who challenged petit bourgeois conventions and sought a reformed world, a just and egalitarian society. Every few years since his death, Brenner has been rediscovered and espoused by perplexed young people trying to find their way first in the twentieth-century and now in the twenty-firstcentury world. He is admired as a writer and cultural leader by religious and secular people alike—and even more so as a person who laid down norms for a society that had lost its moral compass. He was a man of contrasts: skeptical of Zionism and loyal to the Land of Israel, the country where he wanted to raise his son and where he was killed; he possessed the boundless pessimism of a realist who unblinkingly observes reality and also the latent optimism of a man who irrationally claims that “despite everything” the Jews’ will to live will prevail; he epitomized the love of man, the willingness to help anyone in need, and also the terrible awareness of the shortcomings of the human race in general and those of his people in particular. Since his death, idealists have held on to Brenner as the righteous man, the secular saint of Israeli society. In these times of social turmoil and seeking the right path, young people in quest of social reform are turning wistfully to Brenner as a symbol, a beacon for all seasons.

O n e   The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

Brenner was born in 1881 in Novi Mlini (new flour mills) in the province of Chernigov, northern Ukraine, on the Russia-Byelorussia b ­ order. The town is situated on the banks of the River Siem, not far from where it joins the Desna. Its population numbered approximately three thousand, ten percent of which were Jews, some seventy families. Shlomo Brenner, Yosef Haim’s father, was the town’s melamed (teacher). His mother, Chaya-Raisa, the daughter of Yosef Haim Mintz, owned a tavern like her mother before her. Another version has it that Grandmother Hinda was a midwife. She was a good storyteller with a fertile imagination. She also knew how to read cards and tell fortunes, and Jews and Gentiles alike came to consult her. Shlomo’s original family name was not Brenner but Lubanov. Grandfather Shmuel Lubanov had three sons: Haim, the eldest, kept his name and later became head of the yeshiva in Konotop. His other two sons changed their names so that they would be considered only sons and thus obtain exemption from service in the tsar’s army. David changed his name to Narodsky and became a Torah scribe in Bialystok, whereas Shlomo adopted the identity of a young man who had died, whose surname was Brenner.1 In his story “Shana ahat” (One year), Brenner expands on the ploys and stratagems invented by the Jews to avoid military service.2 The protagonist’s father changes his name, as Brenner’s father had done, complicating life for his son, Hanina Mintz. The origins of the Lubanov family are unknown. It may be assumed that Shlomo Brenner moved to Novi Mlini because the name of the town (or one of the neighboring towns) was listed in his papers. The mother’s family was apparently local. Bahoref (In winter), Brenner’s first novel, has strong autobiographical elements. The description of

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Shalom Getzil—the fictional father who came to the town from the north, from Lithuania—has its roots in the Brenner family’s history. Getzil is the son of a family of Mitnagdim (Jews who opposed the rise and spread of Hasidic Judaism and placed emphasis on Talmud study), whereas the mother comes from a Hasidic family in the Ukraine, where Hasidism was widespread. According to one account, Shlomo Brenner was indeed a Mitnaged, but he still sent his son to study with the local rabbi, a Chabad Hasid.3 Novi Mlini was situated in an area abounding with rivers, streams, and lakes, which were interspersed with forests, cornfields, meadows, and various other beauty spots that by their very nature were well suited to children’s play.4 But the pranks and joyfulness of childhood were unacceptable to Jews in the Pale of Settlement. At age three, every boy attended the heder, where he sat all day reciting his lessons. Poor Jewish families such as the Brenners were particularly observant of this custom. Learning accorded prestige, which enabled the crossing of class lines. The scholar was given a seat by the synagogue’s Eastern Wall, mingled with the town’s who’s who, and was even invited to dine at the local rich man’s table. A true prodigy could marry a rich woman, and this was Shalom Getzil Feuerman’s dream for his son in the novel. In the memoirs of a young man from Novi Mlini, Shlomo Brenner is described as a tall, open-faced, smiling man. He earned three rubles a week from his work as a melamed, and his family lived in poverty. His wife is described as “a refined woman from a distinguished f­amily.”5 Yet in his recollections, Brenner writes of his parents: “Both are poor, simple people, workers,” adding a comment that he later crossed out, “especially my mother.”6 In the novel In Winter, the division of labor between mother and father is emphasized: the mother does the hard physical work, cleaning geese and selling the meat and fat. The father works as a melamed, a profession requiring no physical effort that might justify his being called a “worker.” In many cases the traditional Jewish family living in the Pale of Settlement was matriarchal in all matters pertaining to livelihood, and patriarchal in everything relating to prestige and authority. According to this division of labor, ­raising the children, keeping house, and ensuring the family’s subsistence fell to the woman. In lower-class families—those of artisans, such as cobblers, carters, and dairymen—the division of labor was fairer than

The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

in families with pretensions to the status of Torah scholars, in which the women bore the burden. It seems that this was the situation in Brenner’s family. Very little is known about Brenner’s mother. Family tradition has it that Shlomo and Chaya-Raisa married in 1880, when both were eighteen—a relatively late age for a girl, which possibly indicates that she either had no dowry or was not particularly pretty. Yosef Haim was born a year later. Over the next twenty years, the couple had another three sons and two daughters.7 When his mother died in May 1914, Brenner wrote a letter to his friend Yosef Aharonowitz, editor of Hapoel Hatzair, asking him to publish a notice on her death. “Do not add any condolences,” he added, “for I am inconsolable.”8 Except for this request (it is uncertain whether it was sent), there is no mention of Chaya-Raisa in either Brenner’s correspondence or his contemporaries’ memoirs of his childhood and youth. In the novel In Winter, Brenner portrays her from two points of view, that of the child who sees her as a source of gentleness and love and protection against the father’s maltreatment and that of the adult who sees her as just “a poor Jewess suffering anguish.” The novel describes a mealtime conversation in the parents’ house. The children are discussing why it is forbidden to place a hen to brood on goose eggs: when the chicks grow and paddle in the river, the unfortunate mother will be unable to reach them or bring them back, and that is cruelty to animals. Yirmiah notes: “My mother listens, raises her head, gazes at me sadly for a long time, and releases a sigh that poisons my guts, nods in something like despair, an after all is said and done nod . . . the poor hen!”9 The son has spread his wings and flown far away, distancing himself from her both geographically and emotionally. There is a contradiction between the gloomy, depressing description of the Feuerman home in the novel and the picture that emerges from fragmentary descriptions and hints from Brenner himself and others. A childhood friend of Brenner’s recounts that, in 1891, a Purim play was performed in the town with Brenner in the role of the hero, Mordechai. He also wrote “Selihot” (Penitential prayers) in which he joked about life in the town and its “politics.” This was possibly his first attempt at writing.10 From this point on, it seems that the spirit of impishness and jocularity did not leave Brenner. It is difficult to

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a­ ssume that someone whose personal life was replete with sorrow and misery, with so little light in it, such as that described by Brenner in the novel, could be capable of such mischievousness. When he was nine-and-a-half years old, Brenner embarked on his wanderings through the towns of Ukraine to find a “place of Torah.” The story “Shama” (There) describes the torment of a child exiled from his home and forced to suffer poverty and humiliation in the homes of strangers. This is an irreversible step: attempts to return home are no less disappointing and painful than life in a strange land. Meanwhile, his brother Shmuel was born in 1887. The six years separating them gives rise to the supposition that at least one more baby was born in between them who did not survive.11 The trauma of a sibling’s death might perhaps explain the adult Brenner’s anxiety over the wellbeing of infants. Brenner does not mention his brother Shmuel at all, perhaps because he was considered a prodigy and was his father’s favorite. It seems that his fall from the status of an only son and his being sent away from home were experiences that planted in him the feeling that his parents had abandoned him. We have absolutely no knowledge about the year and a half he spent in Homel. Afterward he studied for “a time” (a semester) in Hlusk and, according to one account, was dubbed “the diligent yeshiva student from Hlusk.”12 It was in Hlusk, in the Belarus district of ­Bobruysk, that the boy first became aware of a world outside the Torah and was first influenced by the winds of the secular Haskalah (enlightenment) movement blowing through the Pale of Settlement, especially in the Mitnaged north. In Winter reveals the bad name that the Lithuanian yeshivas acquired in the south of the country, where observant young men were allegedly exposed to the Haskalah and even heresy.13 Brenner described how, during the six months he spent in Hlusk, he started reading Avraham Mapu—the author of “Ahavat Zion” (The love of Zion), considered to be the first Hebrew novel— and taking an interest in secular literature and the sciences. By his own account, he “soured’ somewhat.”14 But his father demanded that he return home and the boy obeyed. But once Brenner was infected by the Haskalah, he was unable to rid himself of it: at night he would read bichelach, a derisory name for novels (the term “books” was reserved for religious works).15 Now Shlomo sent his son to study at a yeshiva

The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

headed by his brother in the nearby town of Konotop.16 Although he was a brilliant student (“I had the head of a demiprodigy when I was young,” he claimed17), for him Konotop was linked with a harsh experience of public humiliation and degradation. He and his classmate Menachem Mendel Slutzker wrote articles in Hebrew in secret. This was a threefold sin: neglecting their Torah studies, engagement with secular matters, and writing melitzot (nonreligious writing) in Hebrew.18 In his articles Slutzker attacked none other than the yeshiva’s mashgiach (religious supervisor) but did not voice heretical opinions. Brenner, however, wrote an essay attacking Hasidism that was replete with barbs and jocularity, uncomplimentary descriptions, and epigrams aimed at the obscurantist Hasidim. The inhabitants of Konotop were Chabad Hasidim, and it caused a storm that their own yeshiva had spawned such a slanderer. The beadle ordered the manuscript burned. The head of the yeshiva, Brenner’s uncle, slapped Brenner publicly.19 He never forgot the public humiliation he underwent; it was as rite of passage, which the Bar Mitzvah, having not left an impression on him, was not.20 His expulsion from Konotop led to his first confrontation with his father. Following that disgrace, Brenner wanted to go to Homel, the big city, to acquire an education, but on the way from Konotop to Homel he stopped off at home. There he was exposed to the influence of his father, who did not cease preaching to him and condemning education: “Kenntschaft [knowledge] . . . Kenntschaft . . . What? What? What will it give you, this ‘Kenntschaft’ of yours?”21 The youth was unable to withstand his father’s moralizing and arguments, and once more he bent to his father’s will and relinquished the notion of acquiring a secular education.22 He was sent to study at the Pochep yeshiva, where a different wind was blowing. Rabbi Yehoshua Natan Gnessin, head of the yeshiva and the town’s rabbi, was an inspirational man who loved the Torah and his fellow men. The thirteen-year-old Brenner was one of the yeshiva’s youngest students. On his arrival, the rabbi tested him and immediately put him in the most advanced class. Brenner forged a profound spiritual closeness with him. Rabbi Gnessin was blessed not only with a fine disposition, erudition, and purity but also with tolerance and an understanding of his young students’ spirits. He allowed them to read Hebrew books and even Hebrew journals such as Hashiloah

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and Hamelitz were delivered to his house, and after reading them, he passed them on to his students.23 Immediately after his arrival in the town, Brenner made friends with the rabbi’s son, Uri Nissan Gnessin. Uri Nissan was two years Brenner’s senior, but they both studied in the same group of advanced students. Their relationship was the kind of friendship made in adolescence that holds fast throughout life. Brenner’s loneliness, the distance from home, his gradual shift away from the beliefs and opinions of his father’s household, and his clear need for friendship, for human closeness, warmth, and love, all served in his forming a relationship with Gnessin. It was a friendship between opposites. Gnessin was an aristocrat in every fiber of his being: tall, distinguished-looking and graceful, restrained, cautious, and quiet. Brenner had coarse features, softened by his blue eyes, and radiated warmth. With his heavy gait, broad build, and average height, there was something plebeian in his appearance. He tended to talk volubly and loudly and to voice extreme positions. Despite their differences in appearance and temperament, they forged a friendship that played an important role in shaping their personalities and literary inclinations. They aroused in one another the desire to write, encouraged each other to try, and each was a sounding board for his friend to test his ability and talent. Their first works were published in two journals, Hakof and Haperakh, which they jointly edited and then made a fair copy. Several issues were published. They mainly engaged with yeshiva life and also literary matters. Brenner described his life at the Pochep yeshiva: “There . . . there . . . gentlemen! I began to sense . . . to feel, there I began to sing . . . and feel the lack of education in a different way.”24 At Pochep a circle of young people formed around Brenner and Gnessin, a group of supportive friends that included Gershon G ­ insburg, Shimon Bichovsky, Shimon Hillel Kruglyakov, and others, all of whom were to play a role in Brenner’s life. This group of yeshiva students had peeked into the secular world, tasted Hebrew literature, and sought to start learning Russian but without going further than that. They had taken only a very innocent peek, a first faltering step on the long road to acquiring a secular education. It was within this circle that Brenner appeared for the first time as a social leader, a literary entrepreneur, editor, and publisher.

The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

Brenner lived in Pochep for more than two years, and during this period diligently observed the framework of yeshiva study. In spring 1897, when he was fifteen and a half, he decided to take action. In Pochep he stood no chance of acquiring a secular education, either because there was no one to help or teach him Russian or because he was caught reading bichelach by the mashgiach and came under suspicion of heresy.25 Brenner wanted to learn Russian so that he could read Russian literature and speak the language of the country. He also wanted to learn Hebrew grammar and the Bible, read belles lettres in Hebrew and Yiddish, and perhaps even study history, geography, and mathematics to prepare for the matriculation examinations that enabled “external” students from the Pale of Settlement to enroll at a university. Uri Nissan, his older friend, remained living in his parents’ home in Pochep, while the bold, naïve Brenner went to the big city, Bialystok, hoping that he could fulfill his desires there. His Uncle Narodsky, the Torah scribe, lived in the city, and he was to provide lodging for the boy and supervise him. Brenner told his father that he was going to Bialystok there to study in its yeshiva. Bialystok was a commercial and industrial city, and Brenner found the company he sought hard to come by. “There are but very few enlightened people here,” he wrote to Uri Nissan Gnessin.26 A young man with no friends and acquaintances had difficulty acquiring them. Meanwhile, he tried studying by himself, employing the time-honored method of the religious school: he bought Russian-language textbooks in Yiddish. He studied the Bible. He was surprised to discover that very few people in Bialystok read Hebrew and that it was hard to find a lending library, even one that charged a fee. The letters Brenner wrote from Bialystok to his friends reveal the soul of a lonely, innocent, and honest young man facing a psychological and intellectual watershed. In contrast to the warmth and love that surrounded him in Pochep, in Bialystok he suffered loneliness. In Pochep his dear friends bolstered his self-esteem, whereas in Bialystok he did not find a single person with whom he could become close. He tried consoling himself by corresponding with his friends in Pochep and also by writing stories and articles for Haperakh. At the same time, he tried his hand at writing poetry. His uncle came to see what he was up to in the kloiz (Hasidic synagogue) where he studied and found him writing. He explained

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that he was writing to his friends in Pochep. The exchange with his uncle is similar to the clash in Brenner’s bildungsroman, In Winter, between Yirmiah and Shalom Getzil over Yirmiah’s seemingly purposeless writing. The uncle persists, saying, “I do not understand what you have in common with your friends,” and the boy reproves him: “And what is a man’s life if not love and friendship?” His uncle mocks him in response: “Philo[sopher] . . . I detest such philosophers!”27 At the kloiz it became known that Brenner was writing—and studying very little. He moved to another kloiz, where he found a pupil and with his teaching fees managed to rent a room. He ate yamim (daily meals), which he hated, with Jewish families that supported yeshiva students. His efforts to learn Russian were restricted to nighttime because he was closely watched at the kloiz. His living conditions did not enable him to write. He was in a wretched state: the loneliness, the pretense and hypocrisy, his longing for his friends and his need for their psychological support, his difficult living conditions, all combined to make him feel crushed and at his wits’ end. He became very sick, he wrote,28 although it might have been psychosomatic, brought on by the stress of the constant pretense and loneliness. On his recovery he found a long letter from his father. His uncle had written to Shlomo Brenner telling him that his son was not studying but only writing. The letter caused “ruination” in the parents’ home. He also received chastising letters from people in his hometown and his uncle in Konotop.29 The emotional entreaties did their work; he was unable to withstand the pressure.30 Brenner returned to religion and for eight months became an enthusiastic Hasid. He changed “from stem to stern” and “fled the world filled with doubts and nonbelief.”31 He studied in a small kloiz in Bialystok, had set times for study and prayer. According to his own account, “I direct my heart to God and speak a great deal with my heavenly Father.”32 His rebellion against his own father was also a denial of God, or at least a rebellion against His authority. His spiritual rediscovery constituted acceptance of the authority of both of his biological and his heavenly fathers. His yearning for home, the cold and alienating atmosphere of Bialy­ stok, and his father’s emotional blackmail directed Brenner toward renouncing his “souring.” Accepting his father’s wishes and relinquish-

The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

ing the frustrating day-to-day struggle eased tensions and raised his spirits. Matters reached the point at which he acceded when his father asked him to write to Rabbi Gnessin, denying the “libel” whereby he had ostensibly abandoned religion.33 The very fact that he wrote the letter indicates the extent to which he was influenced by his father and, further, how easy it was to get him to change his mind, as does what happened afterward. When Uri Nissan Gnessin read his friend’s letter, he wrote back an angry missive on Brenner’s betrayal of their common ideals of aspiring to education and knowledge and their dreams of becoming Hebrew writers. Brenner’s letter in response was filled with abuse.34 Gnessin replied to Brenner’s abusive letter with a long letter of his own. In it there was a blot, next to which Gnessin wrote, “Here a teardrop fell. A teardrop on the loss of a life. See how it scorches the paper.”35 His emotional approach, his display of love for his friend, shattered Brenner’s resolve.36 He recanted his repentance and begged his friend’s forgiveness. Brenner’s plea for forgiveness was accompanied by a long confessional letter describing his internal conflict since he set on his path to knowledge and recounting the steps he had now taken to return to the road of secular education. He went back to learning Russian and began reading short stories in that language. He read Kalman ­Schulman’s History of the World and discovered a whole new realm.37 Furthermore, for the first time in nearly a year he started writing again. He wrote several poems in the rhetorical style of the Enlightenment, naïve poetry of little literary merit. He sent one to Gnessin, along with a relatively brief letter because the cold in his room made writing difficult. He concluded the letter with a declaration of love and gratitude: “My darling, my dear, my delight, my beloved, apple of my eye . . . be well! I am everlastingly grateful to you, for without you I would now be immersed in the stinking mire of Hasidism. . . . And you, only you have saved my soul.”38 When Shlomo Brenner heard that his son had abandoned religion once more, he wrote him a letter that Brenner found hard to withstand.39 A titanic struggle for the young man’s mind ensued. He described to his friend the torment of his struggle with his father: “I did not win a glorious victory easily. And my heart still bleeds.”40 The group of friends from Pochep gave Brenner the love, esteem, and self-confidence that had been undermined in the loneliness

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of Bialystok. Most important for Brenner was the group’s encouraging him to continue writing: “The honorable gentlemen attest that I have talent.”41 Just as his father had pushed him back to the shtetl, to the traditional society, his friends pulled him back up to the big, still unfamiliar world, but one he now knew existed. In March 1898 Brenner returned to Pochep for nine months. He found himself some pupils and eked out a living teaching. He maintained the manners and appearance of a yeshiva student: he kept his sidelocks, wore a kapota (long black coat), covered his head, and diligently recited the Shema prayer every night. But at the same time, he was energetically learning Russian with the help of a local teacher and was even trying to learn German42—without success, although he did evidently learn the Latin alphabet for the first time. He mainly read books published by the Tushiya publishing house, edited by Ben-­Avigdor (Abraham Leib Shelkowitz), and the Hebrew journals H ­ ashiloah, Ahiasaf, 43 and Ha’eshkol. He read Haim Nachman Bialik’s poems and declared: “Our literature gives me great courage and strength.”44 When the autumn winds began to blow, he was assailed by self-pity and voiced it in his letters to Bichovsky in Vilna: his room is cold, he has no winter clothes, and most of his time is squandered on teaching. He can already read Russian but “cannot speak a word properly.” He describes himself as “a lost and depressed young Jew, bent and degraded, with a painful heart and filled with a terrible bitterness,” who has failed to acquire the education for which he lives a life of poverty. But at the end of this long screed of wretchedness, he adds a little selfmockery: “A terrible groan.” His tendency to exaggerate and lament and moan is familiar to his friends. “I see a tiny smile on your lips,” he writes to Bichovsky at the end of the letter. It is “the laugh of a friend, the laugh of a dear brother at the ramblings of one dear to him.” Along with the attack of self-pity, he also feels a sense of achievement. As far as Hebrew literature is concerned he reads and learns incessantly: “My literary sense has developed to a great degree.” The more he reads, however, the more aware he becomes of his need to broaden his horizons, but he also understands the character of his talent: “I am certainly no poet, but I surely possess the talent of a story­teller.”45 Thus, at the age of seventeen, Brenner defined his literary vocation: he will be a writer.

The Emergence of a Writer, 1881–1901

At the end of 1898, Brenner went to Homel to broaden his education and train himself to be a Hebrew writer. Situated on the border between Belarus and Ukraine, Homel at the end of the nineteenth century was a district town and railway junction. It was a mediumsized town, with a population of fewer than 100,000, half of which were Jews.46 Compared with Pochep, it was to all intents and purposes a city—a teeming, vibrant city, rich with public activities, divided among pious Jews, Zionists of all stripes, socialists, and Bundists, a sort of Jewish microcosm that gave expression to the storms that assailed the Pale of Settlement, the divergences and yearnings of the Jewish masses. One of Homel’s wealthy and distinguished families was that of Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen. The father was a Zionist activist who had even delivered a speech at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, the only delegate to do so in Hebrew. The news about Hachohen’s speech had appeared in the Hebrew press, and so, before his journey to Homel, Brenner thought it would be wise to seek his help as one lover of Hebrew to another. He made two requests: first, that Hacohen would read several of his short stories and give his opinion of them; second, that he would tell him whether he could earn a living wage in Homel, of the very modest sum of four rubles a month. Hacohen was not enthusiastic about the stories, and his opinion was shared by the reader at the Ahiasaf publishing house to which Brenner had already sent them, who detected some sparks of talent in them but thought that the writing was immature. With regard to the possibility of subsisting in Homel, Hacohen suggested that Brenner should come and see him. Brenner did so. Hacohen gave him the task of cataloguing his library, one that Brenner dutifully discharged. To find him additional income, Hacohen asked him to make a fair copy of a manuscript he had written. Brenner did not stop at making the copy but amended, edited, and even added to it. Hacohen—who apparently was affronted—put him in his place, and Brenner kept away from him thereafter.47 But in Brenner’s first months in Homel, Hacohen was a real lifeline for him. Over the next few months, Brenner devoted most of his energies to study and reading. According to Hillel Zeitlin, he worked as a librarian in the Zionist library, lending books to readers, talking to the borrowers, and preaching Zionism.48 Although his livelihood was reduced, he

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was satisfied: “I have bread and pickled herring and sometimes even a little butter (here, materialism!).” He read a great deal of Hebrew and Russian literature, and because they bored him, he neglected his preparatory studies for the matriculation examinations but continued learning German. “I am developing insofar as I am able to understand what culture is in general, and Hebrew culture in particular,” he declared. He was brimming with optimism: “I am enjoying my world and am filled with ideals and aspirations to work toward the rebirth of our nation and its literature.”49 His fluency in Russian improved: he was already reading Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Ivan Turgenev. He particularly liked the first two; Turgenev, less so. He read Nikolai Gogol and leveled criticism at him. He discovered the writings of the humanist critic Vissarion Belinsky and was greatly stirred by him. He incorporated Russian words and phrases into his letters, in much the same way he did with aphorisms of the Jewish sages, as if to say, Look, this is mine too!50 It was at this time that Brenner forged a bond of friendship with a man much older than himself, the Hebrew teacher and writer Hillel Zeitlin. In his autobiographical recollections, he wrote: “Of the people living who influenced me then, I should mention Hillel Zeitlin.”51 Zeitlin was one of the people Brenner had intended to meet in Homel, but it seems that he was shy about initiating a meeting with a man of culture who had already gained a reputation and came from a distinguished family.52 The meeting between the two was eventually initiated by Zeitlin, who had heard about the yeshiva student who had come to Homel from Pochep: “I was told that this young man is ‘Mars,’ a ‘seraph,’ a man of truth, a man who influences all around him, not with logical proofs, not even with beautiful and lofty speech, but with warmth, with valor, and with the kindliness of his nature.” Zeitlin went to seek out Brenner at the Zionist library.53 It is doubtful that at the outset of their relationship Brenner had already gained the reputation of a man of truth. Zeitlin’s description of Brenner’s appearance—as a young man wearing the garb of a yeshiva student, with coarse, strange features—is confirmed by other sources, including Brenner himself. Zeitlin describes him as possessing a melancholy mien, with “a child’s blue eyes, clever and kind, and an inimitable gentle smile.” His description of “light and shadow intermingled” in Brenner’s facial features is

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continued in the description of his temperament: he talks enthusiastically, courageously, joyfully, and as soon as he finishes what he has to say, his features convey sorrow and heartbreak.54 Even then Brenner’s tendency toward extreme mood swings was clearly evident. When questioned about this by his friend Bichovsky, with whom he corresponded continuously throughout this period, he replied simply: “My mood varies from letter to letter. Sometimes I am an optimist in one and a pessimist in another. And this is the source of the contrasts.”55 The Homel period exposed Brenner to intellectual poles of attraction: the world of existential-pessimistic thought and that of socialist thought. In addition to these opposing forces, he was also under the influence of the magnetic field of nationalist-Zionist thought and his own formative self-image as a writer with a mission. This generation of yeshiva graduates was not one of happy people, certainly not those who devoted themselves to writing and in Hebrew to boot. They were young people who saw themselves as detached from the tradition of their forefathers but who were still connected to it with their very being. The pain suffered by those caught in between, described by Micha Yosef Berdyczewski in his story “Two Camps,” was existential and psychological.56 They knew that it was impossible to continue along the road of the old way of life, but they had neither the power nor the means—nor even the desire—to embrace Russian culture and sever their connections with Jews and Judaism. The semi-intellectual Jewish circles, circles of external students at various levels of acculturation, are the central axis of Brenner’s novels In Winter and Misaviv lanekuda (Around the point). Added to this was the perpetual poverty of the former yeshiva students, who had neither profession nor training for life and were forced to earn a living by giving private lessons or by konditzia (teaching for a year in the home of a Jewish family in a remote village). Here and there they found work on the editorial staff of one of the Hebrew language journals or translated something into Yiddish or Hebrew, managing to earn a few rubles. Here and there they published something and earned an author’s fee. It was living from hand to mouth while wandering from one Pale of Settlement town to another, with no possibility of marrying and raising a family. It is hard to be an optimist on an empty belly, in a cold room, without hope of a better future.

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The existential pessimism of the former yeshiva students found an ideal forge in the Zeitgeist. The turn of the nineteenth century was the age of pessimism in European culture, with Friedrich Nietzsche as its greatest guide and mentor. His Thus Spake Zarathustra, which was widely read in Russia and translated into Hebrew by David Frishman, was highly regarded by the young people who crossed the fence from religious culture. It provided a secular explanation of the nature and purpose of life; from it blew a wind of great and lofty ideas, of a profound understanding of human nature, what it actually is and what it should be. It subverted the hypocrisy of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois society and introduced trends that swept away all the old beliefs. Its followers were exposed to a heady atmosphere—air of pure oxygen, without pretence, without the compromises of social conventions. They aspired to reach toward truth per se, “beyond good and evil,” to that inner nucleus where the secret of life dwells, even though its meaning is that life has no meaning. Arthur Schopenhauer, Max ­Nordau, Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, and Otto Weininger all belonged to the school of thought that prophesied the destruction of Western culture and saw no future for humankind. There is no significance in suffering, torment, happiness—all is vanity. Only a few, who would be able to break through and raise themselves through willpower, would cast off the shackles of the decadent society. ­Berdyczewski transferred these ideas to the Jewish milieu, especially in his books published by the Tze’irim publishing house. Hillel Zeitlin exposed the young Brenner to radical pessimistic worldviews. They met frequently, and the subjects they discussed “were always ‘the damned questions,’ questions on life itself, the content of life, and the purpose of life.”57 The predispositions of the two came under the almost magical—or demonic—influence of a third man, Shalom Sander Baum, immortalized as Uriel Davidovsky in both In Winter and Around the Point. According to Zeitlin, Baum was a man of secular culture who lacked both knowledge and interest in matters of Judaism. Although he was considered an erudite philosopher, Zeitlin thought that his erudition was at best mediocre. It appears that he was conversant with Russian literature of both belles lettres and revolutionary genres.58 Baum’s influence stemmed more from the force of his personality than from his knowledge.

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Baum was a tall young man with narrow, serious features and “black eyes expressing great sorrow.” He spoke little and made do with sarcastic half-sentences designed to dismiss what the previous speaker had said. Only when pessimistic theories came under attack would he emerge from his silence and defend them vigorously and in depth.59 Baum behaved like a “guru”: in his small, monastic room he would gather a circle of friends who accepted the discipline of silence he imposed on them. It was forbidden to talk about everyday matters, such as nationalism, socialism, literature, or art. “At these gatherings people always saw themselves as standing one moment away from death, so how could one come there with arguments and discussions and ­theories?” Brenner would remain silent, admiring Baum and looking up to him. On occasion he was unable to restrain himself and would beg him: “Talk . . . talk a little . . . let us hear some wise words.”60 In Winter describes a meeting between Yirmiah Feuerman and Uriel D ­ avidovsky, with their numerous meaningful silences, until “between us there begins an outpouring of half-mute confession about our moods, our impressions, our ‘strange moments.’ And this continues between us until approaching footsteps are heard. We are both unintentionally startled, somehow resembling a lover and his beloved hiding in the depths of the forest when people stumble upon them.”61 Baum abhorred contemporary Jews. His opinions preceded and were far more extreme than those of Weininger, a Jew who loathed Jews and described them as feminine, lacking manly traits. And yet he would utter generalizations to the effect that in the past the Jews were a sublime historical phenomenon. As befitted a total pessimist, he rejected socialism but acknowledged socialist concepts and mingled with the socialists of his town. He kept his distance from Zionists: he did not believe that the Jews of the present were capable of creating anything.62 Sander Baum had significant influence on the young Brenner’s tortured and impressionable mind. Fragments of Baum’s views adhered to Brenner and remained with him for the rest of his life. His attribute of looking at reality to its very depths, to the limits of human understanding, and not flinching from the truth, even though it might be as bitter as gall, he took from his acquaintance with Sander Baum. In 1903, when Brenner was serving in the tsar’s army, Baum took his own life. We do not know when the news reached Brenner or how

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he reacted to it, but Around the Point, written a year later, centers on Baum’s enigmatic figure and his death wish. If pessimism was the pole of despair, it was countered by a pole of hope: socialist thought. Brenner was a natural candidate for becoming a socialist. The poverty of his home, of his hometown, and of his friends and acquaintances prepared him to feel the injustice in the existing society. In Homel, Brenner lived in “the Valley,” a poor neighborhood near the river, which would burst its banks in the spring, flooding the wretched houses of the unfortunates who lived there. The suffering of these people with whom he lived endowed him with recognition of the need to change the structure of society. The notion of equality, the right of every individual to human living conditions and dignity, were intuitive for him. He did not feel comfortable in splendid salons and among well-dressed people. The simplicity of his mien, his dwelling, and his attire reflected his extreme frugality, and even during this period it bestowed on him an almost monastic image. Zeitlin reports that one day Brenner asked him whether he could put up “his Shmuelik” in his house. When Zeitlin asked who this Shmuelik was, Brenner explained that he was a young yeshiva student whose father refused to support him because he had gone to Homel to acquire a secular education. Therefore, Brenner felt obliged to support him, and he ate at his table.63 This story, which Zeitlin cites as an example of Brenner’s kindness, expresses his recognition that he is duty-bound to share everything he possesses, except for the minimum required for his own subsistence. At the turn of the century, Homel was an important center of the Jewish Socialist Party, the Bund. The party appeared in 1897, at the same time as political Zionism, as part of the revolutionary agitation that rocked the Russian Empire. The Bund dreamed of a general revolution that would change the world order and raise the wretched of humanity to power. The idea of revolution was deeply rooted in the optimistic view that humankind marches forward (sometimes in revolutionary leaps) toward a bright future because people are intrinsically good and the depraved regime has distorted their goodness. According to the Bundist concept, there was no separate Jewish agenda—the fate of the Jewish workers was bound to that of their non-Jewish counterparts. It was therefore incumbent on Jews to take part in the general

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struggle against the regime. The Bund’s role was to work within the Jewish masses and rouse them to a class struggle against their wealthy employers. Brenner was very much taken by the Bund’s ideas. Zeitlin reports that he discovered Brenner’s connection with the Bund quite by chance. In a conversation on pessimism with Brenner, Zeitlin voiced doubts as to whether Brenner would be capable of working for any social movement, to which Brenner replied: “Others can fight against the capitalists and their leaders. To edit Kampf [the Bund organ]—that I can do!” Zeitlin goes on to quote something Brenner said during that period: “The Jewish workers are not bad material. I am organizing them properly.”64 Apart from Zeitlin’s account, which was written after an interval of more than twenty years, there is also that of Bund leader Virgili Cohen, nephew of Hacohen and brother of Rosa Cohen (Yitzhak Rabin’s mother), who recounts that Brenner worked with him in Homel editing Kampf. 65 “Nein und toisant mal nein” (No, a thousand times no), a story attributed to Brenner, appeared in March 1901 in the third issue of Kampf. 66 It was written in Torah-scroll script, which might substantiate the assumption that it was the work of Brenner, who had learned this calligraphy. It might also indicate a divided heart: what has Torah-scroll script, which belongs in the world of religious books, to do with the anti-religious Bund? The story is written in the form of a social-democratic propaganda pamphlet, and it contains all the usual themes in this type of writing: class struggle, exploitation of the workers by the rich who bask in luxury, the bitterness of the poor, human dignity that is restored to the wretched by fraternity of the workers.67 The story contains nothing of Brenner the author’s sophistication, irony, pain, and compassion. Yet Brenner as a Bund propagandist did his work well. The story is written in spicy, popular Yiddish as befits a propaganda piece aimed at “the Jewish masses.” Brenner pored over the writings of Russian philosophers: Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev, Nikolai Vasil’evich Shelgunov, Nikolai ­Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov, and Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. Dogmatic Marxism did not attract him. The mechanistic aspect of the Marxist diagnosis and prognosis did not sit well with his skepticism toward any doctrine whatsoever. Marxism lacked the degree of opacity, of uncertainty, for it to speak to him. Its moral motif was dulled by the

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i­nevitability of the future promised by determinism. Brenner tended more toward socialism in general terms than toward specific doctrines or organized political parties. According to Zeitlin, he and Brenner, and Sander Baum too, sought to combine Nietzscheism with Tolstoyism—not as a theory but as a way of life. Because of the failure of attempts by young idealists living within bourgeois-urban society to adhere to the Tolstoyan way of life, which mandated austerity, vegetarianism, and nonexploitation of the labor of others, they sought to purchase a tract of land, possibly in America, where they could establish an exemplary agricultural community, close to nature, free of any trace of materialism. At the time, Brenner had to travel to Warsaw to deal with the publication of his first book, Me’emek akhor (Out of a gloomy valley), by the Tushiya publishing house. He and his friends had read Judah Leib Peretz’s short story “Altwarg” (Relics), and in light of the views expressed in it, they believed that Peretz might prove to be an ally who would assist them in obtaining the funds necessary to establish the community. Brenner went to Warsaw but evidently did not manage to have a proper talk with Peretz. A chasm separated the famed writer, who lived relatively well and had a “court” of literati, and the shy, strange-looking, provincial young man. The flesh-and-blood Peretz did not fit the image they had painted from his work. Brenner returned to Homel disappointed with Peretz, and from then on Peretz did not think very highly of Brenner either.68 The world of socialist ideas constituted a counterweight to the world of pessimistic thought that Brenner had espoused. Pessimism fed his open-eyed despair, whereas socialist ideas planted in him a sense of social mission and commitment to his fellow men. Nietz­ scheism stimulated him into understanding the world as it is, whereas socialism nurtured his moral instincts, which obliged him not to cease searching for what might be reformed in it. At the same time, “the Jewish question” gave him no peace. As we have seen, Zeitlin and Brenner first met at the Zionist library, where Brenner worked as a librarian and preached Zionism. This library was part of an effort to inculcate Zionist ideas among local youth. To this end, various societies were established that were more social and cultural clubs than political organizations.69 The society to which Brenner belonged was

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called Tze’irei Zion (The Young of Zion). It met every Sabbath eve for lectures, readings, and talks on Zionist and literary subjects. Its members were required to submit reports on books they had read and also on young people they had organized into Zionist cells. Another member of this group was Z. Y. Anochi (Aharonson), whom Brenner befriended.70 The national idea—that is, the concept of a Jewish collective with needs and interests, material and spiritual alike, whose existence possesses a value of its own—was part of the set of worldviews absorbed by young people exposed to secular culture. The young Ahad Ha’am (penname of Asher Ginsberg) asserted that a person can be a good Jew without observing the 613 commandments. He thus drew a distinction between the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. The separation of the people from the religion afforded young people who followed the Haskalah an anchor of identity instead of the anchor of religion. “Cold, it is cold living without God,” says Yirmiah (In Winter).71 The Jewish people became the source of identity. Many young Jews were swept out of the Jewish milieu, either to the camp of the assimilationists, who sought a better life, or to that of the Russian revolutionaries, who aimed at liberating the Russian people and bringing redemption to the world. But the circles under discussion, such as that of Brenner and his friends, exchanged religion for nationalism. Berl Katznelson, Brenner’s junior by six years, wrote: “I do not know whether our old people would get up in the night and hold a ‘midnight prayer’ and shed tears over the hardships of enslavement and feel the pain of the bitterness of exile as we, youngsters infused with revolution, felt the pain of the tragedy and the shame of the people.”72 Katznelson’s comparison between the religious midnight prayer and the secular “pain of the tragedy of the nation” is not a random one; it is about people whose acculturation was only partial and whose secularization was still incomplete. Katznelson defined himself and his contemporaries as “sons who exiled themselves from their father’s table.”73 Brenner was still walking around Homel in the attire of a yeshiva student and stammering in Russian, even though he read the language for pleasure.74 His cultural world was eventually shaped by the Hebrew press, which he came to know well. The literature of the Enlightenment period, with the nationalist messages of Peretz Smolenskin, Yehuda Leib

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Gordon, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, and others who preceded Zionism, prepared him to absorb Zionist ideas. Theodor Herzl’s political Zionism left no impression on Brenner’s world. Although Herzl might have fit the Nietzschean definition of the Übermensch who changes the world order, the movement he founded seemed bourgeois, focused on the corridors of power, and unsuited to the rebellious disposition of the young people. Brenner put the following sentence into the mouth of Feuerman’s friend, the socialist Haimovich: “What Zionism [lacks] in risk-taking and sacrifices in relation to authority—that alone is sufficient to negate this idea as worthless.”75 Ahad Ha’am was a petit bourgeois author and his words did not give expression to the mental turmoil that beset Brenner and his friends in the course of their severance from the world of tradition. In their view, Ahad Ha’am, who called for “a preparation of hearts” and spoke of “a spiritual center” in Palestine, was detached from their material circumstances, their heated ideological debates, and was irrelevant to the “torn heart” they were experiencing. He radiated peace of mind and a haughty coolness in an era of volcanic eruptions. They admired his honesty, his striving to describe “the truth from Palestine” as it was, but it is doubtful that they were able to see him as the guide and mentor or source of inspiration they sought. In a letter to his friend A. S. Nibilyov, Uri Nissan Gnessin wrote about Berdyczewski’s story “Two Camps,” published in 1899 by ­Tushiya. Gnessin waxed poetic: “There is terrible confusion in the protagonist’s soul. But that is the wonderful point that fetters us to the story with those magical chains.” For Gnessin the story’s greatness is in its revelation of the schism in the soul of “the Jewish-European young people” who seek to change their entire way of life but are unable to completely sever their ties with the past: “They feel the noose of the world that binds them to their origins.” Michael, the protagonist of “Two Camps,” is already outside the camp but yearns for it. G ­ nessin’s conclusion is that at present it is impossible to combine “our national culture with the secular one.” A combination such as this would only be possible when the Jewish people are “a people that shall dwell alone,” built on strong social foundations. Gnessin’s interpretation of Berdyczewski is that the symbiosis between Jewish and secular culture cannot take place unless the Jews have a state of their own and change

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is effected in the Jewish people’s social structure. In this letter, Gnessin’s conclusion is a Zionist one.76 Yet these were young people, whose worldview was still in its formative stages. Only a few weeks after this letter, in response to a request from his friend Bichovsky to send him an article on the nature of Zionism, Gnessin replied that he did not know what it is. “I perhaps know the meaning of ‘the rebirth of the nation,’ but not of Zionism.”77 In another letter to Bichovsky from the same period he writes, “and it may well be that I am a total Zionist.” Brenner’s primary loyalty was to the Jewish people, not necessarily to one nationalist theory or another. In any event, theory was less important to him than deeds. He was therefore able to declare that until he was able to learn and feel that he was ready for it, he saw no point in going to Palestine: “On the contrary, our nation needs people like us both here in the Diaspora and there, and both here and there not to be satisfied with ‘aspiration and patience,’ but with work, to learn and teach.” He concludes this letter with the words, “With brotherly love, under the banner of ‘the rebirth of the Jewish people.’”78 A short time later, he wrote a letter to Gnessin protesting against his friend’s intention of writing literature for the sake of literature and pure aesthetics: I totally disagree with the theory in your letter regarding “literature for literature’s sake,” the purpose of man, and so forth. My view of life is completely different. In brief: we must sacrifice ourselves and reduce the evil in the world, the evil of hunger, slavery, dismissal, ­hypocrisy, and so forth. We must understand everything, understand and distance ourselves from mysticism and fantasies. We must heighten realism and sanctity in the world. We must reform the life of the Jewish people for it to be normal. And these torments of the soul are the result of my doubts in general: Can there be reform? Are we moving forward? This is it in general and in particular: Ich bin nicht zufrieden von zich allein. I doubt my own power, etc., etc. It is some time now since I have become a vegetarian. You write a historical poem—and I do not understand it. Can we divert our attention from the present for even a moment? Are you aware of the situation of our young people? Do you know that we are The Last of the Mohicans? Are you aware that our people are going to die? Do you know that the world is sick? Do you know that despair kills? Do you have eyes? Uri Nissan!79

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This is a letter written by a young man experiencing Weltschmerz, particularly the pain of his people, who sees it as his duty to sacrifice himself for reforming the world and his nation. It is a frame of mind that draws its inspiration from various sources, especially that of the Zeitgeist. The young man’s commitment to act for the general good is combined with the notion that literature too should be dedicated to reforming the world. These ideas had nourished Russian literature since the mid-nineteenth century, from which they filtered down into Hebrew literature. Since the time of the Biluim (a movement whose goal was agricultural settlement in Palestine in 1881), the example set by the Narodnaya Volya, young people who saw themselves as committed to sacrificing their lives for the Russian people, had become an aweinspiring myth for every group of young, idealistic Jews. Brenner drew these ideas from the Russian literature with which he had recently become acquainted, but mainly from Hebrew literature (which itself had drawn them from Russian literature). The demand to keep away from mysticism and fantasy and to heighten realism and sanctity might mean keeping one’s distance from everything connected with establishment religion and instead seeking a connection with real life and through it, with sanctity, which is the opposite of automatic observance of the commandments. One of the letter’s key sentences is “We must reform the life of the Jewish people for it to be normal.” The concept of the “nonnormalcy” of Jewish existence in the Pale of Settlement is one that appears in Zionist writings from Leon Pinsker, who regards the Jews as living dead, through Lilienblum, who engages with the economic anomaly of the Jews’ life. The Zionist idea was specifically or implicitly bound up with the idea of normalization. In the sphere of Zionistsocialist ideas, which had just begun to take shape, ­nonproletarization theory appeared. From this perspective the poor Jewish masses were unable to move from their state of lumpen­proletariat to the ranks of the proletariat because of the hostility of employers and non-Jewish workers. When the revolution came, they would be caught between the proletarian Scylla and the capitalist Charyb­dis. In other words, normalization of Jewish existence and its adaptation to the general course of history was impossible in the ­Diaspora. First and foremost, normalization meant change in the socio­economic position the Jewish people. The eighteen-year-old Brenner was already grappling with

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a question that would attend him throughout his life: Are the Jewish people capable of undergoing reform, of enlisting the mental fortitude and creative powers—what Berdyczewski termed “the will”—to bring about a fundamental change? The sense of urgency gave him no peace: “Can we divert our attention from the present for even a moment?” he reproves Gnessin. Brenner’s own writing, however, focused on the present—the present continuous, with illuminations of the recent past. He had no interest other than the here and now. His sense of urgency derived from his feeling that the Jewish people were going to die, that he and his friends were “The Last of the Mohicans” (from James Fenimore Cooper’s historical novel, published as a bichel by Tushiya in 1896), and that despair devours the soul. When Berl Katznelson described his experiences in Jewish Vilna at about the same time, he employed similar terms: “In our waking hours and in our dreams, we saw the gleam of the twisting sword; in the alley­ways of Jewish Vilna, in the filth, the hunger, and the drone of their struggle for a bare pittance, we breathed the air of extinction. . . . We burned with the flames of heresy and despair and post-despair. We sentenced ourselves to remain where there was no way out. And we saw ourselves as the last ones.”80 Despair may be a youthful fad. Events occurring during adolescence tend to be interpreted radically, and mood swings are not uncommon. The connection between his personal wretchedness and his dissatisfaction, which is also typical of young people, is prominent in Brenner’s letter. He is seeking expression for his Tolstoyan idealism and becomes a vegetarian, but unlike Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Werther and those who were influenced by the character’s angst, Brenner, like Katznelson, drew national conclusions from his personal misery. He therefore also rebuked ­Gnessin for even considering writing literature for literature’s sake and for allowing himself to flee the present. When Brenner or Katznelson speak about the destruction of the Jewish people, they are not imagining physical annihilation of masses of Jews but rather destruction of the Jewish collective either because of assimilation or emigration or because of the loss of will to exist as a collective. There was considerable exaggeration, however, in the apocalyptic view they took of Jewish reality. It was a time of great intellectual flowering in the spheres of social and political thought as

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well as literary endeavor. The two Jewish languages—Hebrew and Yiddish—reached maturity and yielded an extraordinary literary wealth. An abundance of writers, poets, and philosophers published their works in both languages. Large political movements, such as the Zionist movement, the Bund, autonomism, and all the shades of opinion between them, appeared in the public sphere and enriched the political and social debate. During those years Russia underwent a surge of economic development and modernization, which was also enjoyed by the Jews. This was the period preceding the Kishinev pogrom and the pogroms that came in the wake of the failed revolution of 1905. The Jews’ concern for a secure existence was not yet widespread. It is doubtful that Brenner’s description of himself and his friends as “The Last of the Mohicans” or Katznelson’s description of himself and his friends as “the last ones” was objectively justified. The question also arises of what the phrase “the last ones” refers to. It seems that these young people felt that they were a dying breed. They saw young people flocking to the Russian revolutionary camp and relinquishing their connection with the Jewish people, the audience of readers abandoning Hebrew in favor of Russian or Yiddish, the thousands of apathetic people seeking a solution for themselves either through emigration or other means, side by side with those loyal to tradition who turned their backs on this tempestuous era. These same young people who had tasted secular education but remained standing firm on the soil of the Jewish nation and Hebrew culture, who were witnessing the degeneration of the poorer strata of the Jewish people, but who did not view revolution as the solution, felt they were isolated and alien in their environment. They also did not identify with the Zionist camp, because it committed the sin of prattle and rhetoric, talk that did not call for deeds, in a complacent, petit bourgeois fashion unsuited to their aspirations. They sought the redeeming act but could not say what it was. Their sense of “lastness” derived from a combination of a burning sense of mission and a feeling of impotence. The semieducated type, with one foot in the Jewish religious school and the other in the modern world, was not the only one that emerged from Russian Jewry during that stormy period. Two years before Brenner’s birth, a Jew named Lev Davidovich Bronstein, who later changed his name to Leon Trotsky, was born on a farm in southern

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Ukraine. A year after Trotsky’s birth, Vladimir Jabotinsky was born in Odessa. Trotsky saw his birth into a Jewish family as a purely genetic coincidence. His father, who owned the farm, was uninterested in Jewish culture. Lev Davidovich learned a little Hebrew but did not speak Yiddish. His identification lay with the Russian revolutionary movement. He held that the revolution would counteract discrimination and prejudice and thus resolve the Jewish question. Russia was his motherland, and the world at large was his home. Jabotinsky represented a different model of Jew. A graduate of a Russian gymnasium (secondary school), he only became aware of his people’s culture in his late teens. After the “universalist” stage of his life, he embraced Jewish nationalism but throughout his life remained firmly rooted in Russian culture, whereas his roots in Jewish culture were extremely shallow. Like him was Yosef Trumpeldor, the son of a cantonist (a Jewish boy conscripted into Tsar Nikolai I’s army for twenty-five years) who maintained his loyalty to his people throughout his long years of service but was also devoted to his Russian homeland and its language. They were secular Jews who did not suffer the torment undergone by Brenner and his friends. They could choose other channels of identification. The links between culture and nationalism, nationalism and universalism, and revolutionism and Jewishness were complex and open to varied combinations—but not for the circles of Brenner and his friends. For a few weeks in August 1900, Brenner lived in Warsaw, in Uri Nissan Gnessin’s room. Gnessin at the time was working for the Hatzfira newspaper. Warsaw was a sort of Western European fortress on the border of the Slavic countries. Shmaryahu Levin describes it as the first Western city he visited. The influence of Paris and Vienna was prominent there.81 Brenner did not discern the city’s special character, and it did not leave an impression on him. He turned completely inward. Living under the same roof in total brotherhood led the two friends to a common formation of views—until the next storm. In response to a fashionably despair-laden letter from their friend Gershon Ginsburg, they both wrote him letters intended to boost his flagging spirits: “Cease these lamentations that do nothing for man’s preeminence and take action!” Brenner preached to him. “Take encouragement in the name of the spirit of your people, whom you love and admire.” At a time when the Jewish people are suffering from a s­ urfeit

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of Oblomovs (the protagonist in Russian writer Ivan Goncharov’s novel of the same name, who became a symbol of idleness and sloth), when thousands are drowning in their poverty, there is no place for egotistical preoccupation with prying into the soul, Gnessin declared. Brenner encouraged Ginsburg to open a good heder in his city: “The small good deeds of individuals become part of a great account!” And Gnessin lauded “minor work” in educating the younger generation, which would yield important fruit. It would be the preparatory work preceding the great deed that would come when the time was ripe.82 Recognition of the importance of small deeds runs counter to the high tone used by Brenner and Gnessin. In the final accounting, however, they were men of literature and education, not of action, and these were the fields in which they could make a contribution. In this letter Brenner produces the slogan “Long live magnificent and constructive labor for human happiness,” to which, for dramatic effect, he added three exclamation marks. This was not a general, universal call. In the human perspective that he depicts in this letter, there are only Jews. When speaking of commitment to action, Brenner does not cross the borderline of Jewish nationalism. During this time of exciting exposure to current intellectual and revolutionary trends, Brenner wrote his first published works in Homel. He continued his reading of Russian and Hebrew literature. He read Dostoyevsky’s works, and Crime and Punishment made a profound impression on him: “I have no words to describe my excitement over the psychological aspect of this precious and sublime book,” he wrote animatedly to Bichovsky.83 He preferred prose and read only little of Alexander Pushkin’s and Mikhail Lermontov’s poetry, but he did read Lermontov’s novel, A Hero of Our Time.84 When his friend Bichovsky asked him about his aspirations, he replied: “I want to study for another ten years, and if by that time I feel the need and have the ability, I shall write and become a Jewish author.” In the meantime, he said, he was not writing at all.85 But two months later he sent his story “Pat lechem” (A piece of bread) for publication in Hashiloah, which rejected it. Did he change his mind or had he concealed his writing from his friends for fear of failure? “A Piece of Bread,” his first literary publication, appeared in Hamelitz in 1900, soon to be followed by his first book.86 Zeit-

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lin reports that he did not know that Brenner wrote until one day he brought him a bundle of manuscripts, asked him to read them, and if he liked them to be his advocate before Ben-Avigdor, head of ­Tushiya, the publishing house. Zeitlin read them and passed them on to Ben-Avigdor, who hastened to publish them in a book titled Out of a Gloomy Valley, which appeared in 1900, when Brenner was nineteen. Out of a Gloomy Valley is a collection of stories about life’s unfortunates, types that Brenner came across every day in Homel’s “Valley.” The petty squabbles of the Jews in the shtetl, the intrigues between the religious elite and people with vested economic interests, the greed, and the struggle for existence are all described in realistic form. Brenner highlights class contrasts between rich employers and laborers and exposes the deprivation of the unfortunates. His women are mostly capable, whereas the men are weak and unable to provide for themselves and their families. The descriptions are filled with social ­pathos and much compassion. It is the writing of a “committed” writer, reminding his contemporaries of Maxim Gorky’s fiction. Some commended Out of a Gloomy Valley highly, while others, such as David Frishman, roundly condemned it.87 Most critics did not pay much attention to this first collection of stories, but two leading critics welcomed the book. Although Yosef Klausner at Hashiloah was impressed that the author attempted to write dialogue in Hebrew, he felt that it was too obviously a translation from Yiddish.88 Berdyczewski, the Hebrew writer much admired in the circles of the rebellious young people, wrote an article filled with admiration for the book. He viewed the author as a poet who described the afflictions of life. Brenner’s ability to sketch his characters with just a few lines, almost casually, made a great impression on Berdyczewski: “Everything he sees and describes is so strong and alive that it makes an impression, despite the transgressions prevailing here and there, despite his excessive tendency to indict the mighty and justify the lowly.” At the conclusion of the article, he says of the unknown author: “The language of the poet is difficult and moves heavily, and his breathing is also labored.”89 A short time afterward, Zeitlin received a letter from Brenner that ended with the words: “I am your brother, whose breathing is labored.”90 Brenner was apparently in Bialystok on two occasions. The first was when he went there for a short period to check when he was supposed

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to enlist.91 His birth certificate represented him as a year older than his true age. The second occasion was in 1901. Between these two visits he spent most of his time in Homel (where he also wrote the story in Yiddish for Kampf ), except for his stay in Warsaw with Gnessin in summer 1900.92 He was in Warsaw to attend to the publication of Out of a Gloomy Valley by Tushiya,93 and there he met the Yiddish poet Avrom Reisen. Reisen describes a young man with gleaming blue eyes, abounding with kindness, generosity, and friendliness, who sought to make Reisen happy and surprised him with a Hebrew translation of one of his stories and its publication in Hatzfira. The Warsaw days were good for Brenner: “My own feeling was not of the highest order, yet there was a sort of youthful inspiration, an expectation of something, absorbing impressions with all the pleasure they entail.” It was an encounter of young people who had just begun making their names in the world of Jewish literature: “We were on the threshold. We stood at the ‘morning prayer.’” We find confirmation of Brenner’s good spirits in a description of the evening when he and Gnessin read a new poem by Bialik together: “One evening [Gnessin] brought from the street a new Luach Ahiasaf that only that day had come off the press, and it happened on an evening when we had bread, tea, oil for the lamp, and even a hot stove. A short time later, after we had eaten, we were already outdoing one another in presenting the poem by heart.” The two friends’ boisterous enactment of the poem as they declaimed it ended on a sentimental note: “And suddenly the tear sent in the letter from Pochep to Bialystok glistened in the eye and was followed by another. . . . ‘And an honest teardrop I shall shed on you, friend of my youth!’. . . . Our bones trembled. And the fire burned in the stove and the candle on the table.”94 Although Brenner was under threat of expulsion from Warsaw because he was there illegally, this was an hour of joie de vivre and closeness. Brenner’s second encounter with Reisen took place in Bialystok, ­apparently in early 1901.95 Brenner was now a man of means. G ­ nessin estimated that the author’s fee Brenner received from Ben-Avigdor for Out of a Gloomy Valley would have enabled him to subsist for six months.96 But when he met Reisen in Bialystok a short time after the book appeared, Brenner was living in a small attic room, in straitened circumstances, subsisting on bread and butter and tea.97 This phenom-

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enon—the disparity between Brenner’s earnings and how he lived—is to be repeated again and again. It may be assumed that he was sending money to support his family. At the time, Reisen was working for ­Avrohom-Hersch Kotik’s Bildung, publisher of popular science books in Yiddish. Kotik was considered a leading activist and entrepreneur in the sphere of Yiddish culture. Reisen recounts that he was impressed by the purity of Brenner’s heart, his honesty and decency, and respected him greatly. It seems that Brenner worked for Bildung as a Yiddish editor and translator. Reisen reports that Brenner would finish those assignments that he was unable to complete on his own. Brenner jokingly reproved him: “Ay, Reisen, Reisen, you’ve cooked up a fine stew!”98 Brenner lived in Bialystok between 1900 and 1901, but we know very little of what he was doing during that year. It was apparently during this period that he wrote In Winter. His life of poverty, his seclusion, the long months he spent in one place, would have provided the conditions he needed for writing. When Brenner went to enlist in  the army in the fall of 1901, he left his manuscripts and correspondence with Reisen. According to Reisen, these included the manuscript of In Winter. A month later, Reisen left Bialystok and went to Warsaw. He left Brenner’s manuscripts for safekeeping with Kotik, in whose home he lived.99 In a moment of anxiety for fear of a police search, Kotik burned all the material. Brenner had lost all his writings for the second time: on the first occasion he lost them during his yeshiva studies. He hid them in a hole under the doorstep of the synagogue, and one morning saw some workmen repairing the doorstep—and his writings were gone. He did not dare attempt to discover what had become of them. The extent to which this loss hurt him is clearly evident in the recollections he wrote years later, when he was already an acclaimed author, in which he devoted a large portion to the loss that had befallen him in his youth.100 In Winter, Brenner’s first novel is the most autobiographical of all his works. He invites his readers to identify the novel’s autobiographical element by calling his narrator Feuerman which is close in meaning to Brenner (“fireman” and “burner,” respectively). The story is told in the first person. Unlike his later works, in which he tended to obscure the identity of the first-person narrator by using rhetorical ploys—such as inventing diaries, scrolls, and essays or a narrator who claims to have

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heard the story from the protagonist—that create a barrier between the first-person narrator and the protagonist but that also connect them, the narrator of In Winter is the story’s protagonist. The reader should not expect a romantic story, says the protagonist at the beginning of the story. From the first line he lowers expectations: he wants “to write some impressions and sketches from ‘my life’—I do not have either a future or a present; all that remains is the past.” The quotation marks enclosing ‘my life’ hint at a question for the reader: Is this worthy of being called “a life”? Yet Feuerman feels that it is necessary to tell the story of this life, “the past of my nonheroism.” “My past is not the past of a hero,” he explains, “simply because I myself am not a hero.” Brenner invented the antihero long before it became fashionable in Hebrew literature. To create distance between himself and the reader he declares that he is not writing for them but “for myself and in secret.”101 In other words, it is a frank confession that does not consider the reader and the impression the words make on him. In Winter is a story of leaving the shtetl, severing ties with home, moving to the big city, abandoning religion and tradition, and losing faith in God. The narrator, Yirmiah Feuerman (Brenner’s alter ego), leaves his parent’s home several times: first, he goes to a yeshiva and returns home; he returns to the yeshiva and again comes home; he then travels to N, the big city, and once more comes home; again he leaves his parents’ home and returns to N, and thence to the village where he teaches and where he writes the “essays” that constitute the novel. The departure and return symbolize yearning for that which has been lost as well as the impossibility of going back to a state of primal innocence. Feuerman reaches the conclusion “that the ‘there’ is but an illusion like any other, and that the ‘good’ is where we are not.”102 At the end of the novel, he remains cast out of both worlds. The central theme of In Winter is the clash between Feuerman and his father. Yirmiah the youth is torn between his love of and sense of commitment to his parents’ home and the desire to exchange traditional life for something different, open to the big world, that will enable him to express himself literarily. His father, Shalom Getzil, embodies all that is base and contemptible in Yirmiah’s eyes: his approach to life is hypocritical and servile.103 He does not measure people by their intrinsic value but by their standing in the community and ex-

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pects his son to behave like him. Yirmiah’s severance from his parents’ home marks the transition from his wish to satisfy his parents to mounting opposition to his father, challenging his worldview by acts running counter to it: first, by writing for writing’s sake, an act his father cannot tolerate,104 and then by reading irreligious books and striving to acquire a secular education. Yirmiah goes to the big city, N. After two years there he returns home, where he is welcomed excitedly and lovingly, but he feels that “deep inside me lay the same emotion I had felt in my childhood when I was beaten by older boys, and my father, instead of taking pity on me, would even chastise me harshly.” He notices that his father is paying great attention to his attire, to see whether it reflects affluence.105 ­During the family meal, his mother attempts to dispel the tension, whereas his father carps about the material significance of Yirmiah’s heresy. The open clash comes when Yirmiah declines an invitation from Elimelech the moneylender to lecture on Zionism in the synagogue, and displays indifference toward the community’s dignitaries. But ­Shalom Getzil still hopes to match Yirmiah with the rich and pretty Rachel Moiseyeva and thus gain a substantial dowry. When Yirmiah dashes this hope, Shalom Getzil’s inhibitions dwindle. The flare-up occurs when Yirmiah receives a letter from a woman friend in N requesting help for herself and a mutual friend who is in trouble. The possibility that Yirmiah has formed a relationship with a young, probably nonobservant woman, without his father’s blessing, and his willingness to support his friends financially with his own money, is a challenge to his father’s spiritual and material world. Shalom Getzil calls him a “stubborn and rebellious son,” while his mother wails, “I have no son, my son is dead, dead.”106 Rebellion against the father and his authority as part of the son’s personal maturation and development is vital in shaping the young man’s personality. Yirmiah dreams that he is imprisoned in a filthy sack with heavy stones and a load of sand hampering his efforts to escape, but then, “I break out of the sack—and my father is striking me from above.”107 Yet his psychological connection with his parents is still strong, impeding his efforts to free himself. In the end, the love-hate relationship with his father remains unresolved. The second theme of In Winter is sexual relations. Yirmiah is haunted by his physical ugliness108 and develops a chronic shyness ­toward the

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opposite sex, although it is a shyness that is not attended by coldness toward women. On the contrary, he claims: “My temperament was always enthusiastic to the limit, but at the same time I recognized that my looks, voice, and movements are a burden for a woman.”109 Although he convinces himself that he kept away from women voluntarily, he yearns for a woman with feminine beauty. Rachel Moiseyeva is depicted in delicate lines and soft colors. Yirmiah notices her doelike movements, the pretty face she pulls with her upper teeth over her lip, her clear voice. He draws a distinction between pure love and wicked lust. This new emotion, which surprises him, is immediately manifested in bitter envy of anyone who appears to be a competitor for Rachel’s affections. Borsieff, a young Jew from the same town who sports a Nietzsche-like mustache, is the direct opposite of Yirmiah: a conversationalist, courteous, handsome, agile, and well dressed. “Comparing myself with him, I recalled my own nasty, unnatural laugh, my ungainly, lazy movements, my half-uttered words—and they all seemed to me to be abhorrent, foolish, base.”110 He looks at her longingly while Borsieff woos her with stimulating conversation. He dreams about traveling to Germany with her, but the journey ends badly: in the dream the ticket collector stops him boarding.111 The connection between the father’s suppression of Yirmiah and his weakness as a male is illustrated by a dream in which the ticket collector is half rabbi, representing tradition and parental authority, and half Borsieff, representing the male competitor. The love affair between Yirmiah and Rachel takes places solely in Yirmiah’s mind: she is probably unaware of him. Had he succeeded in winning her, his father would have reconciled with him. This is the point of contact between his inability as a man and as a son—thus, his great despair, the everlasting winter. He despises his body, his very being: “My entire being arouses guilt feelings and an impression of abhorrence in me. I have no place.”112 His guilt feelings are directed at both his biological father and the heavenly one he has abandoned. He is impotent, both literally and figuratively. Masculinity is an expression of the will to live and the ability to contend with life. It is the sun that follows winter. At the end of a bildungsroman the learner emerges strengthened and prepared for the trials and tribulations of his life. Although this is the case for the conclusion of In Winter, Brenner provides two end-

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ings, leaving the reader to decide which of them is the true one. The first is optimistic, a letter filled with light written by Yirmiah but not sent to his friend Uriel Davidovsky, while the second describes Yirmiah sitting alone in a remote railway station on a cold winter night. The first ending points toward Yirmiah’s maturation and his overcoming the forces that prevent him from espousing his vocation as a writer. The second indicates that “winter” continues to be his constant companion. The parts of In Winter that deal with relations with the family, particularly the father, are reminiscent of the confessional letters Brenner wrote to his friends after his return to religion, and later, when he relinquished religion again. Prominent in these letters is his love for his family and father and his deep connection with them. In the novel the figure of the father is far more negative and domineering than the one described in the letters. The description of his attitude toward his son—repressive on the one hand and calculating on the other—probably reflects latent grudges that Brenner bore against his father. The story “One Year” provides another example: Hanina Mintz’s father wants his eldest son to join the army and does not lift a finger to have him released, as Jewish fathers usually did. There are several reasons for the father’s behavior: first, there is no chance of Hanina’s finding a decent match. Second, Hanina had become a heretic and perhaps military service would return him to the fold (these two points are a direct continuation of the discussion in the novel). Third, and this is the main point, his younger brother, Yechiel-David, “who conducts himself righteously and does not abandon his Torah studies” and who is “better than his brother in every respect,” will gain release from military service if his older brother serves. Brenner remarks ironically: “Indeed, we had never heard of a father who would not take care of his oldest son by taking him out of military service, but Haim-Mendel is different.”113 The story is supported by fact: Brenner’s father did not try to have him released from military service, and his brother Shmuel, who was six years his junior, was indeed a genuine Torah prodigy, true to the ways of his forefathers. His father’s preferring the younger son for attributes that Brenner did not possess heightened his feelings of hostility, which gained an outlet in the sharp and powerful description of Shalom Getzil, the father in the novel. As we have seen, Brenner wrote In Winter while he was in Bialystok, and when his writings were

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lost, he rewrote the novel during his military service. In his opinion the new version was better than the original one. It is conceivable that military service increased Brenner’s repressed bitterness and anger toward his father, and that the version he wrote in the army radicalized the description of the father figure. Not everything, however, that appears in the novel is based on Brenner’s real life experiences. It seems that the story of Yirmiah’s falling in love with Rachel Moiseyeva is pure fiction.114 In the correspondence between Brenner and his friends before his enlistment, in the memoirs about him, and in the description of the circles he frequented in Homel, no woman is mentioned. It was a male society, starting from the yeshiva, through Zionist circles, the nihilists, and the Bundists. Hanina Mintz, the protagonist of “One Year” who joins the army, describes himself as a virgin. It seems that Brenner would describe himself in this way too. The story of Rachel Moiseyeva took place in Brenner’s imagination, which was beset by a twenty-year-old’s agonies of lust, when the accepted norms in his peer group and his complexes regarding his body prevented him from finding an outlet for them. The days of Brenner’s youth ended with his enlistment in the army. Abruptly, his world was removed from its Jewish framework. He was already a young writer who had published several stories that aroused interest in the limited circle of the Hebrew literary republic, but not beyond it. Already evident, however, were several of the traits that would characterize him in the future. He viewed the world through dark glasses. In the way of young people, he aspired to moral perfection, world reform, and reform of his people, but it is doubtful that at this stage he had defined the way he was to choose. He knew what he rejected but not what he affirmed. He was already outside the circle of tradition and religion, but his rebellion against the Almighty had something of the extremism of a child rebelling against parents who placed obstacles in his way to achieving his aim. His aim was already defined: he wanted to be a Hebrew writer. That was his identity and his vocation.

Two   In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

In fall 1901 Brenner joined the tsar’s army and served for two years and three months. The story “One Year,” written a few years later, describes the first year of military service of an idealistic and naïve young Jew. In it Brenner reveals his suffering in the tsar’s army. G ­ ershon Schoffman, who served at the same time, later wrote that the quality of Brenner’s description is comparable to that of Dostoevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Dostoevsky, however, never wrote about his own military service. Schoffman remarks that “perhaps in his astro­ logy he foresaw that this experience would be recounted by a Jewish writer of a similar character and said to himself: ‘He will do it no worse than me.’”1 In many senses this was a formative period for Brenner, whereas in other senses it was totally meaningless. For the first and apparently the only time in his life, he lived in the company of non-Jews. There were, however, several Jews in his unit, and after a short while he was able to spend his furloughs in the city of Oryol at the home of the local rabbi nominated by the authorities, the writer and critic H. Y. Katznelson. His good friends came to visit him too. In Oryol he frequented revolutionary circles, most of whose members were apparently Jews. But during this period of two and a quarter years he lived his day-to-day life among Russians, the majority of whom were peasants’ sons. In “One Year” he describes how the innocent Jewish student, a Tolstoyan vegetarian who had never known a woman, learns the hard way that his naïvety and purity of heart are exploited by others. As long as Brenner was within the framework of Jewish society, he was protected from the brutality, belligerency, and cruelty that typified the way of life of lowerclass Russians. With all its drawbacks—poverty, hypocrisy, ignorance,

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and superstitions—Jewish society was a shield against life “outside.” Military service was for him an outstanding school for learning about the human soul and its deepest recesses. Thus far, he had known the Russian people mainly through literature. Tolstoy’s or Dostoevsky’s descriptions deal with the middle and upper classes of Russian society, their sophistication, refinement, and cultural tradition. From the second half of the nineteenth century, however, there were writers such as Turgenev and Gleb Uspensky who portrayed the Russian peasants and their life without varnish. But they did so as part of a cultural-political debate that presented the Russian peasant as the symbol of the Russian nation, a person of purity and moral force. Most of their descriptions were replete with admiration of the peasants, their way of life, simplicity, loyalty, and fortitude. Brenner’s encounter with flesh-and-blood Russian peasants, without the aura of romanticism and idealization of the Narodniks (populists) and Slavophiles, was dramatic. The Jews of the Russian Empire viewed military service as a terrible punishment for a sin they had not committed. Memories of the cantonists—the Jewish children torn from their mother’s arms for twentyfive years of military service (dating back to the reign of Emperor Nikolai I; reduced to four years during the reign of Alexander II)— made that service a restrictive law in the view of the Jews. The tsar denied civil rights to Jews but demanded that they fulfill all their civil obligations. Military service meant severance from family, from the Jewish community, and mandated desecration of the Sabbath and nonobservance of Jewish dietary laws. In the army the Jew was subject to the whims of any junior officer, corporal or sergeant, or just a brutish soldier. Most of the Jews had never done any physical labor, and nothing had prepared them for army life. They viewed military discipline as strange and coercive; as Brenner put it, the soldier is both in jail and at school.2 Added to this was the Russians’ endemic anti-Semitism. All levels of Russian society were tainted with hatred of Jews, a hatred they had learned from their folksongs and lullabies, from religious texts and their priests’ sermons. None of this heightened the Jews’ sympathy for military service. In contrast, for the Russian soldiers, who came mostly from rural areas, serving in the army was a step up in their life. The training was easier than the work they had done in the fields since childhood. The army provided food and clothing. Every now

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

and then, they were paid a paltry sum, which the Jews disparaged, but the soldier-peasants, who had never seen money in their lives, were overjoyed by it. Army life was good for them: it gave them the opportunity of going to town in uniform, dallying with women—for nothing or for payment—and getting as drunk as they wished.3 Unlike many Jews, Brenner was ignorant about bribery or providing other services to his superiors to make his own service easier. He also did not know how to evade arduous physical duties with a variety of excuses and pretexts as other soldiers did. He completed the assignments he was given without question and thus did more than his fair share of his company’s extra duties. His difficulty in adapting to physical activity, his ungainly movement and slowness, made him the butt of jokes and abuse by both his officers and comrades. Military discipline troubled his spirit. The stupefying routine of barracks life depressed him. He had no privacy at all and no possibility of reading or writing. He was posted to a regiment stationed near Oryol, outside the Pale of Settlement. His first months as a recruit who had not yet sworn the oath of loyalty to the tsar were extremely hard. In his first known letter from Oryol to his friend Uri Nissan Gnessin, he bemoans his fate: “I get up at five in the morning, and until nine in the evening I wander between torture and jolts, unjust acts and harsh insult.” The loneliness and being cut off from his friends embittered him. Even though Sunday was a day of rest, he was forbidden to leave the barracks, which left him time for harsh thoughts about his misery. He put down on paper questions such as “What will become of me?” Yet it seems that his situation was not all that terrible, for he also quotes the Bible, “Death is cursed,” and the Ethics of the Fathers, “Man is destined to live.” He also continued taking an interest in what was happening in the Hebrew and Russian literary world and asked his friend to revive his spirits with detailed news. Brenner’s situation improved after a while. As mentioned earlier, the writer H. Y. Katznelson lived in Oryol, where he wrote reviews of Hebrew literature for the Jewish-Russian press. At about this time, he published an article in the yearbook Budućnost (The future) on the state of Hebrew literature, in which he noted, among other things, that a new star had risen in the firmament of Hebrew literature— Brenner—with the publication of Out of a Gloomy Valley. This was the

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Jewish-Russian intelligentsia’s first exposure to Brenner. Hillel Zeitlin, who read the article, wrote to Katznelson, telling him that this new star was serving in the Mozhaysk Infantry Regiment stationed near Oryol. Katznelson hurried to the barracks, where he found Brenner buffing brass: “His clothes were patched on patches, his short legs seemed to be drowning in his oversized boots, and his faded, peakless cap rested almost wholly on the back of his neck.”4 He found it hard to believe that this disheveled, neglected man was the writer, but the two quickly found a common language: Brenner was familiar with Katznelson’s articles from the journal Voskhod. Katznelson hastened to intercede on Brenner’s behalf with both his company and regiment commanders, asking them to ease his service conditions and allow him frequent visits to Katznelson’s home; “after a long sermon about the Jews in general, and their evasion of their military duties in particular, as was to be expected, the man assented to meeting my request.”5 Katznelson undertook to guarantee Brenner’s conduct outside the barracks. In all probability he promised that his protégé would not desert, as many Jewish soldiers were apt to do. Thenceforth, Brenner was a frequent guest in Katznelson’s home, where he was able to relax, read, and write. Katznelson’s heart went out to the young writer whose officers and comrades exploited his naïvety. On one occasion he saw Brenner staggering under the weight of sacks of flour; although two other men had been assigned to the work too, they had avoided it on various pretexts and left Brenner to do it on his own. Another time, he found him burning up with a fever, and no one had bothered with him. Katznelson complained to the company commander, and from then on the abuse lessened.6 His relationship with Katznelson alleviated Brenner’s loneliness and misery. Added to this were his friends’ visits to Oryol. Z. Y. Anochi, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and Shimon Bichovsky—close, dear friends of Brenner’s—all came to see him there. “When I came to town today, I found . . . Uri Nissan sitting in Katznelson’s house, readying himself to go and see me,” he joyfully wrote to Anochi. “My joy was exactly like my joy on that day I came out—and saw you!”7 Gnessin’s visit at the end of April 1902 was a particularly successful one. Brenner was free that day and the two were able to talk as much as they wished. “We talked about reality and dreams of reality”; thus Gnessin described

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

the conversation. Brenner surprised him with the narrow horizons of his dreams: “I thought I would find him dreaming burning, boiling, world-shaking dreams,” but Brenner “dreams about literary work in his lonely, quiet room in the big city.”8 It seems that Gnessin did not comprehend the pressures of barracks life: the lack of privacy, the enervating routine, the inability to concentrate and write. More than anything else in the reality of a soldier’s life, Brenner felt the stultification of his powers as a writer. He therefore especially appreciated the privilege that Katznelson had obtained for him—permission to receive Hebrew and Russian books.9 His friends’ visits and his correspondence with them sweetened the period of his military service. The literary and psychological world that was so close to Brenner’s heart was not closed off to him. His conversations with Gnessin and Anochi were a sort of umbilical cord connecting him to the reality that was so important to him. In the summer of 1902, after completing his basic training and being sworn in, Brenner became a regular soldier and the abuse diminished. He even gained his comrades’ approbation with his diligence in his work and duties and because he wrote letters home for them. Now he felt able to engage with intellectual matters. First, he sought to publish the manuscript he had left with Avrom Reisen in Bialystok. Reisen informed him that his manuscript was with the publisher Kotik, who, as we have seen, Brenner knew and had even worked for. A convoluted correspondence then ensued between Brenner and Kotik. Kotik found it hard to tell Brenner the truth about his consigning the letters and manuscripts in his possession to the flames. He therefore sent Brenner the money he owed him for his work and ignored the matter of the manuscripts.10 When Brenner brought it up again, he did not respond to the question but instead suggested that Brenner request a furlough, come to Bialystok, and work for him.11 By the fall of 1902, it was clear to Brenner that the manuscript was lost. “My heart and I are now a deep grave after my loss,” he wrote despairingly to Anochi. But in contrast to his usual tendency toward depression and self-pity, in this case he displayed impressive mental fortitude: he could rewrite the story. The problem was that he did not have the time: “I have to guard the regiment carts and peel potatoes.”12 In the meantime he consoled himself with being able to read as much as he wanted, and he spent a lot of time reading philosophy.

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Brenner managed to rewrite In Winter with surprising speed. He wrote under insufferable conditions, without a table or chair, in the darkness of the barracks at night, to the accompaniment of his comrades’ snores. On weekends he wrote at Katznelson’s desk.13 The story began to appear in Hashiloah in serial form in spring 1903. A short time before, Ahad Ha’am had handed over the journal’s editorship to Yosef Klausner. Ahad Ha’am adopted an uncompromising policy toward the young writers: not only had he rejected Brenner’s story “A Piece of Bread” but had recently also rejected Anochi’s story “­Hayenuka” (The little one). “What did you expect?” Brenner responded sarcastically. “I am only surprised that Ahad Ha’am found some signs of talent in you.”14 With the transition to Klausner’s editorship, the journal’s gates were opened to the young writers. Klausner accepted In Winter and began publishing it. He did not respect Brenner’s wish that In Winter should be subtitled simply “Notes and Sketches” (Reshimot ­vesirtutim) and gave it the more pretentious subtitle, “A Novel.”15 Brenner was also not happy that the book was published in short installments. “The impression has been obliterated,” he complained.16 He received an author’s fee and instructed Klausner to send a large portion of the money, 50 rubles, to his parents and the rest to him.17 Before the 1905 Revolution, it was customary in the Russian army that following summer maneuvers, the soldiers were allowed to work privately, handing over part of their income to the regimental fund. Brenner did so with his author’s fee and thus “bought” himself some free time.18 Unlike other Jewish soldiers, he did not employ a washerwoman and did his own laundry. Some viewed this as evidence of his penury, but it seems that it was out of choice.19 Between the spring and fall of 1903, two incidents took place that became key events in Brenner’s second novel, Around the Point. The first was the Kishinev pogrom, which occurred during the week of Passover; the second, the suicide by poison of Shalom Sander Baum in Kremenchug in the spring. The pogrom is mentioned in passing in Brenner’s letter to Anochi, the main thrust of which was Brenner’s concern for his two friends who had been expelled from Kiev for illegal residence. “And in the world there is news: Kishinev! If we stand and shout every day and every night—that is not enough. The curses evaporate!”20 This was his only reference to this seminal event in

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

Jewish-Russian consciousness. His letters were about either literature or the spiritual life of friends, and Jewish or general politics are not mentioned. No less surprising is that Baum’s death is not discussed in his letters. At the end of 1902 and early 1903, Brenner and Anochi had exchanged views about Baum. Anochi inquired of Brenner “concerning the change in Baum,” and Brenner replied, “I think that this is how it should be: philosophy should be gentle without rejecting anything. However, with regard to Baum ‘as a living man,’ I am in complete agreement with you.”21 This is an enigmatic statement. It might well be that it refers to Baum’s journey from his home in Homel to ­Kremenchug (in Around the Point Brenner explains the journey as the wish of Uriel Davidovsky, Baum’s alter ego, to commit suicide far from his parents’ home so that his mother would be spared the sight of his death). It also might be about work he was given or a surprising ideological change. It is difficult to assume that Brenner was alluding to suicide. In the summer of 1903, Brenner suffered mood swings. He wrote to Anochi that “my agonies this last summer, both physical and spiritual, are more burdensome than those we knew there . . . do you remember?” referring to their time in Homel. He is probably alluding to his having begun, when he was in Homel, to suffer from depression, which continued and worsened during his military service. Many details in his letters and writings from this period hint at this: the feeling of hopelessness and low self-esteem, despite recognition of his potential as a writer, his revulsion toward his own body, his view of himself as ugly and repulsive, as a man from whom girls shy away. The season of In Winter symbolizes nature’s melancholia, the cessation of growth and creativity, but it also symbolizes the “winter” in the writer’s soul, the cycle of depression that is often associated with winter. During his life in the army, he was unable to be idle for psychological reasons, so if he indeed suffered bouts of depression, he knew how to overcome them. A short time afterward, he emerged from his depression and was full of joie de vivre: “Let not thy spirits fall, but with joy and song, come shoulder to shoulder to the aid of our nation,” he wrote, quoting Bialik to express his fine spirits.22 He views his own and his friends’ vocation as creating Hebrew literature

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and consoles Anochi: “If we are not heroes, then we are also not weaklings!”23 This letter was written in August 1903. A letter written in September that year is also filled with light and joy in response to the printing of Anochi’s story “Hayenuka.” It contains no mention of Baum’s suicide. If the accepted time of Baum’s suicide is correct, that is, spring 1903, it seems that either Brenner had not heard about it at the time or it took place later than September 1903. However, in the same letter he writes: “I have in mind the content for a story, ‘Hahu gavra’ [That man (a traditional reference to Jesus)].” The accepted interpretation is that this was a story (which would evolve into Around the Point) in which Baum is the protagonist. That being so, Baum’s suicide possibly took place before the fall of 1903 and Brenner already knew about it, so then it would seem that Baum’s suicide affected him less than might be imagined. In the fall of 1903 Brenner was in fine spirits. The publication of In Winter and the reactions he apparently received turned him from an aspiring young writer to a well-known, widely admired one. It appears that this was the principal cause of his happiness. Two and a quarter years had elapsed since Brenner began his military service. Physically, he was stronger and managed to withstand the harsh conditions. Unlike many Jews who served in the army, he did not complain about his service. “He accepted everything with love . . . , as if he liked the suffering and torment.”24 In a conversation at the Katznelson home, Brenner explained, half jokingly, half seriously, that he had been used to suffering since his childhood, and not a day had passed that he had not gone hungry and slept in his clothes on a hard bed. Compared with that, conditions in the army were a change for the better: he ate his fill of tasty food, slept on a straw mattress, and covered himself with a warm blanket.25 It was almost like the change he described in “One Year” in the situation of the Russian peasant conscripts. His acceptance of suffering stemmed from his belief that it was the way of the world and that man is born to toil. The entire world order is built on evil and injustice, so why should he complain about his bitter fate? Furthermore, identifying with the wretched and oppressed by actively participating in their fate is the road leading to purity, to redemption. He thus followed Tolstoy’s doctrine, but his emotional difficulties did not abate.

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

His friends were well aware of his suffering in the army, and on more than one occasion they tried persuading him to desert, as many other Jews did. In “One Year” he describes how the Russians do not trust the Jews and keep a wary eye on them in case they desert, even those who are exemplary soldiers. Hanina Mintz, Brenner’s alter ego (Mintz is surname of Brenner’s mother), discharges his duties unquestioningly, does not avoid work, and even successfully completes the arduous marches. At the end of Brenner’s first year of service, his friends suggested that they organize his escape from the army. He did not believe that it was practicable and viewed the whole thing as “stuff and nonsense,”26 but his friends continued with their plans to get him out of the army. According to one version of the story, Zeitlin, who was older and more responsible, came to Oryol for consultations on the matter.27 The plan was also discussed at length with Katznelson, who was Brenner’s guarantor. Katznelson opposed desertion, feeling as he did that the risks involved were too great: if Brenner deserted, was captured, and court-martialed, he would be in even greater danger. He had already completed more than half his service, he had a routine that enabled him to live and work, so why risk it all? According to the accepted version, Brenner decided to desert when the Russo-Japanese War broke out and his regiment was about to be deployed to the Far East. Katznelson also attests to this.28 Asher Beilin says that Brenner was not prepared to fight for the tsar.29 Brenner’s last letter from Oryol, written on 6 January 1904, was to Bialik, who had been appointed editor of Hashiloah. It contains a hint of a possible change of address: “For the time being do not send anything else here,” and he further states that he would not be sending stories for publication in the coming weeks.30 The next letter, written after Brenner had crossed the Russian border into Prussia, is dated 28 March 1904 and begins with the words: “In the three months that have passed since my last letter to you, on more than one occasion I have said: ‘I am doomed!’”31 The three months Brenner mentions run parallel to the interval between the two letters, and they also fit the descriptions of the various stages of Brenner’s desertion, which ended with his leaving Russia. The Russo-Japanese War broke out at the end of January 1904, when Japan, without a declaration of war, attacked the Russian naval

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base at Port Arthur after breaking off negotiations with the Russians two days earlier.32 It appears that Brenner deserted several weeks before the outbreak of the war. Perhaps it was clear that war between the two countries would break out while the negotiations were still ongoing. It is also possible that Brenner’s regiment was given its movement orders to the Far East as part of the reinforcement of the Russian forces once the possibility of war was clear, but perhaps Brenner’s action was not connected with the war in the Far East. Brenner, of course, was not a special case: deserters from the Russian army in response to the war with Japan, known as Yaponchiks (little Japanese), were among the members of the Second Aliya and the Jewish emigrants in Europe and the United States. Brenner’s plan to desert was not formulated before the end of 1903. On 24 December 1903 he wrote a letter to Klausner full of his writing plans, which does not suggest a man planning to desert.33 His letter to Bialik two weeks later, however, bears clear evidence of his preparations to do so. It seems that the opportunity to escape presented itself between these two letters, perhaps in light of his regiment’s preparations to ship out. Brenner’s behavior may be compared with that of two other people who were to play a role in his life: one was Yosef Trumpeldor, the son of a cantonist family who grew up far from Jews and knew nothing about Judaism, but whose self-esteem was expressed in his loyalty to the Jewish people and Russia. When the war broke out, he was serving in the Imperial Army and asked to be sent to Port Arthur, where he gained the reputation of a hero. Trumpeldor was the only Jew to become a commissioned officer during his service in the tsar’s army.34 The second was Gershon Schoffman, a young writer stationed in Homel during his military service. Brenner and Schoffman did not meet face to face (Schoffman came to Homel when Brenner was already in Oryol), but they shared many friends. Schoffman frequented the same circles that Brenner had. During his service in Oryol, Brenner had read Schoffman’s Sippurim vetziurim (Stories and sketches), published in Warsaw in 1901, and was less than impressed: “He knows nothing except for himself, and his knowledge of himself is fuzzy,” he wrote to Anochi, who had apparently praised the young writer, whom he had known in Homel.35 Schoffman had experienced the trauma of the pogrom against the Jews in Homel in September 1903, when he

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

and another Jewish soldier from the same regiment were forced to watch the atrocities and were under orders not to aid the Jews.36 In 1904 news was received that Schoffman’s regiment was about to be deployed to the Manchurian front. The Hoffenstein family, patrons of the young intellectuals in Homel, swiftly obtained clothing, papers, and money for the journey south, and Schoffman safely crossed the Russian border into Austria en route to Lvov.37 In his article “Min hamishol” (From the path), Brenner contemplates the randomness whereby the two great poets Haim Nachman Bialik and Shaul Tschernichovsky were saved: “Had Haim Nachman or Shaul been killed in their youth in Russia, then not only would we be missing what we now have, but we would also not have known of its absence.”38 This statement is true to the same degree with regard to Brenner or Schoffman and in a different sense for Trumpeldor as well.39 Brenner’s friends and admirers gave an ideological interpretation to his enlistment in the tsar’s army. He did not dodge military service like many others because he was concerned that another Jew would have to serve in his place according to the quota system. Perhaps he even wanted to influence the soldiers in the spirit of Tolstoy’s social reform (as Hanina Mintz claims of himself).40 Even desertion was not interpreted simplistically. Beilin’s statement that Brenner was not prepared to fight for the tsar determined “the ideological character” of his desertion. Brenner himself supported this version in “One Year,” which contains hints of criticism of Jews who dodge military service, their evasions while in the army, and their desertion. Hanina Mintz behaves differently, honestly and decently, and does his duty. Perhaps that is why Brenner took the trouble to emphasize that he did not flee just like that, because he could no longer endure army life, but out of the fear that he would be sent to fight a war that was not his. And perhaps that is why he also begins “One Year” with a sentence spoken by his protagonist: “That year was a year of peace.”41 In other words, all the vows and prohibitions he mentions in the story were valid solely in peacetime. Brenner’s desertion began with an all-too-simple act. As the regiment marched to the Oryol railway station—probably on its way to the Far East—Brenner exploited his superior officers’ trust in him as a loyal and disciplined soldier and asked permission to go into one

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of the courtyards to attend to “needs that brook no delay.” After a brief exchange, he was given permission, and as the regiment marched on he went to a prearranged safe house, where he changed into civilian clothes. When it was discovered that he had not returned to the ranks, a search for him began, but he was not found. Beilin describes the details of his desertion, which he says he heard from Brenner.42 Katznelson’s version is similar: the army was engaged in emergency assignments and did not have time to search for the many deserters. But the local police conducted occasional searches for Jews staying in the city without a permit. Thus, they came to the house where Brenner was hiding. He was arrested and did not have identity papers. He gave an assumed name and a fictitious place of birth, claiming that he was from Bobruysk in Belarus. With this assumed identity, he managed to avoid a court martial for desertion, the penalty for which was either death or exile. He was sent in a prisoners’ column (etap) to Bobruysk to verify his identity.43 Brenner describes this odyssey in his story “Me-aleph ad mem” (From A to M), which he published in Hameorer (The awakener). The story’s title later became part of the Brenner myth: the initial letters of the cities he was led between were interpreted as prophesying the forty years of his life until his murder (the Hebrew letters aleph and mem signify the numbers 1 and 40 respectively).44 His description of the Jewish and non-Jewish criminal characters and the mainly Jewish political prisoners provided him with an opportunity to present a rich gallery of human brutality in all its details and shades, from the primitive to the most sophisticated. And in that human comedy, Brenner did not flinch from devoting a prominent place to the Jews’ evil and despicable behavior, which although no less cruel than that of the Russians, outdid them in sophistication. Brenner showed no mercy for either revolutionaries or common folk; he presented them both in all their vileness and inhumanity. Only the simple peasant retains his humanity in this hell. In the meantime the people who had aided him in his escape were able to act toward his release from custody. The driving force behind organizing his escape and saving him from his captors was a young woman named Chaya Wolfson. The Wolfson family came from the town of Surazh in the Chernigov governorate. There were two

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

­ rothers, Boaz and Yisrael, and a younger sister, Chaya, who was born b in 1886. In Homel the Wolfson brothers would sometimes visit the Hoffenstein family’s “salon,” which was frequented by Brenner, Baum, Zeitlin, Anochi, and others. Chaya was too young to attend this circle. Later, Boaz Wolfson went to Oryol to study and take the matriculation examination. In the towns outside the Pale of Settlement, Jews were easily eligible under the quota system because of their small number. His sister joined him, and she too studied for the matriculation certificate in Oryol. It seems that there the Wolfson brother and sister became the core of a Socialist-Revolutionary circle, which included two non-Jewish Russians.45 Although Boaz Wolfson had known Brenner in Homel, it was only in Oryol that he and his sister realized that he was a writer from the article about him in Russian published by H. Y. Katznelson.46 Chaya did not know any Hebrew—her language was Russian—but she knew that Brenner was a Hebrew writer who in his stories described the life of the Jewish working classes and “externs” (external students). She therefore respected and admired him. A friendship was formed between Brenner and the Wolfsons. Brenner was a frequent visitor at the home of the brother and sister; during those evening visits, Chaya would recite the poems of Pushkin and Lermontov with special accentuation and good taste, and Brenner was taken by both the poems and Chaya’s recitation.47 Zeitlin described Chaya Wolfson as follows: “She was one of the Jewish souls that aspired to bring about salvation and redemption to the world through self-sacrifice for the sanctification of socialism.” 48 Bichovsky says that she was a “modest and quiet Jewish woman, with a beautiful soul, who at the time was considered the banner of the Bund.”49 It seems that Bichovsky was mistaken on this last point. In an article in Hatekufa in 1922, Zeitlin wrote about the relationship between Chaya and Brenner: “I do not know for sure about her attitude toward Brenner: I only know about Brenner’s attitude toward her. She was, if I am not mistaken, the only woman (at least before the Palestine period) whom Brenner loved, and it was of course a Brenneresque kind of love, that is, attended by doubts, vacillations, and particular emotional agonies.”50 In a description that appeared in Die Zukunft in the late 1930s, Zeitlin changed his assessment and wrote of Chaya that

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“she admired Brenner and thought about him with more than Platonic love.”51 It seems that this description was influenced by Brenner’s story “Hu siper leatzmo” (He told himself), which was written under the terrible impact of the news of Chaya’s death when he was in London. According to her brother Boaz, Chaya, who was a girl of sixteen or seventeen when she was in Oryol, was in love with another Jewish soldier, “a good but uninteresting young man.”52 While Brenner was suffering in the prisoners’ column, Chaya Wolfson was quick to act toward his release. Two political parties shared the claim to securing Brenner’s release: the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bund. Chaya journeyed to Roslavel, a Socialist-Revolutionary stronghold. In the meantime Brenner reached Bobruysk, where the Bund wielded great influence. Large sums were required for keeping him until he crossed the border, for clothing and papers, and payment for the guides who would lead him across the border. Zeitlin held part of the money—Brenner’s author’s fee for In Winter, which had been held back by the Ahiasaf publishing house and was sent to Zeitlin only after repeated importuning. A further sum was raised in Roslavel. ­According to Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen, two young revolutionaries came to his home one spring day and told him that Brenner had deserted, been captured, that he had to be released, and to this end a sum of several score of rubles was required. Hacohen unhesitatingly gave them the money. One of the central people in the escape organization was Jacob Cohen, Mordechai Ben Hillel’s nephew, the brother of Virgili (one of the Bund’s leaders) and Rosa Cohen. He was active in the Bund underground, and when asked to organize Brenner’s ­escape from detention, he did so without question.53 Jacob Cohen was not particularly sympathetic toward Brenner, but the release of a Jewish deserter was, in his view, a worthy act. According to Zeitlin, the man from Roslavel who was mobilized for Brenner’s release was a tall, black-haired, brave and strong Russian with a limp, called Roman. Roman went to Bobruysk and together with a Bundist lay in wait in a dark alley for Brenner and the two policemen escorting him from remand to the jail. The two brandished knives and overcame the two policemen. No one was killed. The stunned Brenner was ordered to run in a certain direction and was immediately joined by one of his liberators, who led him to the Bund’s

In the Imperial Russian Army, 1901–1904

secret printing press in Bobruysk. Zeitlin states that he too arrived in Bobruysk at the same time as Roman because he was too excited to wait in Roslavel for the outcome of the operation. He found Brenner seated on a broken chair in a little room, holding a stormy debate with two Bundist printers, who had apparently worked all night but were not prepared to forego a debate with Brenner “on the question of Palestine and exile, Hebrew and Judaism.”54 In an earlier version, Zeitlin, who spent a long time with Brenner in the safe house, states that the subject they discussed was the tragedy of the Jewish people. The Bundists knew that Brenner was no longer one of them, but this did not stop them from saving him: “They admired not Brenner the Bundist, but Brenner the man, whom they liked very much.”55 Beilin provides a different version, according to which Brenner, during his stay in Bobruysk, was seemingly active in the Bund underground and wrote illegal literature, and it was only in the course of this activity that the disagreement between him and his comrades came to light and he decided to leave. The Bundists assisted him in this.56 This story, which is based on what Beilin heard from Brenner, does not fit the circumstances. Brenner had already been far from the Bund for a long time, and it is inconceivable that he even considered remaining in Bobruysk when he was a known and wanted deserter. Shimon Bichov­ sky confirms Zeitlin’s version of the events and adds another detail: for part of the time spent waiting for his papers to be prepared—more than a month—Brenner was in Starodov in the Chernigov governorate.57 There he was visited by Uri Nissan Gnessin. The distances were relatively short and the whole episode took place in an area well known to our heroes.58 It was there that Brenner rewrote his still untitled story, “Hahu gavra” (the first draft had been lost in the course of his escape). Brenner describes the terrors of secretly crossing the border in his story “Rishmei derekh” (Travel notes), how he came by train to the station near the border with two Jewish escapees and an escort, a revolutionary by his appearance, who traveled with them by cart to the border town, where he handed them over to a smuggler who, after travails, fears, and adventures, got them safely across the border into Prussia. According to Beilin, the terrible story recounted in “Travel Notes” about a young man who tried to cross the border, was fired on

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by soldiers, and was so confused by fear after crossing the border that he continued to wander until he came back to the Jewish house from whence he had come, is the story of Brenner and his companions. In any event, after three days Brenner crossed the border into Prussia like many other young Jews.59

Th re e   London, 1904–1906

On 28 March 1904, soon after crossing the border into Prussia, Brenner wrote to Bialik. Considering the dramatic circumstances of the border crossing and the weeks that preceded it, the letter is surprising in its balanced, businesslike, and practical tone. He thanks B ­ ialik for sending him 300 rubles to help with his escape and expresses the hope that he will now be able to continue writing Hebrew literature. He explains that the manuscripts of all the stories he had with him were lost during his detention, and the chapters of his new novel, Ha’akhronim (The last ones)—an early version of Around the Point, which he rewrote in the safe house while awaiting his papers—were also lost during his escape. “I wanted to go to New York, but I do not have the money,” he wrote simply. He was also prepared to go to Switzerland, but there was no possibility of doing so from Prussia; therefore, “I must go to London. There is no other place.”1 Thus, London was his default destination. Brenner’s journey to London was not the outcome of planning and thought. Like many other Jewish refugees, he was swept to that shore as a result of his limited means. Victorian London was the capital of the greatest world power on whose empire the sun had not set. It was the world’s largest city. His encounter with London was his first with a modern metropolis. It was also his first encounter with a liberal parliamentary system, which held itself responsible for the welfare of the country’s citizens and did not regard them with suspicion and hostility. London was a city of refuge for European revolutionaries such as Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Alexander Herzen, who lived there for short periods, and Karl Marx, who lived there for many years and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. The Russian anarchist Prince

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Peter Kropotkin, the revolutionary Nikolai Tschaikovsky, the communist leader Vladimir Lenin, and others all found refuge in London at the turn of the century. The city also hosted important conferences of Jewish and non-Jewish socialist parties. It teemed with the activity of subversive revolutionary movements and the Okhrana, the tsar’s secret service. The base for all this activity, half of it overt and the other half secret, was London’s Jewish quarter, the East End. Up until the 1880s, the number of people known in London’s local parlance as “the foreigners” was fewer than fifteen thousand. On the eve of World War I, their number reached approximately one hundred thousand, with the majority of them Jews from the Russian Empire.2 According to other estimates, the number of London’s Jews (including “the locals”) at the end of the 1890s stood between 140,000 and 150,000, with new immigrants making up the vast majority. In a city of several million people, as London was at the time, this may not count as an impressive figure, but within the city’s ethnic and cultural uniformity, the Jews stood out in their foreignness. After the Irish, they were London’s second largest minority.3 The Irish, however, were a familiar part of the population, and the ethnic differences between them and the English were not so pronounced. The Jews, however, were foreigners: they looked foreign and behaved differently from the locals; they did not speak English; some still wore the traditional East European Jewish garb; the smells of their cooking were different. They did not frequent pubs, did not get drunk, and were not violent. They did not care about the cleanliness of the environment in which they lived. They loved gambling but were prepared to work very hard. They nurtured their children and ensured their education, and in contrast with the filthy streets that stank to high heaven, their children were clean and well dressed. They appeared to possess “middle-class virtues but lowerclass values.”4 The three-square-kilometer area of the East End was the most densely populated in England. In this area, which Israel Zangwill called a “ghetto” in his novel Children of the Ghetto, Jewish life was lively and vibrant, with almost no connection with the world outside its borders.5 Victorian London, with its norms and values, its splendor and shortcomings, was out of bounds for the Jewish immigrants. The Londoners looked on amazed at this invasion of foreigners, as if observing an anthropological phenomenon. Beatrice Webb, who

London, 1904–1906

conducted a sociological study on London Jews, called them “the aborigines of the East End.”6 Although they were not considered a danger to the public, they engendered unease because of their aspiration to progress and provide their children with a better future. They were suspected of cheating and a tendency to lie: “A Jew never tells the truth unless it’s by mistake,” noted policemen who served in the area.7 Stereotypes of the Jew as a person with all the attributes for financial success and an irrepressible drive to advance in life formed an image of someone who would stop at nothing to succeed. The competition between Jewish and local tailors and cabinetmakers was considered unfair: Jews were prepared to work for next to nothing to provide for their families. Qualities that in the middle class were considered virtues aroused suspicion and derision when found in Jews. Thrift and making do with little were seen as an expression of an uninhibited aspiration to succeed, and a lack of aggression as an expression of unmanliness.8 Thus, the encounter between the East European immigrants and the English population led to considerable alienation and hostility. Jews had lived in England continuously since their return was permitted in the seventeenth century, but they were Jews with a Western tradition, a local education, and acceptable behavior. The only difference between them and the English was their religion, a difference that could be tolerated. This was not the case with the new immigrants, who both looked and behaved like foreigners. This invasion led to notions of limiting immigration into England, but legislation of this kind ran counter to England’s liberal views and tradition of tolerance. Therefore, the public debate continued for some years, but eventually the Aliens Act of 1905 became law, limiting immigration to England and granting broad powers to the immigration officers to decide who was entitled to enter the country. This was an expression of hostility toward an economic competitor and of the fear of losing Britain’s racial purity.9 The act was quite lenient and enabled the continuation of controlled immigration, but its psychological effect was great: a drastic drop in immigration to Britain followed. The United States became the primary immigration destination. Brenner reached London on 2 April 1904 without either luggage or money. He had fled Russia almost penniless, and the journey to London exhausted what little money he had left. He was alone, with no

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friends or acquaintances. He was welcomed by a gray city, the smoke from whose chimneys covered it with a fine layer of soot. His first concern was finding somewhere to live. Initially, he thought about living in the doorways of East End houses, as other homeless Jews did, but he met “one of my brothers from Russia,” who shared his room with him.10 The quarter was filled with “brothers from Russia,” and it seems that he was someone whom Brenner knew well. The man was ­Pelzer, a young man from Pochep and a friend of Uri Nissan ­Gnessin,11 who lived at 66 Jubilee Street. His next concern was finding work. In his letter to Bialik from Prussia, he had asked him—the editor of the Hashiloah literary section who had contacts in the Hebrew literature world—to help him find “literary work.” Brenner suggested that he could write reviews of Russian literature for Hashiloah, adding that if he did not find work he would be forced to “hasten with writing my [stories] to revive my soul”; in other words, the standard of his writing would be lowered.12 In everything pertaining to Hebrew literature, London was a wasteland. The Jews of the East End spoke and read Yiddish, while the rest of England’s Jews spoke and read English. Hebrew interested very few, usually Zionists. As a young man with neither contacts nor knowledge, Brenner had difficulty finding a livelihood as a Hebrew writer. Bialik was his link with the world of Hebrew letters and the Jewish-Russian world he had left behind. An extraordinary relationship developed between the young writer and the poet. It is doubtful that Brenner and Bialik ever met face to face. But their relationship, as described in Haim Be’er’s book, Gam ahavatam, gam sin’atam (Their love and their hate), was amazing in its intensity.13 Less than twenty days after his arrival in London, Brenner sent Bialik the first story he wrote there, “Min hazavit” (From the side).14 At the same time, he complained about the Ahiasaf publishing house, which had not paid his author’s fee on time, and asked him to try and make sure that in future he would receive an advance for his work. Getting money from Ahiasaf was a troublesome process. Brenner repeatedly visited the bookseller to whom the money order was supposed to be sent, but in vain. “I have called on H. twenty times, and he is unable to pay me. I shall not go again,” he wrote bitterly.15 When the money order eventually arrived, the bookseller refused to hand it over because of his own outstanding account

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with Ahiasaf. It was only in early June that Brenner was able to cash the money order, but the bookseller gave him its sterling equivalent at a very low rate of exchange.16 Bialik viewed this prolonged, shameful affair with the detachment of the sated man who does not understand what hunger is. He repeatedly pacified Brenner, claiming that Ahiasaf would not withhold his fee and telling him not to get angry about the delay. Brenner also presented his dilemma to Bialik: he could not teach (whether because he did not want to teach Hebrew or because there was nobody who wanted to learn it or because he knew no ­English). He could, however, work for a Yiddish language journal but hesitated because he viewed it as “killing work” that was liable to injure his soul. In Russia Brenner had written Bund pamphlets in Yiddish, but not literature (although according to one account, he also wrote sketches and stories in Yiddish).17 It is therefore hard to explain his sudden fanaticism for Hebrew. Furthermore, once he realized that the likelihood of making a living from what Ahiasaf paid him was slight, he quickly accepted a job on Die Neue Zeit, the journal of the Social Democrats and the Bund, two Marxist parties that during this period had few sympathizers in London. It was not a chance association. Immediately on his arrival in London, he wrote to the Bund center in Geneva about prospects for work. His name was known to people there, and they had received information about him from their comrades in Russia. They knew he supported the Bund “and could be of assistance to the Bund on the literary level,” mainly in translating from Russian to Yiddish, so they referred him to their man in London.18 It is possible that in this way he was also accepted onto Die Neue Zeit. In his next letter to Bialik, he told him that he had obtained work on a “jargon” (derogatory term for Yiddish) newspaper.19 It was nonliterary work and so, Brenner contended, his soul remained intact because he was giving them only his hand, not his pen—that is, not his literary talent. His job was to write news items, translate, and proofread, tasks that consumed most of his time and energy for ten shillings a week. “It is slowly robbing me of the holy spirit and is increasingly enslaving me,” he reported.20 But he was unwillingly swept into more creative work. He began publishing his own articles on Nikolai Mikhaylovsky and Y. L. Peretz in Die Neue Zeit. Writing in Hebrew as opposed to Russian is

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one of the central motifs in Around the Point, on which Brenner was working at the time. But Abramson, Brenner’s alter ego in the novel, tries his hand at writing in Russian and feels that as a result he is losing his soul, whereas Brenner was writing in Yiddish with no pangs of conscience. Even after his initial period in London, Brenner continued working for Social Democrat and even anarchist journals that preached on matters unacceptable to him. He also translated brochures from Russian into Yiddish for the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the view of the Hebrew language loyalists, his conduct ran counter to his commitment to Hebrew, but when asked about it, he replied that it was solely a matter of making a living.21 It is unlikely that Bialik was overly worried about Brenner’s writing in Yiddish. Indeed, there was competition between the supporters of the two languages for the best writers. Yet a Chinese wall did not stand between the Hebrew and Yiddish. The shift from writing in one language to another was accepted by many writers. Hirsch David Nomberg, Yitzhak Katznelson, Sholem Aleichem, Y. D. Bercovich, and many others wrote in both languages. It was not by chance that Bialik wrote to Sholem Aleichem: “It is time that you dallied less with the ‘maidservant.’ There is, at least, the commandment of having relations with the ‘lady’ regularly, and only going to the ‘maidservant’ for pleasure.”22 The “lady” is of course Hebrew; the “maidservant,” Yiddish. Yiddish was a living, vibrant language with a flexibility and beauty that Hebrew did not yet possess. A dialogue in Yiddish was far more natural than one in Hebrew, which was not yet a spoken language. Bialik himself translated his epic poem “In the City of Slaughter” into Yiddish because Peretz’s translation did not appeal to him. It seems that Brenner’s approach in this matter should not be viewed as a threat to abandon Hebrew in favor of Yiddish, and not even as a hysterical expression of fear for his soul, but as a simple statement to the effect that his work at Die Neue Zeit was sapping his strength, and after a long, exhausting day’s work, he found it hard to sit and write the big new story he had promised Bialik for Hashiloah. More than addressing Bialik’s “Hebrew” soul, Brenner is addressing Bialik the editor who is seeking worthy literary material to fill the pages of Hashiloah. But in everything pertaining to his writing, Brenner possessed greater mental and physical resilience than one might imagine: despite his demanding

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work on Yiddish journals, he started to rewrite Ha’akhronim, whose title would be changed within a short time to Around the Point.23 In early June 1904, Brenner suggested to Bialik that Ahiasaf pay him twenty rubles a month for the exclusive rights to publish his work. After several weeks of haggling, Bialik received approval from the publishing house director.24 Although the money was slow in coming, Brenner devoted every free hour to writing his story. He strove to complete it so that it would be included in the 1904 issues of ­Hashiloah. He was working under pressure, and every tiny thing threw him out of kilter: “I fear that I am losing my mind together with my hero, Abramson,” he wrote to Bialik.25 In a letter to Hillel Zeitlin (of which only a draft has been was found), he hints at the character of his torment: “my life is also unbearable from such aspects that you surely are unable to imagine (you will see some traces of them in my essay ‘Days of Sun,’ which is to be printed in the next issue of Haluakh [Luakh Ahiasaf ]).”26 “Days of Sun” deals with a shy young Jew beset by lust but incapable of doing anything about it with the girl he covets. The writer Lamed Shapiro (Levi Yehoshua Shapiro), who came to London a year after Brenner and befriended him, recounts that Brenner complained to him about “the torments of a young man.” His glands, he said, had taken over and were making his life a misery,27 “glands” being a codeword for sexual desire. Although since his military service Brenner no longer presented himself as a virgin, he could not free himself of his shrinking from relations with women. His unsatisfied sexual desire added to Brenner’s feeling of loneliness and separation in London, where he had not managed to form a spiritual relationship with anyone. His letters to Bialik on the one hand and to Gnessin and Zeitlin on the other were a substitute for the so-important emotional and human contact he longed for. In a letter to Gnessin, he poured out his heart and complained bitterly about his loneliness and misery. In all probability he wrote more or less the same thing as he had to Zeitlin: “I am no longer awaiting redemption and am not thinking about death either.”28 Gnessin urged him to stop looking at reality so straightforwardly because it brought pessimism and depression on him, writing, “Your eyes are open too wide—close them intentionally.” He advised him to flee London for a warmer and friendlier place, where he would feel better.29

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Between May and the end of August 1904, Brenner rewrote, adapted, and made two fair copies of Around the Point. He worked feverishly under difficult conditions. Bialik urged him to complete the work so that the novel could be printed in the last four issues of that year’s Hashiloah. Brenner apologized, writing that he was not in the best of health “from lack of air and little food” and was consequently unable to work without a break. His dire financial straits were not eased. Ahiasaf had not sent him the promised twenty rubles. The man with whom he shared his room was sick, and he too was not earning: “We are suffering significant shortages.” But everything is relative: “When I recall the conditions under which I copied In Winter, I am ashamed to mention such hindrances.”30 Despite the difficulties, at the end of August he sent the manuscript to Bialik and started worrying that it might get lost on the way. Around the Point is one of Brenner’s most fully formed novels. From many standpoints it is a continuation of In Winter, with the same background of Jewish life in Homel, the same circles of young Jews at different stages of acculturation, the same back and forth movement between socialist and Jewish-national worldviews. The focus of the book, however, is not on the crisis of leaving home and abandoning faith but on life in the circles that have already moved into the secular world. It was no coincidence that Berl Katznelson was captivated by Brenner when he read Around the Point, but not when he read In Winter. The “point” [nekuda] represents the Jewish essence in the heart of the young person aspiring toward the lofty worlds of man’s liberation. It does not allow him to break away from his Jewish destiny, neither by means of identification with the Russian people nor by means of ignoring society through radical individualism. The story revolves around three characters: Ya’akov Abramson (Brenner’s alter ego), the young idealist seeking his path, whose name incorporates two of the Jewish people’s patriarchs; Yeva Isakovna, or Chava Blumin (Chaya Wolfson’s alter ego), a young woman who binds her fate to the Russian revolutionary movement; and Uriel Davidovsky (Sander Baum’s alter ago), who is familiar from In Winter. The introduction of Chaya Wolfson (as Yeva Isakovna) into the external circles in Homel is an example of the use Brenner makes of autobiographical material while taking license to change locations

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and subject according to the needs of the fictional story. As we have seen, Brenner did not know Chaya Wolfson in Homel but only later, in Oryol, and she was not a member of the Homel circles he describes. Unlike Rachel Moiseyeva of In Winter, who was apparently a product of Brenner’s imagination, Yeva Isakovna actually existed. In contrast with Rachel’s indifference toward Feuerman, Isakovna displays warmth toward Abramson and is spiritually connected to him. Whereas Rachel is not blessed with any outstanding qualities except for her feminine beauty, Yeva is a human being in every sense of the term: she is a thinking woman with formulated positions who possesses the ability to organize her life rationally, yet with sensitivity toward the pain and suffering of those around her. Isakovna is depicted as a charming, pure-hearted young Jewish girl who has undergone acculturation and is far from Jewish matters and culture. She has a beautiful soul, which she dedicates to the plight of non-Jews. Abramson manages to convince her that the fate of the Jews is no less harsh than that of the Russian peasants, but she still does not understand his preference for particular Jewish matters over general Russian ones. In all the chaos in Menashe Katzman’s house, where the Russified young people meet, and where confusion, absence of direction, and loss of way reign, she is the focal point of order, seriousness, cleanliness, and purity. Isakovna embodies lust for life, the only chance of redemption through spiritual and physical love. The main thrust of the relationship between Yeva Isakovna and Abramson, even though it contains throwbacks to Brenner’s revulsion toward his own body (“a foul smell comes from my mouth”),31 which we have found in In Winter, is built on confrontations around ideology: Abramson writes in only Hebrew, which is not a spoken language and which has neither readers nor literature. For her part, Isakovna does not understand why he does not write in Russian, the language of the masses. Their spiritual and physical closeness is blocked by their ideological differences. Abramson reluctantly keeps away from her because each of them worships a different god. His devotion to Hebrew as his creative language opens an unbridgeable chasm between them. It is a dialogue between the deaf and the mute, for Isakovna does not read Hebrew. Abramson could have bridged the chasm had he written in Russian and would thus have been able to restore harmony to his

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world: “How long will he risk his life and not hear her voice, the voice of life calling out?” he wonders.32 Uriel Davidovsky, who at the end of the story takes his own life, represents the death wish bound up with seeking the meaning of life, which is beyond human reach, the morbid attraction to the void, to chaos. There is something mythical in his name: Uriel, the name of an archangel, and Davidovsky, the Russian version of David, the redheaded boy with beautiful eyes (an allusion to King David). Chava Blumin (Yeva Isakovna’s Jewish name) suggests vitality and order (Chava-Eve, mother of all the living). But to grasp hold of life Abramson must free himself of his loyalty to the Jewish people. For him, writing in Russian means uprooting himself from an entire spiritual world in which he had been rooted since his youth, and when he tries to do it, he feels torn from the source of his creativity: “There is no longer a heavenly voice for me from Mount Horeb!”33 To achieve personal happiness, he must therefore relinquish his identity, give up the inner core of his being, “the Jewish nekuda.” Abramson becomes unhinged when two disasters befall him simultaneously: the pogroms that rock the foundation of his Jewish existence and Davidovsky’s taking the path of nihilism and choosing death, after which there is ­nothing. Whereas before to the pogroms Abramson might have thought about abandoning the Jewish collective, now he is once more unable to, and in his mind he remains “the last one,” the last Jew. The choice of life is taken away from him and so is the choice of death—all that remains is madness. The characters of Isakovna and Davidovsky as two foci of attraction for Abramson also hint at two foci of sexual attraction—a woman and a man—between which he vacillates. Attraction to the woman’s expresses the passion for the positive pole, in which there is also a possibility of continuation in having a family life. Attraction to the man can only lead to a dead end. This is also a frightening, nonnormative desire, which arouses Brenner’s fear. Abramson’s suicidal intentions represent the dark force, the inclination toward self-destruction embodied in attraction to Davidovsky. Abramson flinches from suicide. But he is also unable to connect with Chava Blumin: she threatens his self, his very being. With all the qualities he finds in her, she still stands between him and his commitment to his people, which is his commit-

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ment to himself, to his masculinity. According to this interpretation, Abramson’s derangement is a way of escaping the woman he wants, the woman he loathes, and the woman he fears. His guilt feelings over his bisexual attraction are the cause of his madness. Bialik was seven years Brenner’s senior, all of thirty-one years old. Even though he was a young man from the standpoint of age, he belonged to the generation before Brenner’s from the standpoint of his Hebrew style and his status. In the great debate on the desirable nature of Hebrew literature between Ahad Ha’am and Berdyczewski, Bialik aligned himself with Ahad Ha’am. With all the sympathy and respect he had for Berdyczewski, he was unable to bring himself to publish one of his stories in Hashiloah, even after he was no longer under Ahad Ha’am’s shadow.34 From the point of view of writing style, he liked the works of Simcha Ben-Zion, a writer who did not “smash the tablets,” but he had recognized Brenner’s talent after reading In Winter. “Brenner is a sufficiently mature talent—and in his later years he will surely flourish greatly,” he wrote to Klausner in the fall of 1903. “At present I cannot see a Jewish writer like him among the young ones.”35 This statement contains both praise and reservations: Brenner is the best of the young writers but does not reach the standard of such older writers as ­Mendele Mocher Seforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovich), Sholem Aleichem, or Peretz. Bialik’s reservations about the younger writers were the result of his education in Ahad Ha’am’s Odessa school of thought and probably a consequence of personal inclination as well. The “young ones,” who engaged in literary experimentation, soul searching, and describing the deep psychological recesses of their protagonists in the spirit of Dostoevsky and Russian decadence, did not speak to him. Stories in which everything that takes place does so in the minds of the protagonists left him indifferent. He returned a story to Gnessin that Gnessin himself thought was superb: “After all [Bialik’s] critical comments I am assured that, for the time being, we do not write a story like this twice a year,” Gnessin protested in a letter to Brenner.36 Bialik would impose his own style on the literary pieces given to him for editing and would then complain about the large amount of work he had to put into them to make them worthy of publication. Whenever Ben-Zion gave him a story, he did very little editing on it because Ben-Zion’s approach to writing was close to his own. ­Bercovich gained

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his lavish praise: “More power to your elbow,” he wrote to him.37 In contrast, the young writers frustrated him. “If you only knew how much trouble the two pieces by Brenner and Siko [Meyer Smilan­ ski] caused me,” he wrote to Ben-Zion. “The first [Brenner’s story, ‘­Hendil’], I edited fully and I am pleased with it. But with the second, on which I worked more, I did not succeed. Sometimes the content is the cause, and sometimes the style.”38 Bialik changed the title of the first story Brenner sent from London, “From the Side,” to “The Jerusalemite,” claiming that the first title had already been used by somebody else. In addition, Brenner had dedicated the story to Hillel Zeitlin, but Bialik crossed out the dedication on the ground that dedications contained a personal element inappropriate to Hashiloah.39 Bialik had urged Brenner to complete Around the Point and send it to him, but once he received it, he hemmed and hawed with regard to the writing and its author alike. After reading it for the first time, he wrote to Brenner: “Your novel will apparently become a great work in our literature,” but then proceeded to qualify his praise: “Were ­Hashiloah and yourself in better circumstances, I would advise you to somewhat delay your novel to improve its language.”40 Brenner replied that in his present circumstances he could not postpone publication, adding a request/plea/demand: “Now, and not for the first time, I request that you exercise very great restraint when amending words in my story . . . especially when everything I have written in Around the Point has been written intentionally.”41 Bialik’s next letter, written after he had finished reading the novel, was filled with words of praise for Brenner: “You are the new Hebrew writer of our time in the full sense of the term.” The relatively unpolished style of Around the Point is more than atoned for by its other qualities: “A living soul, fiery emotion, and a burning idea permeate each line and flutter in every letter.” Not only is the influence of the great Russian writers clearly evident in Brenner’s writing, Bialik views him as another link in the chain of Hebrew literature, in a new image: “The power of your work, even though it appears to be European, is fundamentally a Hebrew creative power. And of a man of the Diaspora, of course, a man of the exile of our time, whose desire is greater than his ability—who sees the decadence of the nation and wants its freedom and believes and does not believe in the possibility of freedom . . . —strives and cries out in pain, suspended between

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thousands of magnets, and cuts off from his own flesh strip by strip with white hot tongs.” In the book’s characters, ­Bialik sees symbolic figures of the movements in the present-day life of Jews, which are not nurtured by deep roots; the notions guiding them are unfounded, and so they quickly disappear from the world. “It all sparkles and withers in one day,” and “there is no absolute truth but only at the side of the ridicule, humiliations, and poverty of our life.” But to this litany of lavish praise Bialik adds a critical comment: “Incidentally, the language of your novel requires revision, please try to improve your language.” Although novels such as these are written feverishly, they should be held back and improved. “You have your own language,” Bialik acknowledges, “but sloppiness is clearly evident in it.”42 This letter probably aroused mixed feelings in Brenner. There was further correspondence over the long months during which the novel was published in installments in Hashiloah. Bialik claimed that Brenner wrote things that were superfluous to and unnecessary for the storyline, that he adopted a “nonobjective” tone, that he tended to “relate everything all at once and in a single breath.” He advised Brenner: “Improve your talent, my brother, and be not hasty in your spirit.”43 This horrified Brenner: “I long to see the coming issues, for fear rises in me,” he wrote to Bialik. He admired the poet and found it hard to protest against him, but he had no hesitation in standing up for his right to express himself in his own way: “Do you not yet know that I do not write a word without good reason,” he reproves him.44 Brenner’s style is not polished; it is intentionally rough. He sought to translate the Yiddish vernacular into Hebrew and create a natural dialogue in it. The roughness did not derive from either impatience or haste, and not even from a limited ability to express himself. It was the writer’s personal style, which in his view properly expressed the inner content of his words. Bialik did not like this form of writing. He attempted to educate Brenner the way a senior editor educates a novice writer, teaching him to write a Hebrew acceptable to him and in the form of an epic, whose narrative line is clear and understandable for the reader. Yet he pacified Brenner: “Have no fear. Your novel will come to no harm. I am not amending and correcting for the sake of convenience.”45 Brenner had no qualms about telling Bialik that he was mistaken with his corrections. It seems that Bialik did not agree.46 But Bialik was

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Bialik, Hashiloah was the important Hebrew monthly, and Brenner was forced to swallow his pride and sent Bialik his next story, “Travel Notes.” Bialik was not pleased. He poured out his heart to Klausner on the low standard of the writing, which placed a heavy burden on the editor. “Woe betide us that our literature and writers have come to this,” he complained bitterly.47 To Brenner he wrote: “Your last ‘piece’ is shallow and bad in its content, its form, and its language. After the numerous corrections I have made—perhaps it is worthwhile for Hashiloah, but from you, my friend—I have the right to demand better than this.” He lectured him about his slovenliness in a way a teacher would chastise an outstanding student who has gone astray.48 For several years Brenner avoided giving his “brainchildren” to Bialik. He did not bear a grudge toward the poet and continued to admire and appreciate him, but he took care not to reestablish editor-writer relations with him. It seems that Ahiasaf’s delays in paying his fee, along with his frustration at Bialik’s aggressive editing, drove Brenner to seek a different publisher. He offered his services as a writer to Ben-Avigdor at Tushiya, which had published his first book. At the same time, BenAvigdor joined Hazman (The time), the important Vilna daily newspaper and monthly journal, as a partner. Brenner’s proposal was in accord with Ben-Avigdor’s aspirations to raise the quality of Hazman, and he hastened to invite Brenner to participate in these efforts, assuring him, “you will be pleased with the salary I shall set for you.”49 Two months later, he was approached by the daily Hatzofeh (The observer), edited by one of his admirers, A. Elyashuv (who used the pseudonym Ba’al Makhshoves, “The Thinker”), who also said he would publish his work. “We can assure you,” wrote Elyashuv, “that we shall know how to appreciate your work and offer you a salary commensurate with it.”50 In 1905 Brenner published one work in the Hazman monthly, Le’et ata (For the time being), his first attempt at writing a play, and an essay, “Hakahal doresh” (The audience demands) in the Hazman daily. His first two pieces of journalism also appeared in Hazman. He published a series of articles in Hatzofeh, “Rishmei sha’a” (Current impressions), and in the London newspaper Hayehudi, edited by Isaac Suwalsky, he tried his hand as a book reviewer. All of these were published in 1905. Meanwhile, he continued

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working as a proofreader, translator, and editor for Yiddish language journals and Socialist Revolutionary publications. These activities cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that Brenner was needy and went hungry in London. In the year between fall 1904 and fall 1905, Brenner’s life is partially shrouded in mist. Brenner lived in London as an anonymity. He frequented three libraries: the Hebrew one, known as the Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque, which was poorly stocked; the Russian library, founded by Russian revolutionaries who lived in London, such as Kropotkin and Tschaikovsky; and the London Mission to the Jews Library, which had more modern Hebrew journals than the Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque.51 The libraries were a refuge for London’s Jewish vagrants, a place where they could get warm and even have a cup of tea. The Russian Library was the meeting place of the various revolutionary movements. There people could catch up with what was happening in Russia’s turbulent world, to which the Jewish émigrés remained connected by ties of love and yearning. An anarchist club opened in February 1906 under the leadership of Rudolf Rocker, a non-Jew who joined the Jewish anarchist movement and learned to speak Yiddish; debates and lectures were held there, and Brenner used to visit.52 Additionally, there was the Club und Institut Arbeiter Freund (Workers’ Friend Club and Institute), a socialist club in the East End, where Brenner worked for a time as a librarian.53 Jonah Spivak—a young Ukrainian passing through London on his way to the United States, where he became active in the Jewish trade unions and wrote for the Hebrew and Yiddish press—describes a chance meeting with Brenner, who was already well known to readers of Hebrew literature and admired by Spivak after he read In Winter.54 Spivak was sitting in the Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque reading room perusing the issues of Hashiloah that contained In Winter. Unable to contain himself, he tried to share his enjoyment of the novel with his neighbor at the table. At first the broad-shouldered, badly dressed man did not respond, but after Spivak praised the author for his simple, heartwarming language, and “the sickliness he has introduced to our literature from the depths and adorned it with sanctity,” the man softened and a conversation ensued. And then Brenner shyly introduced himself to his young admirer. Spivak’s attempt to announce Brenner’s

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presence was thwarted: the library’s director was sure he was an imposter and the upshot was that Brenner and Spivak were shown the door. At the end of October 1904, Brenner was forced to leave his quarters and look for other lodgings.55 The friend in whose room he was a subtenant had apparently left London.56 At about the same time, or perhaps slightly earlier, Brenner and Kalman Marmor established contact. Marmor, a Jewish-Russian intellectual four years older than Brenner, was born in Vilna, had studied at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, and was a political activist whose raison d’être was involvement in public life. As a radical Zionist, he had attended several congresses and even took part in conferences championing the Hebrew language. He was a member of the Democratic Fraction (an organization of young, mostly Russian Zionists) and collaborated with Chaim Weizmann (another young Russian Zionist who had arrived in London penniless), with Moses Gaster, rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community in England, and others. Marmor headed the Ma’aravi (Western) society, whose objective was to generate a spiritual, economic, and social renaissance in Western Asia. When most of the society’s members emigrated to the United States, Marmor sought a new political address. He joined one of the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) circles in Britain. At the time, societies that sought a synthesis between Zionism and socialism were established in various places, using the name Poalei Zion. Marmor became the leader of Poalei Zion in Britain. When he moved to the United States in 1906, he became one of the movement’s leaders there. In 1907, along with Ber Borochov, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and others, he founded the World Union of Poalei Zion in The Hague.57 It is unclear who brought Brenner into the Marmor household, which at the time included Kalman, his wife Sarah-Shifra, and their baby son, Shmuelik. It appears that Brenner was attracted to the warm family atmosphere and the feeling of being at home with the young family. When a small room in the Marmor home became vacant, he moved in and shared a room with Kalman. The length of time he lived with the Marmor family is unclear, but it seems that he moved in with them in the fall of 1904 and by August 1905 no longer lived there. The collaboration between the two men during this period was intense and continued after Brenner moved into different lodgings.

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Marmor drew Brenner into activity in Poalei Zion. Because he did not want his Ma’aravi activity to be identified with Poalei Zion, he persuaded Brenner to take the post of secretary of Poalei Zion in Britain; Marmor would do all the organizational work. The use he made of Brenner’s name is instructive: it proves, first, that Brenner had a reputation among the Zionists and second, that Brenner agreed to be publicly identified with Zionist positions. This was the period that followed Herzl’s death, a time of feebleness in the Zionist movement. The main issue on the agenda of the circles that sought a territorial solution to “the Jewish question” was “the Uganda scheme.” The territorialists were willing to accept a territory in East Africa (in present-day Kenya, not Uganda), which the British offered Herzl for Jewish settlement, instead of Palestine. When the plan was shelved because the territory was not suitable for mass settlement, they continued looking for other alternatives. The territorialists in Britain, led by the writer Israel Zangwill, held considerable sway. At the time, Palestine seemed to be an unattainable dream. In his memoirs, Berl Katznelson recounts that in his youth he too was a follower of the territorialist idea.58 This was the great public debate, and Marmor devoted all his energy to it. He was devoted heart and soul to “Zion Zionism.” It was at this time that Brenner began to try journalistic writing and published a series of articles on topical matters in Hazman against the backdrop of the uprootedness of the Jewish emigrants in London, who had not struck roots in their new domicile. The misery of existence and the force of the ideological debates were the topics through which he described the life of Jews in London’s East End. His “universities” were the Zionist and Russian libraries and the socialist club where the intelligentsia gathered for momentous debates while Georgi ­Plekhanov and Marx looked down on them from the wall. The hollowness of the harangues and the mockery and sarcasm with which the majority of the speakers treated those considered “idealists”—that is, anyone who was not a materialist—roused Brenner into concluding one of his articles with a sketch whose protagonist was Brenner himself: “Before dawn he took down Hirszenberg’s wonderfully tragic painting, ‘Exile,’ from the wall above his head and tore it into tiny pieces: Gypsies are not in exile.”59 Brenner saw himself as a nationalist Jew whose nation was East European Jewry, for whose fate he was in

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fear. He emphasized the Zionist element not in its political sense, but in its broader, sociocultural one, which he defined as “restoration of the national power and resilience to the Jewish nation, reform of our past and healing of the terrible breach in our history.”60 But he shrank from the political Zionists who believed that they could lead the way to a Jewish state under the aegis of the world powers and also from the culture of Zionist congresses and Zionistic chatter, which for him were evidence of the nation’s feebleness. His Zionism was more a psychological commitment than an ideological doctrine, and that commitment was deeply linked with a socialist worldview. His friend Lamed Shapiro claimed that socialism for Brenner meant simply that every human being should have food.61 During this period Marmor, who would change his taste and become a fervent communist, based his own socialism on the words of the Prophets, while opposing materialist perceptions. There was a meeting of minds between the two friends but not identification. Marmor contended that Brenner did not possess a comprehensive political theory. He even defined him as lacking a will of his own, as a man easily influenced. As long as Brenner was close to him, Marmor claimed, Brenner was under his influence and accepted his views on socialist Zion Zionism. He therefore agreed to lend his name as secretary of Poalei Zion in ­Britain. Marmor would write letters in Brenner’s name and on occasion, if the addressee was unfamiliar with Brenner’s handwriting, he would also sign them.62 It appears that it was Marmor who connected Brenner with Naroditsky’s printing press. Israel Naroditsky, an educated member of Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) from Zhitomir in the Vohynia administrative district and a friend of Bialik’s from their youth, arrived in London on his way to South Africa. He had heard that there were gold mines there and intended to make his fortune, which he would dedicate to building the Land of Israel. Like many others, he was temporarily held up in London, and instead of following his original plan, he settled there. He did not abandon his Zionist beliefs. He named his children Bar-Kokhva, Zerubavel, and Carmel in recognition of his hopes. He sank his love for his people and Jewish culture into the Hebrew type with which he printed beautiful editions of Hebrew and Yiddish books, May Day pamphlets, and holiday announcements. He was

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not fussy about the work he took on, and with the exception of pornographic, racist, or illegal literature, he was prepared to print anything. More than once he trod the thin line between legal and illegal literature with regard to socialist and anarchist revolutionary literature.63 Brenner’s first publication printed by Naroditsky was a free adaptation and translation into Yiddish of a polemical pamphlet supporting Zion Zionism, written by future Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, which was now titled “Far vus villen mir davka Eretz Yisroel un nit glatt a territoria in welt arein?” (Why do we need Eretz Yisrael in particular and not any other territory?). Brenner signed it Y. Mehaber (Author), and the piece appeared in 1905 as a first publication by the London Poalei Zion. The publishing house’s logo appeared on the cover page, a Star of David with the word “Zion” in its center. This was the first tangible collaboration for Marmor, Brenner, and Naroditsky. Russian political tradition based the existence of a party on three elements: apparatus, propaganda, and an organ. When he took over the organization of Poalei Zion in Britain, Marmor followed the the accepted modes. The acme of his activities was the monthly Die Jüdische Freiheit (Jewish liberty), whose subhead was “Organ of the Radical Zion­ist Workers.” The Star of David logo with the word “Zion” was also incorporated into its masthead. Two sentences in a box appeared on its front page: the first, a quotation from Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher, “Redemption of the People of Israel is dependent upon redemption of the Land of Israel”; the second, “Workers of all Countries Unite, under the Banner of Poalei Zion.” Thus, the Zionist-Socialist balance was maintained. Naroditsky expressed his love of Zionism and socialism by providing the magazine with a fine graphic format. Marmor was its editor and also wrote the leading article and several other columns. Brenner assisted with the editing. The first issue came out in April 1905 and the second in June of that year. Gershon Schoffman’s story “Akharey hara’ash” (After the pogrom) was published in the second issue, translated into Yiddish by Brenner under the title “Nochen pogrom.” Appearing in the inside page of this issue was an advertisement for the booklet by Y. Mehaber. The magazine announced the opening of a free Zionist library and the Ness Zion School, in which Hebrew was the medium of instruction, with A. L. Bisko as its principal. The advertisement for Bisko’s heder was at odds with Brenner’s own

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attitude; indeed, in Around the Point he sarcastically criticizes such a heder. At the time, Brenner thought that there was no likelihood that Hebrew would become a spoken language, and he also did not think it necessary; there was no reason to twist one’s tongue in laughable Hebrew when one could speak Yiddish comfortably. He clashed with Hebrew teachers on this issue, among them Isaac Yanishevsky, his ­Poalei Zion comrade. When they addressed him in Hebrew, he replied in Yiddish.64 Some claim that while he was in London, he even refused to teach Hebrew for a living. This was not the case with writing, for which he gave clear priority to Hebrew. Literature must be written in Hebrew, but the language is acquired by its lovers with great difficulty and anguish. The shift to Sephardic pronunciation was also difficult for those who spoke Ashkenazi-accented Hebrew. Brenner viewed both Yiddish and Hebrew as the languages of the Jewish people. To express his position on this issue he devoted one of his articles to a harsh attack on several of the Yiddish newspapers, particularly Die Jüdische Wort, edited by his old friend Avrom Reisen, which claimed that Yiddish was the exclusive national language. “There is no fruitful national language in its full sense without ancient traditions and deep roots in the soul of the nation,” he reproved them.65 Like other left-wing organs, Die Jüdische Freiheit was published with donations from the party’s members and supporters. Marmor recounts how Brenner was profoundly excited by an article of Marmor’s that described the ideological development of a Jewish youth so influenced by exemplary Biblical and Talmudic figures that they led him to the modern revolutionary ideas of liberation of the people, the working class, the Jew, and humanity. Carried away by these feelings, he took from his pocket a handful of pennies he had saved and put them on the table—a total of four shillings and nine pence, his contribution to  the publication of the first issue.66 The second issue contained a list of ­donors, with the major donor, Naroditsky, contributing seven ­shillings. Brenner’s name was very high on the list, with a contribution of three shillings, a tidy sum for him (according to Marmor, when a shilling once dropped into a crack in the floorboards in his house, Brenner took up the whole floor to find it67). Most of the donors contributed less than a shilling. It may be assumed that Naroditsky behaved generously; when Marmor had difficulty raising funds, he

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waived the charges for printing, which he also did for other publications close to his heart.68 It seems that Die Jüdische Freiheit served as a model for Brenner when he published his journal Hameorer along the same lines a few months later. The friendship between Brenner and Marmor—and Brenner’s activity in Poalei Zion—continued. In a letter he wrote in the summer of 1905, Brenner sounds optimistic and even full of vim and vigor: “My situation is improving, and there is no doubt that I shall not die of hunger. I am also working hard with the spirit of nationalism soaring within me. I also speak in public and am writing stories and sketches.”69 The “spirit of nationalism” and the public speaking he mentions refer to his activity in Poalei Zion. His friend Marmor would travel all over England, spreading the word on behalf of Socialist Zionism. His appearances as a speaker and preacher, from which he reaped great satisfaction, were compensation for his misery at home. To all appearances, life in the Marmor home was idyllic, but tension was rife in the family, mainly because Marmor barely earned anything. His work for Poalei Zion was unpaid. It is also doubtful that he was paid for editing Die Jüdische Freiheit. He poured out his heart to Brenner, regretting that he had not learned tailoring (his wife was an outstanding seamstress). Had he learned tailoring, he would have been able to provide for his family and travel as a preacher “from city to city, state to state, country to country, to awaken human recognition in man’s heart.” But he did not have a profession. The party promised to send him to the United States, and he eagerly awaited fulfillment of this promise. “If I remain in London and am dependent on she who plies the needle, I shall sink into the mire until water covers me and I am cleansed . . . or I am covered by darkness and extinguished,” he wrote. But he swiftly recovered: “I hope that tomorrow evening I shall forget my last words in this letter and again feel what I felt in my first lectures, if not for the audience, then for myself, for I desire to live, if only for a few hours.”70 His public activity gave Marmor an excuse for staying away from home and also filled his profound need for acknowledgement and status. He dreamed Nietzschean dreams, to live a life filled with vitality and passion, to soar to unattainable heights, to “a place where there is no good and bad, pure and unclean, righteous and evildoers, lovers and haters.” He felt something of this when delivering his lectures to an

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admiring audience, but after these exhilarating flights he would land on the ground of the wretched reality where he was dependent on his wife’s needle.71 Marmor’s frequent absences from home may have caused an embarrassing situation regarding the presence of the single lodger in the house. In any event, in August 1905 Brenner was already living in Naroditsky’s print shop at 48 Mile End Road, the famous London address at which he lived until he left the city. Between May and August 1905, Brenner became close to Naroditsky, who taught him typesetting. Printing was a job for frustrated educated men who had difficulty finding work, and the print shop was traditionally the meeting place of the educated proletariat. Brenner was not the only such person to be taught typesetting by Naroditsky. Rudolf Rocker, the German anarchist who headed the Jewish anarchist party in London, also learned the trade from him. This was Naroditsky’s way of supporting the publications close to his heart, whose owners were unable to pay their debts.72 Brenner lived in a small, miserable room on the second floor, overlooking a yard whose filth and gloom were depressing. “The room was small, its walls sooty, and its furniture—an almost bare iron bedstead, a rickety table with no cloth, a red wooden chest bound with rusted iron.”73 The next room housed boxes of type. Naroditsky’s family made friends with Brenner, and he was even invited to the circumcision ceremony for Naroditsky’s first son. He also shared meals with the printers that included pickled herring, fish soup, potatoes boiled in their jackets, and black bread. From the adjoining shop wafted the smell of that standard English fare, fried fish and chips. Occasionally, Brenner would bring some chips to the meal. He was known as a bashful man, and Mrs. Naroditsky recalls his even being shy of shopping in the adjacent grocery shop.74 Brenner was engaged in editing and translating for the Social-­ Democrat Neue Zeit and the paper of the opposition anarchists who had left Rocker’s organization, the Freie Arbeiter Welt. He also translated brochures for the Socialist Revolutionaries into Yiddish.75 He even corresponded with S. An-sky (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport), who was living in Switzerland, about writing articles for the Socialist Revolutionary paper.76 Brenner had no qualms about writing in Yiddish: the pieces he wrote for Poalei Zion were in that language. Publication

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of his stories in Yiddish would have brought him a handsome sum. Around the Point was published in the Russian monthly ­Yevreyskaya Zhizn (Jewish life) in 1906 and apparently brought him a further sum,77 in addition to the regular author’s fee he received for the journalistic articles he published in the Hebrew papers at this time. It is therefore difficult to understand why he needed to learn typesetting and why he complained about scarcity and lack of work.78 The image of Brenner shouldering the entire burden of Hameorer became part of the Brenner myth, but there is no answer to the question of why he worked as a typesetter. Following the success of his books, it is inconceivable that Brenner despaired of making a living from writing. The writer Lamed S ­ hapiro, who passed through London on his way to the United States, met with Brenner and befriended him. According to Marmor, Brenner was capable of displays of great generosity (he would send the income from his books to his family for his sister’s dowry) but also of decided miserliness (he would save pennies, which he counted from time to time). In this case, he showed his great beneficence in this case, giving Shapiro the editorship of the Freie Arbeiter Welt because Shapiro had no source of income. After one week, however, Shapiro was summarily dismissed for overediting. Although Brenner went back to editing the paper, his generous gesture was not forgotten.79 He needed very little to subsist (he lived like an ascetic monk), but he was a proud pauper. When he rightly suspected that the Marmor family was feeding him at their expense, he refused to eat with them. To overcome his opposition, Sarah-Shifra set out her food expenses in detail and proved that this was the cheapest meal he could obtain.80 Another story in the long line of Brenner’s acts of generosity is told by Asher Beilin, who came to Brenner’s room by chance and saw the embarrassed writer preparing a repast of sweetmeats for a band of street urchins. Such examples do not indicate any genuine financial straits or explain why Brenner turned his hand to typesetting. April 1905 brought a pogrom to Zhitomir, Naroditsky’s birthplace. This was only a prelude to the series of vicious pogroms that erupted in October that year as a reaction to the first Russian revolution. In response to the events in Zhitomir, Brenner wrote “Hu amar la” (He told her), an emotional call to young Jews to enlist for self-defense.81

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The story is written as the monologue of a youngster seeking to join his friends in the fight, who argues with his mother when she tries to stop him. The conceptual world of traditional Jewish society clashed with that of the younger generation, which had abandoned the faith of its forefathers and refused to accept maltreatment or abuse of the individual’s and the nation’s honor. Brenner preached Jewish activism, a sort of outspoken, specific continuation of “In the City of Slaughter,” Bialik’s response to the pogrom in Kishinev in 1903. On the slim booklet he wrote that revenues would be “devoted to self-defense.” Although “He Told Her” is not one of Brenner’s more profound stories, his writing talent rescues it from becoming just another political pamphlet. Much later, it became one the most popular and influential works in the education of youth movements in Palestine. In early summer 1905, Brenner was mulling over the idea of publishing his own Hebrew monthly. Public and journalistic activity in collaboration with Marmor had shown him that it was not impossible, even though Jewish London was not immersed in Hebrew culture and was not holding its breath over the attempts to publish a Hebrew language journal. In the course of 1905, Brenner’s journalistic work was also part of his preparations to publish the journal. He stopped seeing his vocation as that of solely a writer, as he had in his youth and during his military service, and began seeing himself as a committed intellectual. This was the result of the maturation of his talents, his personality, and his self-confidence. Yet the demons that assailed him and caused bouts of depression continued to torment him. In summer 1905, Joseph Lian (Linn), man of letters and editor, visited London, and through the good offices of Isaac Suwalsky, editor of the London newspaper Hayehudi, he met Brenner, who knew of him from his writing. They discussed the possibility of publishing a journal that would be a joint enterprise of the Berlin Zionists and the London Hebrew Speakers Society. They even agreed on the journal’s name, Hameorer (The awakener). The idea was to enlist the required support for the journal at the Seventh Zionist Congress, which was to be held in Basel at the end of July 1905.82 In early August that year, Brenner wrote to Bichovsky and told him, among other things, about the plan to publish a journal that would be called Ha’avuka (The torch), and asked him to activate the old network of friends from Pochep on the

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journal’s behalf.83 However, immediately after the congress, Lian informed Brenner that all their plans had come to naught: the Berlin people did not want to back an enterprise headquartered in London. Brenner was bitterly disappointed, and in early September he informed Bichovsky about the plan’s failure: “The cloud of darkness is mocking ‘The Torch.’”84 It was Brenner’s habit to change the titles of his works several times. In this case too it seems that he came up with the two names, Ha’avuka and Hameorer, and finally decided on the second.85 Both names were drawn from the Russian revolutionary cultural milieu. Hameorer is reminiscent of Alexander Herzen’s mid-nineteenth-­century Kolokol (Bell), which was well known in the revolutionary world. It was published outside Russia but was aimed at the tsarist readership, and this is what Brenner hoped for with his own journal. Avuka (Torch) is reminiscent of Iskra (Spark), Lenin’s newspaper, whose fire motif served as a message of liberty and revolution. Brenner was possibly also influenced by the name of the Bund organ, Der Weker (The awakener). In any event, he sought a name with active “presence,” with pretensions of shaping public opinion. Compared to the names of the Hebrew papers of the time—Hazman, Hatzofeh, Hashiloah, and, appearing later, Haolam (The world)—Hameorer was evocative. After despairing of the partnership idea with the Berlin Zionists, the London Hebrew Speakers Society (Brenner’s allies in the stillborn enterprise) decided to establish a literary association that would be a sort of subsidiary of their society, with the aim of publishing a Hebrew journal in London. Its prime movers were Naroditsky, S. B. Maximovsky (a Zionist essayist and disciple of Ahad Ha’am), and Selig Brodetsky (later one of Britain’s Zionist leaders). In September 1905, it was decided that Brenner would be the editor of the journal, which would be called Hameorer “in accord with the suggestion of the future editor.” Following the financing setup of Die Jüdische Freiheit, the new journal would be financed by the association’s membership fees, whereby each member would pay no less than five shillings in installments over three months. The initial preparations were made in September–October 1905, with the first edition due to come out in mid-December.86 But then came a break of more than a month in the association’s meetings, which was apparently connected with events

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that had taken place in Russia in the second half of October and early November 1905. On 17 October Tsar Nikolas II issued the Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order, the precursor of Russia’s first constitution. On the face of it, this was the moment of triumph for the mainly constitutional 1905 Revolution, but the manifesto engendered confusion and led to ferocious incitement against the democratic forces in Russia, which were presented as plotting to depose the tsar. It was not long before the incitement was redirected against the Jews, who in the propaganda promulgated by the loyalist Black Hundreds were depicted as being responsible not only for the Russo-Japanese War, in whose wake the 1905 Revolution came about, but also as seeking to change the character of Holy Russia by turning it into a democracy. Pogroms of a previously unknown scope and brutality broke out. Within two to three weeks there were 660 such atrocities, mainly in the south and southeast of the Pale of Settlement. More than 3,500 Jews were killed and more than 10,000 wounded.87 This quantum leap in the scope of the pogroms, their severity, and the number of dead and wounded was dramatic. Only two years earlier, the world had been shocked by the Kishinev pogrom, in which fewer than fifty Jews were killed; compared to what took place in October 1905, this was an insignificant event. The news apparently reached London at the end of the first week of November. Apart from the terrible national calamity, Brenner was dealt a personal blow: Bichovsky wrote him that Chaya Wolfson had been murdered. She was nineteen years old. The character of Chaya Wolfson, the girl from Oryol who became friendly with Brenner during his military service and was the driving force behind his rescue from the prisoners’ column to Bobruysk, is lovingly and delicately depicted by Brenner in Around the Point. Contact between them had continued during his stay in London.88 ­Bichovsky informed him that Chaya was well and in the Crimean city of S ­ imferopol.89 In “He Told Himself,” the story of lamentation Brenner wrote about Chaya some six months after her death,90 the narrator mentions a bundle of letters in Russian that his beloved had sent him. This is a reference to letters Chaya wrote to Bichovsky, in which she had mentioned Brenner, that Bichovsky forwarded to Brenner after her death.91 In them her personality and character shine

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through. The relationship between Brenner and Chaya Wolfson was one between a relatively adult man who aspired to the innocence and optimism, idealism and willingness for self-sacrifice of a young girl who embodied a belief in life and goodness. While she was alive, he did not clarify for himself whether he loved her. His feelings for her were charged with sin and guilt, for he wanted not only her but others too. “She was a woman and more than a woman. And you had no faith in your feelings for her. You knew how you thought about the woman . . . and about her.”92 This combination of pure and lustful love was difficult for Brenner. There was something monkish in him that prevented him from submitting to his desire and recognizing it as an inseparable part of his love. His reserve, his decision not to become close to her, he explained, stemmed from his total despair, which sentenced him to flee from happiness. That her soul was bound to his seemed a mystery to Brenner, as it is for the narrator: “What did she find in you? What was she waiting for from the heavy, sick you? Did she know that there is no love for a man whose substance is nothing?”93 It is doubtful that Chaya loved Brenner in the physical sense. There can, however, be no doubt that her heart went out to him, that he was dear to her, and that she hoped to restore in him faith in goodness, the future, and hope. She eagerly awaited the revolution, “the awakening dawn,” and believed that a new period of light was about to begin in the history of Russia. Instead, there were pogroms. The narrator describes how he learned of her death: “And those days came / And the hand of madness comes to stun you / And for many days you lay motionless / And then you saw on a list the name of that city / Then you sat and wrote to her / But there was already no one to reply.”94 The 16 November 1905 issue of Hatzfira carried a notice containing the names of the victims of the “Days of October” who were killed on 18 October. Among them was “Chaya, daughter of Dov Wolfson, zemstvo [local government] worker.”95 According to her brother Boaz, she had been in Surazh but was bored, so she asked his permission to come to him in Simferopol. At the time, he was employed by the Bureau of Statistics, where she too found work. At the end of the summer, he returned to his university studies and Chaya remained in Simferopol. The day after the tsar announced the manifesto, a demonstration in support of the democratic movement was held in the

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city park and ­attended by the city’s socialists and liberal elements, Jews and non-Jews alike. The demonstrators were attacked by the ultranationalist Black Hundreds, who beat them, wounding and killing them, especially the Jews. Chaya was hit with a truncheon and lost consciousness. A park keeper dragged Chaya to her hut to rescue her. On recovering consciousness, she hurried back out to rejoin her comrades, but in the meantime the crowd had dispersed and only the assailants remained in the park. They beat her with anything they could lay hands on, and she died on the spot. She was identified only by the clothes she was wearing.96 On 23 November 1905, Brenner wrote to Bichovsky: “Shimon, today I started to recover somewhat from the daze that has beset me in recent days, and especially after receiving your news. The Valley of Slaughter is wider and deeper than I had ever thought. Commiserate with me, brother.”97 The last words refer to his personal tragedy, a drop in the ocean of the overall Jewish calamity, but a very bitter drop nonetheless. This was the only occasion on which Brenner referred specifically to his personal loss. In his memoirs, Rabbi Benjamin (Yehoshua Redler-Feldman), Brenner’s partner in Hameorer, describes Brenner as elusive about revealing what this Chaya Wolfson meant to him, saying only, “My sister has been murdered.” He mourned her for many months. “His appearance at the time was the appearance of Job.”98 He would stand setting the type of Hameorer, and “not a word came from his lips, his hair was unkempt, his thoughts were wild, the private and personal sorrow burned and smoldered, smoldered and burned.”99 About six months later, he published a booklet titled Lo  khlum [Nothing] with two stories, one of which was “He Told Himself,” his lament for Chaya Wolfson. “Lo khlum is very depressing,” Gershon Schoffman wrote to Asher Beilin. “The shadow of the letter writer (‘He Told Himself’) follows me through the streets and pathways of Lemberg [Lvov]. A!”100 Yet the terrible pain did not discourage Brenner. Sometimes a burst of pain would even shake him out of his depression. It was as if he were sinking his pain and despair into unceasing work with an attack of energy and initiative that dulled the pain. In early December 1905, some ten days after Brenner wrote “commiserate with me, brother” to Bichovsky, there was a meeting of the Masada Association, a sub-

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sidiary of the London Hebrew Speakers Society. The meeting was attended by Rabbi Benjamin, who had studied in Berlin and published articles in the Hebrew press. He had come to London in fall 1905. A short time after his arrival, he attended what was known in those days as a neshef (gathering), a study evening organized by the Hebrew Speakers Society at which S. B. Maximovsky (one of the first supporters of Hameorer) read Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye der ­milkhiker” (Tevye the  dairyman) for the enjoyment of an audience of several dozen. In the middle of the reading, a group of excited Poalei Zion youths burst in. One of those present, the teacher Y. H. Lasek-Cohen, pointed out one of them to Rabbi Benjamin: “That’s Brenner.” Worlds separated the student from Galicia, who was not a revolutionary, and the ragamuffin writer. But Rabbi Benjamin met him a few days later at the rundown, empty Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque, where their friendship was forged—a friendship “between two people as distant and foreign as two stars” is how Rabbi Benjamin described their encounter.101 It was an alliance on which Hameorer was founded. Brenner needed an intellectual partner and comrade in this literary adventure. In the wasteland of Hebrew literature in London at the time, the appearance of Rabbi Benjamin—some of whose work Brenner had read in Luakh Ahiasaf of 1903 and admired—was something of a miracle. Brenner had found the partner he was looking for.102 The first fruit of their collaboration was naming the Hameorer association “Masada” (Fortress), after the last stronghold of the rebels against Rome in 70 CE. The name was not a neutral one, but the first expression of the sense of “the last stand” that attended the monthly’s publication. The name Hameorer had been decided on before Brenner was joined by Rabbi Benjamin, who had reservations about it, but Brenner refused to change it. The name “Masada” was a joint decision that came in the wake of the events in Russia and the feeling of calamity and crisis. The meeting held on 3 December 1905 was a seminal event, in which responsibility for the journal was transferred from the London Hebrew Speakers Society to Masada. In honor of the society’s initiative, it was agreed that the cover page would bear the legend: “Founded by the London Hebrew Speakers Society.” It was also decided that Hameorer would be a monthly. The attempt by the teacher Yanishevsky to restrict Brenner’s editorship to solely literary

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matters was thwarted by Rabbi Benjamin, who explained that it would be an untenable restriction for an editor, and that it was impossible to accurately distinguish between literary and thematic material. Brenner and Rabbi Benjamin were appointed joint editors. Elected to the ­Hameorer committee were Zionist cultural activists in London: LasekCohen, Maximovsky, Naroditsky, A. Don-Yihye, and S. L. Creditor.103 Additional names appearing in the Hameorer records are Yanishevsky and Bogadin of Poalei Zion. A comparison of the names involved in the publication of Die Jüdische Freiheit and those involved in the publication and distribution of Hameorer shows that the same culturalpolitical circle supported and aided both of them. The committee convened frequently over the next few weeks. Two days after the founding meeting, another was held that decided on the journal’s format, the scope of each issue, and discussed cost estimates. Among other things, the editors’ remuneration was determined: Lasek-Cohen suggested that Rabbi Benjamin be paid thirty shillings per issue (that is, per month). Rabbi Benjamin said he would be satisfied with twenty-five shillings but asked for fifty percent of the advertising revenue. Naroditsky suggested that the joint editors should be paid a lump sum, to be shared. Apart from writing and editing, Brenner would also do the typesetting, while Rabbi Benjamin would deal with the journal’s administrative matters. Brenner was not present at this meeting, and his colleague announced on his behalf that at present he would waive his editor’s fee and make do with his typesetter’s wage. This suggestion, as well as Rabbi Benjamin’s wage demands, was accepted by the committee. Within two months, however, Rabbi Benjamin had had enough of administration, submitted his resignation, and suggested that the committee should hire someone else for the position.104 Considering the journal’s financial difficulties, it was a groundless suggestion. After all, Brenner had waived his editor’s fee and made do with his typesetter’s wage. Now, in addition to editing and typesetting, he took on the administrative work, which was of course unpaid.105 Thus, even though at the outset it seemed to Brenner that he had found a partner in Rabbi Benjamin, within a few short months it had become a limited partnership. In his memoirs Rabbi Benjamin describes the period when he was joint editor of Hameorer as the only time in his life in

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which he was solely a “writer,” with no other occupations. This period lasted only six months; when spring came, he packed his suitcase and left London. Brenner accompanied him to the station and kissed him goodbye.106 They remained firm friends. As far as Rabbi Benjamin was concerned, his commitment to the journal was only partial; Brenner’s commitment was total, and, for better or worse, he identified himself with Hameorer. Throughout this turbulent period of depression, personal crisis, and dealing with publication of the journal, Brenner found the time and strength to concentrate on writing his story “Me-aleph ad mem” (From A to M), which is based on his experiences marching in the prisoners’ column from Oryol to Bobruysk (Arnovesk and Mivalena in the story). “From A to M” is a description of man’s soul in all its degradation. Not one person emerges innocent—the Russian criminals and guards, the Jewish felons and political prisoners, the Yiddish and Russian speakers—all are tainted by hypocrisy, brutality, inhumanity, and blindness toward the suffering of the weak. The Russians’ anti-Semitism is overt, self-evident, and evil. Even the Jews who are not part of the criminal camp are marked by their lack of concern for the fate of those outside the camp, their lack of loyalty to the Jewish people, and their ideological bickering. It is one of Brenner’s bitterest stories, leaving the reader not one scintilla of light at the end of the march. Brenner published “From A to M” in the 1906 issues of Hameorer, and it provided the spine of the journal’s literary skeleton. He did not receive a fee for it. The first issue of Hameorer appeared in early January 1906. Brenner let Rabbi Benjamin write the journal’s “To the Reader” manifesto. “We have here a desire to create and bring into the world a new literary creation, and there is also belief that it can be accomplished and that soon a new current of life will flow in the heart of the Hebrew reader,” he wrote. The journal would be “an island, a lone citadel of several Hebrew people.”107 Rabbi Benjamin’s reasoned, wise words did not spark the readers’ imagination. The call—which became a part of collective memory and went out with extraordinary force as an enlisting and inspiring rallying cry—was the one written by Brenner under the pseudonym H. B. Zalel in an article that dealt with the YiddishistHebraist controversy over the national language. He opened it in a

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Brenner, Rabbi Benjamin, and Lamed Shapiro, London 1905. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

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moderate, unassuming tone, but the deeper he went into the debate, the more heated he became, presenting the Hebraists’ arguments with increasing force. The arguments in favor of Hebrew were not based on either logic or reality: “We write in Hebrew because we cannot do otherwise, because the divine spark within us only emerges on its own in this flame, because this spark does not ignite, is not completely fulfilled, except in this language.” This was a translation of the poetic pathos of Abramson’s reasoning in Around the Point, who hears “a divine voice from Mount Horeb” only in Hebrew. There was something mystical and inexplicable in his devotion to Hebrew, but it is a fact; he could not do otherwise. Hameorer appeared at a time of crisis for the Hebrew press and literature. In 1906 Hatzofeh was closed down because of financial difficulties, followed by the closing of Hashiloah, which was connected with Hatzofeh in distribution. The Vilna Hazman, which was both a monthly and a daily, was shut down by the authorities because of its censure of the pogroms. The Hebrew literary space was increasingly shrinking. When Hameorer appeared, it did so against the backdrop of the pogroms, the closing down of the Hebrew press in Russia, and a drastic drop in the Hebrew readership, which flocked to the Russian and Jewish-Russian papers. The first issue of Hameorer carried the following anecdote: the poet Shelley’s biographers write that in his lifetime the number of owners of copies of his book of poems did not exceed one hundred. And the editors of Hameorer remark: “Can we find some consolation in this for our Bialiks?”108 Brenner addresses the lovers of Hebrew: “Another few years of discouragement without respite and our Hebrew literature will no longer be the great treasure of the soul of our nation.” Hameorer is the symbol of the nonacceptance of this reality, the rebellious opposition to it. “We, for whom Hebrew has resurrected and enriched our soul, without which we have nothing, as it is our life fount, a part of the secret of our being and of our very essence—we do not want this, and therefore we shall never accept this wickedness. . . . We will stay the last ones on the wall.”109 Shapiro described Brenner’s position with the following image: “We are lost, but we shall die with our boots on and upright.” This is swimming against the tide even when there is no chance of overcoming it. There is value in the struggle itself, in the willingness

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to fight to the bitter end. Thus, Brenner explained the choice of the name “Masada”: just as the fighters of Masada were the last of the Great Revolt’s fighters, who continued fighting even when all hope was lost, so were they fighting for the Hebrew language. This is the rebellion of the human spirit against the course of history. The wall on which the last fighters stand is that of the falling Masada. The call to be “the last ones standing on the wall,” referring to the Hebrew language, was understood in a broader sense. It became the motto of the Second Aliya (1904–1914). With time it became the motto of every group of pioneers that perceived itself as fighting for its truth against the forces of reality that rose up to destroy it. As far as Brenner was concerned, the fight for Hebrew did not mean acceptance of Zionism. In fact, at the time he announced his loyalty to Hebrew, he adopted positions on Zionism that seemed heretical. A short time before the appearance of Hameorer, he published a pamphlet with an article titled “Mikhtav arokh shalakh li” [He sent me a long letter] that was filled with despair and hopelessness, an impulsive response to the pogroms. The crisis of Russian Jewry led him to abandon the Zionist positions that he had fervently preached when he worked with Marmor. Now he cried out: “For what do we need a land of our fathers, for what do we need the Holy Land, when we have no way of reaching it? A cave, we need a cave, a cave for the fugitive. . . . Give us a cave to hide in.” But he knows that this cave cannot be found: “There is no longer a vacant place for them”; the world is indifferent, and there is no hope.110 We find exactly the same shift in “Mikhtavim le-Russia” (Letters to Russia), which he published in the first issue of Hameorer. “A country! Any country we are able to obtain, any country with the possibility of building our home there soon.” This country would be a safe haven for future generations because the increasing atrocities boded evil for the future. Referring to past pogroms, he muses: “And who knows, brothers, who can guarantee, who will tell us that our children and grandchildren will not remember 1905 and 1906 as we today remember 1880 and 1881?” He concludes this call for any possible territory with the words: “Magnified and sanctified be the Hebrew man” (an allusion to the mourner’s Kaddish).111 In other words, there is not necessarily a connection between Hebrew and the Holy Land. One of the members of the Masada committee

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remarked that some of the Zion Zionists were refusing to distribute Hameorer because of its territorialist inclinations. In answer to his question of whether this trend would persist, Rabbi Benjamin replied that “Hameorer has no political program, and it has room for different views.”112 The combination of Hebraism and territorialism roused several reactions. Brenner’s good friend Marmor—who in February 1906 had finally managed to sail to the United States where the position of editor of the Poalei Zion organ Der Yiddischer Kämpfer was awaiting him in Philadelphia—responded to “Mikhtav arokh shalakh li” with a long letter to Brenner that he wrote aboard ship.113 He tried to console Brenner, saying that the despair that stemmed from both Brenner’s personal and the national calamity was driving him toward territorialism. Marmor was seeking to strengthen Brenner’s belief in the nation’s revival and in his role as a writer heralding the spring. “You are not the last Jewish writer . . . but one of the first of those to appear before his time. You are a sparrow that has come to herald the spring in winter [bahoref ] but in the end spring will come.”114 Marmor’s words, the main thrust of which he published in ­Hameorer, did not change Brenner’s position. Throughout 1906 he published articles in support of “rescue Zionism,” a concept that at the time was perceived as territorialism. Joseph Klausner, who praised Hameorer, criticized Brenner: “I cannot understand your sympathy for territorialism at all,” he wrote to him. “Are there crazy people in the world who may believe it possible to transfer hundreds of thousands of Jews to a desolate land in a short time?” If the numbers were smaller, “we can fulfill our historical ideal and not create an autonomous diaspora, a kind of new ‘Kingdom of Kazar.’”115 He quoted Brenner, “Palestine cannot be ours,” while posing a difficult question, asking him whether “the Hebrew language can live on, and Hebrew literature can exist, and the Jewish people can stop being gypsies?” Playing on Brenner’s sensitive spot—the contradiction between desire and ability—he reproved him: “If the possibility is the main thing, not the worthy and the necessary, then at present the jargon [Yiddish] is far more possible than the Hebrew language, at least to the same degree that British territory is more attainable than the Land of ­Israel. That being so, why are you standing halfway?”116 In Homel in faraway Russia, however, Jacob Cohen, the Bundist and revolutionary

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who was involved in Brenner’s escape from Russia, informed him that he would place funds at his disposal to publish a collection of his views in Yiddish. Others proposed a project to establish a Jewish colony somewhere or other, on the condition that he relinquished his Hebraism, which was perceived as unnecessary romanticism.117 In the United States, Marmor received letters from members of Poalei Zion informing him of the erosion in Brenner’s positions and explaining the change that had taken place in him as a result of the influence of a woman named Chaike. Quoting his party comrades, Marmor wrote that “Brenner is squandering his money on flowers for the territorial­ istka Chaike and reviles and derides Zionism.”118 The year 1906 was marked by Brenner’s territorialism. Brenner was Hameorer’s founding father, nursing mother, and governess. Not only was he its unpaid editor (and not paid for his work in distribution and other organizational matters), he also did not take a fee for “From A to M” or for the articles he published. He even gave his “He Told Her,” the pamphlet he paid for out his own pocket, to Hameorer gratis. The paper’s advertisements were few: after all, how many Hebrew readers were there in London for whom advertising in a Hebrew language paper would be worthwhile? The advertising came mainly from Naroditsky, the Masada Association, and the London Hebrew Speakers Society, all of which were members of the same cultural circle, a very limited readership. Brenner had absolutely no understanding of public relations. When two Jewish Chronicle reporters heard about the phenomenon of a Jewish writer living in London and publishing a Hebrew journal, they wanted to interview him. They went to Naroditsky’s print shop, where they found a broadshouldered, badly dressed man with ink-stained fingers, not exactly the romantic figure they expected of a Hebrew writer. And he, on hearing what they wanted, quickly drove them away, aggressively waving his blackened arms.119 Brenner was uncomfortable about being interviewed in English. Although he was studying the language with a student, Benzion Halper, who later became an important Arabist, his English was inadequate for a newspaper interview.120 In contrast, he and Rabbi Benjamin agreed to speak before the Hebrew Speakers Society at the Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque, where he delivered a lecture on “the various currents in Hebrew literature.” As he spoke only

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broken Hebrew, the question is whether the society allowed him to lecture in Yiddish. The Masada Association’s devotion to the journal did not last very long. Except for its partial funding of the first issue, the association did not support it.121 Brenner hastened to inform his friends Gnessin and Bichovsky, who thought that Masada was a serious organization, that “this Masada is nothing but Mister Brenner, Herr Redler [Rabbi Benjamin], and another two or one and a half (the remaining one and a half are not writers, heaven forbid, but teachers).”122 Fortunately for Brenner, Daniel Persky, an admirer of his and who loved modern Hebrew literature, was passing through London. Persky went looking for Brenner and found him in the print shop translating and typesetting a manuscript in Yiddish for the Freie Arbeiter Welt. When Brenner asked who he was, he replied “a Hebrew reader and lover of Hebrew from Minsk.” To this Brenner replied that this was the first time he had met a Hebrew reader who was not a writer. He gave Persky, who was on his way to the United States, a letter for A. S. Waldstein, a Hebrew writer and member of the Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language and Literature in New York, asking him for help in distributing Hameorer there. The New York organization began supporting Hameorer from its fourth issue (April 1906) and also helped with its distribution. Marmor also engaged in promoting Brenner and Hameorer in New York, and it was not long before the ire of the ultra-­ Orthodox paper Tageblat was directed at Hameorer. The realism of “From A to M” and Zalman Schneur’s sensual poems—“Kach noshkim etzlenu” (This is how we kiss) in particular—appeared to break the bounds of modesty. Waldstein also had reservations about this writing: “I am opposed to extreme realism where it is not needed,” he wrote to Brenner, with the self-righteousness of the old generation,123 but continued his support. He was also not overly impressed by Brenner’s managerial skills. When Hameorer was late arriving, he noted somewhat derisively that “you are evidently not an outstanding man of commerce,”124 but this did not prevent Waldstein from suggesting to Brenner that he should become a partner in Hameorer while maintaining Brenner’s right of editorial veto.125 This suggestion, however, came to naught. But despite ultra-Orthodox pressure, the society’s support of Hameorer continued until mid-1907.126

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In that trauma-filled year, the appearance of Hameorer was something of a poor man’s comfort. Joseph Lian, who along with the Berlin Hebraists was supposed to be a partner in the journal, hastened to write to Brenner and Rabbi Benjamin: “I found the first issue completely unsatisfactory! The spirit of dilettantism hovers over it.”127 Yet he still thought it worthwhile to offer the Hameorer people in London a partnership with the Berliners: he was prepared to agree that the journal would be printed in London, but it would have two centers, London and Berlin. The Berliners promised to obtain appropriate literary material, and in exchange they demanded the right to approve all the material that would appear in the paper, even the advertising.128 Lian’s belated attempt to join Hameorer indicates that, despite the weaknesses he found in it, he viewed it as important from a public and a literary standpoint. Even more important were the reactions of writers, for they had to contribute to the journal. The severest criticism came from Brenner’s good friend Uri Nissan Gnessin: “What is this man doing? If at least he had provided something tangible. A man publishes an agitational journal, just like an intelligent Bundist, and even gives it an agitational name while calling it a literary journal and pins all his hopes on it. Oh, God Almighty—this Brenner!”129 In Gnessin’s view Hameorer demeaned the writer’s vocation, giving a nod and a wink to propaganda by employing the tools and pathos of a political party. But their friendship was important to Gnessin, and in a letter to Brenner he moderated his criticism. It opens with the salutation “My Good Brother!” and then, somewhat jocularly, reproves him: “Scoundrels, let the journal be more literary and less agitational.” He contended that publishing the journal before any worthy literary material had been prepared was hasty and unnecessary. Even the design of the slim journal did not satisfy him, but with all his reservations he assured Brenner of his support and promised to send something for Hameorer.130 Rabbi Benjamin disliked the journal’s name as well. When Brenner informed him that it would be called Hameorer and faced him with a fait accompli, Rabbi Benjamin voiced his reservations and asked jokingly: “Why ‘Hameorer’ and not ‘The Cockerel’?”131 Brenner’s explanation that he aimed at a human awakening was received as fine rhetoric; it did not refer to the reservations per se. Criticism of both the name

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and the journal reached Brenner through the people for whose support he hoped. The first was Gershon Schoffman, who had not met Brenner face to face but knew him from his writing and his friends, to whom he was exposed during his military service in Homel. He was one of the first people that Brenner wanted to enlist for the journal, and Schoffman assented unhesitatingly. “Here you have a ‘Hanged’ one,” he wrote, referring to his short story “Talui” (Hanged), which appeared in the third issue of Hameorer in March 1906. This was the first fictional piece in the journal not written by Brenner. Schoffman also had no hesitation in criticizing: “I have to tell you the truth—this is not yet it! If you have already begun to establish a sort of literary platform, then it should have been [done] in a different way.” He focused his criticism on the journal’s name: “Why such a stentorian and responsible name?” he asked. “And in general,” he continued, “the first issue gives the impression of ‘the work of a band.’”132 This last criticism was leveled at the lack of diversity in the journal’s contents, written almost entirely by the two editors. Nonetheless, the journal became all the talk among the young writers. “Whether the name of your journal is ‘Hameorer’ or ‘Hameyashen’ [putting to sleep], let it awaken only to good—then all of us will certainly give you our hand,” wrote B ­ ercovich, who was present when Schoffman wrote his letter to Brenner. He explained that the indolent and hedonistic Schoffman “cannot stand the loud ‘awakening’ voices.”133 Bercovich had not yet seen the journal, but he expressed his support of Brenner and wished him success. Anochi was very excited by the appearance of the journal, which despite the troubles and upheavals, he viewed as the starting point of the revival of Jewish literature, but he still moderated his enthusiasm with a critical comment: “For some reason the name Hameorer is very much not to my taste.” To sweeten this bitter pill he added parenthetically that this was a trivial thing.134 The poet Yitzhak Katznelson wrote Brenner a warm and cordial letter, saying among other things: “[and] our young people are obliged to support you, dear man, and I can assure you that our writers who have God in their hearts will send you their work with greater joy than they send it to the ‘Masters-Editors’ who pay an honorarium.”135 Criticism of the journal’s name reflected disagreement over its desired character: was it to be a literary journal or one combining

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l­iterature with topical matters? For the young writers who were to contribute to the journal, the pretension of combining literature with ideology seemed dubious. It smelled of politics, and, more particularly, there was something defiant, brash, and immodest in it. At exactly the same time that Brenner was planning to publish Hameorer, Gnessin was engaged in publishing Nisyonot (Trials), a series of high quality translations into Hebrew. A comparison between the modest, self-effacing name “Nisyonot” and the strident “Hameorer” highlights the difference between them. Gnessin the connoisseur viewed the stridency of Hameorer as lowering the tone of literature. During 1906 there were nonstop efforts to consolidate Hameorer and ensure its continued existence through subscriptions and individual sales. The journal’s main problem was Russian censorship. Hameorer was far distant from revolutionary matters of any kind, but the very mention of the bitter fate of the Jews in Russia, even without direct reference to the pogroms, and Brenner’s descriptions of the gallery of Russian characters in “From A to M” could be construed as subversive if the censor so desired. Four times in the course of 1906, parcels of copies of the journal that Brenner sent to Russia with great effort and expense were returned. The approximately one hundred subscribers who had paid for issues in advance did not receive them, and this dealt a harsh blow to distribution. Brenner was given many and varied forms of advice on how to bypass censorship: by sending single copies; sending them in the name of Abraham Stiebel, the owner of a respected publishing house; sending them to Hillel Zlatopolsky, a notable Jewish philanthropist who had promised great things to Hameorer; sending them to Vilna, Warsaw, Kiev, and so on. On occasion the stratagem was successful, but in the main it was not. The benefactors did not fulfill their promises; insiders’ contacts with the censors proved disappointing. There was no method in the madness: sometimes the journal reached its destination, while on other occasions it was returned to London without explanation. The second problem was the distributor. The journal’s main agent in Russia was Shimon Bichovsky, who eagerly accepted the assignment but fulfilled it with a considerable lack of skill. He was dedicated and full of good intentions but possessed no practical sense. Not only was he inexperienced with the work and insufficiently energetic for distribution, he was also unlucky. When he eventually

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traveled to Warsaw to meet with Stiebel, who had promised to speak with the censor and put an end to the interception of the parcels, he fell afoul of a police search in the home of the friend with whom he was staying and was arrested because of “self-defense” movement posters that were found in the apartment. Distribution of Hameorer was suspended for months. Brenner transferred distribution from Bichovsky to Ezra, a well-known and highly regarded St. Petersburg bookshop, and later was aided by the Tushiya publishing house, but they too were unable to do much. This entire affair was exhausting.136 Meanwhile, Uri Nissan Gnessin managed to raise the required funds to realize his dream of publishing Nisyonot. The first issue contained a Hebrew rendering of Chekhov short stories. Gnessin, an aesthete, wanted his journal to be of both superior literary taste and appropriate visual appearance. He inquired of Brenner whether it would be possible to have Naroditsky print Nisyonot. The printer’s asking price seemed fair, and Brenner quickly found himself in charge of printing not only Hameorer but also Nisyonot. He warned Gnessin about the difficulties of sending the journal from London to Russia, but in vain. Gnessin felt that the quality of printing in London would outweigh the difficulties of introducing the journal into Russia. The exchange of letters that followed among Brenner, Gnessin, and Bichovsky resembles a dialogue of the deaf: Brenner issued instructions about distribution of Hameorer, grumbled about the difficulties and his lack of funds, and especially about his friend Gnessin’s not sending him anything for publication in Hameorer. Gnessin sent him repeated instructions about font size in Nisyonot, line spacing, and the picture of Chekhov that was to appear on the front page. And Bichovsky was in the middle. Gnessin, who was close to Bichovsky and saw him in all his helplessness, reproved him more than once about his meager efforts in the distribution of Hameorer and Nisyonot. From afar, Brenner did not blame Bichovsky but wrote letters of despair and reproof, especially toward his good friend Gnessin. Between February and April 1905, Marmor, Shapiro, and Rabbi Benjamin, three of Brenner’s closest friends, left London. Shapiro was not committed to the Hebrew language, but this did not impair the friendship forged between them. Shapiro recounts how he, Rabbi Benjamin, and Brenner would crowd into Brenner’s tiny room on the

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s­ econd floor of Naroditsky’s print shop, amid the boxes of type, and talk. The subjects they discussed were of great import: the failure of the first Russian revolution, the terrible pogroms. “We felt painfully that we were Jews and no less painfully that we were human beings” is how Shapiro described these meetings.137 Brenner continued corresponding with all three: with Marmor about Hameorer and Der Yiddischer Kämpfer, and even about Marmor’s family; with Shapiro, friendly letters between writers; and with Rabbi Benjamin about Hameorer. For Brenner, the hardest parting was from Rabbi Benjamin. “Nu, goodbye,” he wrote to him, “for you know that I shall not forget you, even when I am lying on my deathbed.”138 On five occasions in his letters written in April and May, he mentioned Rabbi Benjamin’s having left. The feeling of loneliness and abandonment, severe fatigue, and anxiety over the fate of Hameorer, whose future after the third issue was unclear, assailed Brenner, along with a new wave of depression manifested by illness. Whether this was real or psychosomatic is unknown.139 By the end of May, the wave had passed and he recovered. But with regard to his spirits, he once more sank into mourning for Chaya Wolfson. It was at this time that he wrote “He Told Himself ” and thus experienced his loss and pain anew.140 “My health has improved,” he wrote to Bichovsky, “but after everything that has happened to me, there is no hope for my spirits.”141 “There has been no change in my private life,” he wrote to Rabbi Benjamin, “I am the same man who no longer has anything in his world.”142 He found some small consolation in the reactions to “From A to M.” Gnessin wrote him an animated letter. “In general, you are a ­bastard. How much it reminds me of Dostoevsky in his more growling places out of despair,” he wrote. On reading the fourth excerpt, “I felt that you are growing.” He concluded his praise with an order: “Write stories,” which may be interpreted as a demand: do not occupy yourself with editing, journalistic writing, and politics.143 Rabbi Benjamin was effusive: “Your story reaches genius. And I am privileged to be your friend!”144 From faraway New York, Shapiro wished that Brenner might “live to a hundred and twenty for this work.” He suggested that he arrange a ticket for him to New York, where he would be able to publish Hameorer under better conditions, concluding his letter with: “Kommt zu fahren! Schreibt Yiddish!” (Come here! Write Yiddish!).145

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The Hebrewness of Hameorer did not prevent Shapiro the Yiddishist from forming a deep rapport with Brenner and his brainchild. Shapiro’s attempt to lure Brenner into writing in Yiddish was made half in jest, half seriously. During that year, with its paucity of both journals and readers, Hebrew writers tended to shift to writing in Yiddish. Peretz Hirschbein was of two minds as was Schneur. Z. Y. Anochi and Y. D. Bercovich moved over to writing in Yiddish. When Brenner reproved Bercovich for moving to the “jargonist” camp, as he put it, he replied that he had not moved over completely but was writing in both languages. “I am writing in jargon, for needs must, and also because ‘both these and those are the words of the living God.’”146 Brenner considered it right not to mount a frontal attack against Yiddish in Hameorer because many of the writers whose work he sought also wrote in Yiddish. “I fear that I might arouse their ire against me,”147 he wrote to Yitzhak Wilkansky (A. Zioni), a Zionist in Palestine, explaining why he had cleaned his article of any exaggerated personal attack against the Yiddish writers. Although the journal does not contain unequivocal expressions for or against Yiddish, in matters pertaining to the political aspect of the Jewish national movement, one can find both Zionist and territorialist views. When Brenner lamented the Jewish masses’ feeble response to the pogroms, he was referring to Zionism and territorialism as two positive movements bringing a national message, in contrast to Marxism, which he saw as a movement detached from the tragic reality of the Jews’ life.148 Solid Zionist views were aired on the pages of Hameorer by A. Zioni, Klausner, Marmor, and others who were less specific in their words. In one of the first issues, following an article whose Zion Zionist positions opposed the territorialist views expressed by the editor, Brenner explained that every writer must take responsibility for his words, whereas ­Hameorer “is only a small platform for every Jew within whom the light of the god of our nation burns, be he from any party whatsoever.”149 ­According to this definition, Hameorer was open to anyone writing in Hebrew, but in fact this was not the case. Brenner defined Hameorer’s accepted spectrum of opinions in response to a question posed by a writer on “freedom of speech” in the journal. Pronational ideology is an inseparable part of commitment to the language, and Brenner was prepared to give room to every view,

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positive or negative, “but by no means to those who refer with estrangement or frivolously to ‘the thing known as Zionism.’” In other words, denial of Zionism is permissible, but it must be done out of pain, while recognizing the tragedy of loss, and with a feeling of belonging. Therefore Brenner, whose basic commitment to the national movement was beyond doubt, believed he was entitled to voice heretical remarks and still be considered a member of the camp, but not someone who from the outset denies Zionism completely. “As you know, Hameorer is not the organ of the Zionist camp (which, tragically, is almost dead),” Brenner wrote, indirectly expressing his position, “but it must express and endeavor to express, vehemently, the Zionist pain; and anyone to whom for some reason this pain is foreign shall not come to us and not approach the bowing wall [Psalm 62], before which we, the writers of Hameorer pour out our hearts.”150 Brenner does not dictate a political position but demands an emotional commitment. His political position changed again and again, either in response to recent news from Russia or following a conversation that left an impression on him, but his mental approach was planted deep in his personality and did not vary with changing circumstances. Thus, in a letter to Rabbi Benjamin he was able to write the following: “And regarding your people that you seek, I do not know what to tell you. I, for instance, have no people.”151 At the same time, Brenner began planning to go to Palestine. In fall 1906 he was experiencing severe fatigue: fundraising for Hameorer exhausted him; distribution ran aground again and again; and, the main problem, he had no good material written by top-flight authors.152 It seemed to him that the journal was about to close down at the end of its first year. This was the background for the rumors spreading about his imminent departure for Palestine. The first hint of his plan emerged in a letter he wrote to the Zionist activist Shmaryahu Levin in February 1906 (a short time after the first appearance of ­Hameorer), in which he tendered his candidacy for the editorship of Hashiloah, which, according to a Jewish-Russian press report, was to be transferred to Palestine. “To go to Palestine and there live a life with ­worthy work has been, for various reasons that have no place here, my heart’s desire long since, long since,” he wrote.153 He presents his talents as an editor, writer, proofreader, and typesetter, and

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expresses his willingness to make do with little. But the plan to transfer Hashiloah to Palestine was cancelled, and Levin’s reply has not been preserved. In early October, Brenner denied the rumors of his imminent journey to Palestine to become an editor there.154 A week later, however, he informed Menachem Gnessin, Uri Nissan’s brother who was in Palestine, “I have decided to join you in any event,” evidently alluding to the cancelled plan to publish a journal there under his editorship. He was postponing his journey until the end of the year to finish Hameorer’s first year. He asked Gnessin a series of questions, some trivial (“Are the Jewish women in Palestine ashamed of a Jewish name?”), some practical (“Is there a worthy Hebrew printing press in Jaffa where I might find work?”), and other questions that reveal his anxiety about the country’s inhabitants (“Is there great suffering at the hands of the Turkish officials and the Arab neighbors?”) and the change of language (“Do you speak only Hebrew amongst yourselves, and with which accent?”).155 As if that were not enough, he declared that he had definitely decided to go and that he asked the questions solely “out of national curiosity.” He concluded the letter in a florid, pathetic tone: “And on our banner we shall inscribe: ‘and you were sanctified and were holy, for holy is the god of our nation.’”156 Given that only three months earlier he had informed Rabbi Benjamin that he had no people, the change indicates an extreme swing in both his mood and his plans. The decision to go to Palestine was born in moment of despair stemming from the publication problems of Hameorer. Brenner was unable to meet the journal’s printing costs, but more than that, he felt that his friends had abandoned him and were not sending him material worthy of publication. He was also alone in London, unable to find a coeditor after Rabbi Benjamin left the city.157 In the second half of October 1906, he announced that early in the new year he intended to close down Hameorer and go to Palestine.158 His decision apparently coincided with the trend prevailing that year among his friends from the Hebrew circle and also from Poalei Zion. One of them, B ­ ogadin, who was involved in the publication of Hameorer, wrote about this to Marmor in the United States in a letter that provides us with a rare peek at Brenner’s behavior and how he appeared to his contemporaries. Bogadin denied the rumors that had reached

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Marmor about Brenner’s territorialist inclinations and emphasized the loyalty of Brenner, “the worthy Jew,” to Zionism. “I am truly surprised at how you could believe that rumor,” he rebuked Marmor. His telling proof of Brenner’s loyalty was the writer’s decision to go to Palestine: “In two months time Brenner is going to Palestine, not to see the country and not to live there temporarily, but to settle,” Bogadin informed him. As further proof of Brenner’s serious intentions, he wrote: “For several weeks now Brenner has not spoken to our friends in any other language but Hebrew,” adding an important comment: “As you know, Brenner did not believe in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language.”159 Two other people linked with the Hebrew circles in London were planning to immigrate to Palestine: Isaac Yanishevsky and S. B. Maximovsky. Y ­ anishevsky did reach Palestine, but Maximovsky, Ahad Ha’am’s disciple and friend, eventually went to the United States, where he gained literary renown under the pen name “Maximon.”160 It is also possible that Brenner was influenced by a letter he received at this time from the writer and essayist Jacob Rabinowitz, who was involved in publishing the journal Hakeshet (Rainbow). Rabinowitz prophesied the eradication of both Jewish languages, Yiddish and Hebrew, as a consequence of the penetration of Russian and other local languages into the sphere of the Jewish languages. “The remains of our language are being totally destroyed,” he wrote, “and only in one corner a Hebrew world is being built—Palestine.” Rabinowitz urges Brenner to transfer Hameorer to Palestine: “Go to where your heart calls you, go to a place to which the Jewish people aspire, to a place where its language is on the lips of children.” And he promises to do his utmost to help Brenner.161 But less than two weeks had elapsed since Brenner’s decision to leave for Palestine, and again he changed his mind. At the end of October, he informed Rabbi Benjamin that a new plan was being drawn up for the continued publication of Hameorer in London.162 He wrote to Bichovsky, whom he had invited to go to Palestine some two weeks earlier: “For the time being we should stop thinking about ­Palestine.”163 Brenner’s sudden recovery—and that of Hameorer —is linked to Naroditsky. When Naroditsky learned that Brenner was going to close the journal down at the end of the year, he suggested that he would incur the journal’s printing costs for a further year if he were

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in charge of its management and distribution, which offered Brenner an additional advantage.164 Now he was able to safely announce the continued appearance of Hameorer in 1907 and ask its subscribers to renew their subscriptions.165 At this point in his life, Brenner preferred London, with all its hardships and fogs, with its alienation and paucity of Hebrew culture, to Palestine. He did not have a concrete offer of literary work in ­Palestine, whereas in London Naroditsky had given him the opportunity to continue publishing Hameorer, which surely influenced him.166 Palestine also cast terror over him, a terror of the unknown, and when Naroditsky threw him a lifeline, he swiftly grasped it and abandoned his plan.

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Hameorer’s second year was unlike the first. Its front page demonstrated the differences that had taken place. The masthead showed that the journal was published by the Masada Association, London, while the name Society for the Dissemination of Hebrew, New York, had been removed and replaced by an epigraph that elucidated the journal’s name: “For it is to awaken you, brother, that I come, to awaken you and say: Ask, man, of the ways of the world, ask: Whither the road, whither?” Brenner placed this in quotation marks, as if he had taken it from the words of one of the ancient Jewish sages. But in fact he was quoting himself, from an article he had published twice, in Hayehudi (December 1905) and in Hameorer (June 1906). The article, “Al haderekh” (On the road), which was published immediately after the October 1905 pogroms, is an extraordinarily Brenneresque mélange containing a call for a territory, “acquisition of a place for our wanderings,” and a demand for loyalty to the Hebrew language.1 The graphic design was also changed: the front page was clearer, more cheerful, and boasted floral artwork. The journal was now defined as a “pamphlet for thought and poetry,” and it seems that this was retrospective justification of the journal’s character, which had started off as a literary journal but did not attain its objective. Now, for the first time, the front page proclaimed: “Edited and published monthly by Y. H. Brenner.” The journal of the second year reflected the new reality: Brenner was now its sole editor and publisher. In summer 1906 a young writer came from Lvov to London, Asher Beilin, along with his wife Tsipa (short for Zipora) and their young son Jacob (Koba). Beilin, who for some years was Sholem Aleichem’s secretary, came to London to seek work suitable for an educated man

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with no profession. For a time it seemed that London was destined to become the center of Hebrew culture. Ahad Ha’am had lived there, Sholem Aleichem had spent several months in the city, and of course, Hameorer was published there. Even Schoffman had made inquiries about moving to London.2 So Beilin had come to Britain’s cold city. Back in Lvov, Beilin had become friendly with Schoffman. Both had something of the hedonist and lover of life in them, always seeking new and exciting experiences. Schoffman, a bachelor, and Beilin, who had an unhappy marriage, exchanged experiences and views on women with a graceful lightness more suited to Vienna than Lvov. On one occasion Bialik commented on Hameorer: “A man shouts gevald [Yiddish: exclamation of alarm], another moment and we are lost— and along with it appears Zalman Schneur’s poem ‘This Is How We Kiss’—how is this possible?”3 The same can be said of the two young writers who, while they sought to broaden their experience of women, wrote depressing stories about the catastrophe that had befallen their people and about world injustice. Brenner and Schoffman formed a friendship grounded in great mutual admiration. In Hameorer’s first year, Schoffman was the only important contemporary writer who repeatedly sent Brenner stories for publication in the journal. Brenner admired Schoffman’s writing, even though it was completely different from his own. Schoffman painted delicate, short, restrained pictures. “How fine is your paintbrush, how sharp your colors!” Brenner wrote to him in wonder.4 Just before ­Beilin left for London, Schoffman asked him to go and see Brenner, and he also informed Brenner of his friend’s imminent arrival. Schoffman’s intuition told him that Brenner was lonely in London, and he tried to find him a kindred spirit. This was an extension of the Homel friends’ network, of which Schoffman was a member. Brenner also introduced Rabbi Benjamin into the network. It seems that Beilin was somewhat concerned about his encounter with Brenner. Much later, he explained it positively, saying that he had behaved like someone who delays opening an important letter to savor the pleasure. But it is also possible that Brenner frightened him with  the gloomy despair of his writing. The two finally met in August 1906. Beilin recounts how Brenner, who had received a letter from him, did not wait for Beilin to call on him but hastened to visit

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him. The physical impression he made on Beilin was of a burly twentyfive-year-old man, with coarse, ugly features, despite his beautiful blue eyes. Their conversation revolved around Schoffman, other writers, and literature. It was a warm, convivial talk between two emigrants from the same homeland. As Brenner was leaving, he stopped by the door and shyly complained that Beilin had not kissed him either on his arrival or as he was leaving. The source of this complaint was apparently the suspicion that Beilin was physically revolted by him, in much the same way that he despised his own body. The embarrassed Beilin apologized and told him that it was not customary for men to kiss in England. Their second meeting was extremely strange: late one night, Brenner came to the Beilins’ flat, fell flat on his face, lashed himself, got up, and left without a word. Did he do this to show Beilin the dark side of his personality, so he would know that his friend was assailed by demons? Or was he putting Beilin to a test to see whether their friendship would be preserved despite this weird display? Brenner’s flagellation reveals severe guilt feelings. Did it express a repressed sex drive, or was it an attempt to subdue a latent lust? In a letter he wrote to Rabbi Benjamin at about the same time, Brenner summarized his torments: “A terrible heartache bubbles inside me day and night and does not cease for a moment. Its source: fear of life and death, destruction of the nation, harsh longings of desire, bad dreams and bad thoughts.”5 The three circles—universal, national, and personal—coincided in him, thus creating a single system of anguish that cast terror and guilt feelings onto him which gave him no peace. Only a person who carries with him a sense of unatonable sin can torture himself in this way. At first Beilin was put off by Brenner’s strangeness, but Schoffman urged him get closer: “Be with Brenner, be with him! I have received the latest Hameorer—with each successive issue I am filled with admiration for this ‘human being.’”6 The friendship between Brenner and Beilin firmed, in part because neither of them had another soul mate in the wasteland of Hebrew culture in London. In one of his letters to Schoffman, Beilin tells him that they both admired Gnessin’s “­Beynatayyim,” adding: “Shake the author’s hand on behalf of all the Hebrew readers in England, that is, Brenner and myself.”7 They both feel that they are Hebrew literature’s last loyalists. “That there is no Hebrew literature left in the world, of this I have no doubt,” Brenner

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writes to Schoffman. “Readers—I do not know, there are about a hundred in the whole world. Here in London, there are two or three. Perhaps.”8 And Beilin writes in the same vein: “Everything has already ended. Without a sound and clandestinely, that entire generation is finished.”9 By September 1906 the two were close friends. “I see Brenner every day,” Beilin wrote to Schoffman. Sholem Aleichem was in London at the time, and he employed both Brenner and Beilin part time. “In the evening both of us walk until midnight, look at women, eat pears and apples, and go home tired” is how Beilin described their leisure pursuits to Schoffman.10 Those nights were not just innocent evening strolls to delay Beilin’s return home to his unhappy marriage.11 According to Beilin’s memoir, written very shortly after Brenner’s death, they were nights of baring souls, of self-revelation to the most profound depths. Brenner was revealed to Beilin as “a monk from ancient times, with a vast soul profound in its morality, its love of truth, its thirst for justice, its purity and compassion.” He believed that he had freed himself from God and “the hypnosis of his Torah,” but this release aroused a sense not of freedom in him but of guilt: on his shoulders he bore the sorrow of the world and all its creatures and the sorrow of his nation. In accordance with his Nietzschean views, Brenner interpreted his own compassion for and love of human beings as an expression of weakness. “He is a moral man,” Beilin wrote, “because morality is the anchor of the oppressed. The Jews are, so to speak, the righteous among the nations because they are weak. . . . His love is his weakness, his compassion is his decline. He is a righteous man because he is unable to be evil, because he is contemptible and worthless.”12 The agonizing, the search for external and internal flaws in his personality, devoured Brenner. The cycle of light and darkness in his moods also had an outward manifestation: when he was in a period of light, he would bathe, shave, and dress like anyone else, have fun with Beilin’s family, especially his son, Yankele. But when a period of darkness began, his face would become covered with sickly red blotches, his eyes glowed, his body was bent, and he neglected his appearance. “He was sometimes assailed by a kind of strange mental paralysis, so much so that the sight of him frightened me,” Beilin noted. His voice would change, becoming hoarse and low, and on his lips hovered “a sick, almost idiotic giggle.”13 He despised

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himself, suspecting, as in the days of In Winter, that a bad smell was emanating from him. When Brenner was upset, it was frightening to be in his company. Beilin once saw him tearing Rembrandt reproductions—which he loved—from the walls of his room. At Naroditsky’s print shop, “there is still the desk, and on its leaf Brenner’s teeth marks from when he had bitten it in a violent mood.”14 At the time, B ­ eilin told Schoffman about Brenner’s suicidal thoughts: “Do you recall Abramson in Around the Point? That is Brenner. The only difference is in the ending: Abramson lost his mind, and Brenner will not wait but will put his head in the noose.”15 Brenner’s imagined illnesses have their place in this. According to Beilin, Brenner was naturally a very healthy, strong, sturdy man, whose military service had developed his muscles and physical ability. He never caught cold in London’s dank air but would complain of all kinds of imaginary aches and pains, headaches, heart disease, and so forth. He would walk bent over, dragging his feet, and claiming that he was physically and mentally helpless. In Beilin’s view Brenner deliberately chose the crown of thorns he wore: “For after all, torture is also pleasure, torment is both desirable and the reward.” Beilin continues: “Deep in your soul, you love your torments; deep in your heart, you lick the blood of your wounds with enjoyment, you are the contemptible one.”16 He likened Brenner to the Indian fakirs who lie on a bed of nails to atone for sins they have not committed. This explanation of Beilin’s is from a later vantage point. At the time he feared that Brenner really would take his own life, as Sander Baum had. And indeed, Brenner did harbor suicidal thoughts. The suicidal drive he attributed to Abramson and others among his protagonists was an expression of his morbid attraction to chaos. But the fear of death he mentioned in his letter to Rabbi Benjamin frightened him no less than his fear of living. Additionally, he was also a man with a sense of mission. He was therefore sentenced to go on living in torment. Although it was hard to be in Brenner’s company for long, ­Beilin met with him every day. “He is a ‘goodly lad,’ but to my taste is sometimes strange,” he explained to Schoffman. “He is far too noisy. Zeitlinism in both literature and life. I do not like this ‘banging one’s head against a wall,’ this overexcitement, and in it I find a great deal of the marketplace—in a word, the opposite of Schoffman,” he wrote to

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his friend in Lvov.17 It seems that Brenner’s tendency toward ecstasy, either positive or negative, ran counter to the young writers’ inclination toward restraint, a minor tone. Not only did Brenner speak his mind, he spoke in a bitter shout for whose pathos only the sincerity of his feelings of pain could atone. Beilin viewed this tendency as the result of the negative influence of Hillel Zeitlin, in whom there was also something otherworldly and who also tended toward exaggeration. Once he decided to remain in London and publish Hameorer for another year, Brenner’s mood improved. “There is hope that ­Hameorer will appear in the coming year too,” Beilin informed Schoffman, “if by that time Brenner has not lost his mind completely.”18 Rabbi Benjamin made a great effort to help Hameorer. From where he was living at the time in Poland, he approached writers and journalists, asking them to help Brenner. Schoffman urged Brenner to overcome his mental inhibitions, approach writers, and ask them to send him their works.19 In a show of support for the journal, Schoffman transferred his story “Hatiyul” (The walk) from Nisyonot to Hameorer.20 Although Gnessin sent “Hatiyul” to Brenner, his joy on receiving Schoffman’s story was overshadowed by Gnessin’s not sending him anything of his own.21 He plucked up his courage and wrote to the author he most admired, Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, asking him to write for ­Hameorer.22 Berdyczewski’s positive response was music to Brenner’s ears.23 As an inducement to his friend Zeitlin to write for his journal, Brenner informed him that he was prepared to write for the Warsaw weekly ­Yiddisches Wochenblat, and in Yiddish.24 Zeitlin published an incomplete article on Lev Shestov, whom he viewed as Nietzsche’s true successor, in Hameorer.25 Brenner also approached Bialik, inviting him to take part in Hameorer. Bialik’s reply, “Why did you not call me [earlier] to Hameorer?” was moderated somewhat in the continuation of the letter, revealing his attitude toward Brenner: on the one hand, he wrote “Yours, with mighty love” and called him “well-liked and courageous,” while on the other he turned down his invitation.26 Brenner hastened to apologize to Bialik: “I did not call you because with each issue of Hameorer, I did not believe that the next one would come out and insisted on not troubling you unnecessarily.” He went on to say: “Your use of the term ‘courageous’ about me awakened a pain within me. Oy, oy!”27 But he did not delude himself: Hashiloah reappeared at

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the same time, and Bialik edited its literary section, so it was clear that Bialik would give preference to his own journal, just as Brenner gave preference to Hameorer over Hashiloah.28 This was a happy and most active period in Brenner’s life. “I am a strong man, good and free, I lead a philosophical life and also a somewhat happy one in a certain sense; I know bad, evil desires, but there is no millstone around my neck” is how he described himself to Hillel Zeitlin.29 To Schoffman he wrote: “I am living not badly at all in recent days. The Hameorer writers are putting some content into my life: Schoffman, Redler [Rabbi Benjamin], Bar-Tuvia . . . not bad!”30 Hameorer’s second year was immeasurably better than the first: apart from Bar-Tuvia (Shraga Feybush Frenkel), Rabbi Benjamin, Schoffman, and Schneur, who had all published in the first volume, appearing in the journal were Beilin, Berdyczewski, Jacob Cahan, Jacob Fichman, Peretz Hirschbein, Yitzhak Katznelson, Shammai Pinsky, David ­Shimonovich, and translations of Oscar Wilde and Maurice Maeterlinck. Hameorer became the address for all the young writers. However, this was only a temporary situation. In 1907 Hazman and Hashiloah reappeared, as well as a new journal, Haolam, while in Palestine Haomer appeared. Hameorer was no longer the only journal of Hebrew literature. Although Brenner was sincerely pleased with the reappearance of Hashiloah and even rebuked Bichovsky, who had voiced his envy of the competitor, competition was a fact of life: the other journals paid their writers a goodly fee.31 The first issue of Hameorer in 1907 expressed the bond of friendship and mutual admiration forged among Schoffman, Beilin, and Brenner. It opened with a story by Beilin “Be’otam hayamim hashekhorim” (In those dark days), about which Brenner wrote to Schoffman that had Hameorer been published for it alone, it would have been enough.32 Some of Schoffman’s short sketches were also printed. Responding to Schoffman’s query about what kind of a face Brenner pulled on reading one of his stories, Beilin told him that Brenner knows all the stories [Schoffman] had sent him by heart.33 The issue also contained articles by Rabbi Benjamin, Bar-Tuvia, and even a new talent in the field of literary criticism discovered by Brenner, Fishel Lachover. It also included poems by Schneur and Jacob Cahan. But the jewel in its crown was the first act of Brenner’s new play, Me’ever ligvulin (Beyond boundaries).

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At the end of 1906, once it was decided to continue publishing Hameorer and with the improvement in his spirits, Brenner had a burst of creativity. In early December he announced, “I do not have even one line of my own” for the 1907 Hameorer,34 but a few weeks later he wrote, “in recent weeks I have been engaged in something new and large in size, which I have written, and successfully.”35 A day later, he instructed Bichovsky to insert in Hameorer’s advertisement for 1907 an item stating that “in the editorial file there is a new play in four acts about the life of the emigrant Jews in East London titled Beyond Boundaries by Y. H. Brenner,” and that it would be published in the first four issues of Hameorer.36 Between the announcement that he had no material of his own for the journal and the advertisement about the play, there was an interval of only sixteen days. Beilin, describing the writing of Beyond Boundaries, reported that after a few days of great unease, Brenner informed him that he had completed his preparations for writing and asked him not to call on him until he, Brenner, came to him once he had finished writing the play. A few days later, Beilin visited Naroditsky and inquired about Brenner. Naroditsky told him that Brenner, before he began writing, emptied his room of all its contents, including newspapers and books. He took down the mirror from the wall because in it he saw someone walking around the room and disturbing him at work. In the cold of December, he even refused food and coal for the fire. When Mrs. Naroditsky tried to bring him a little milk, he poured it away in front of her. Beilin decided to see how Brenner was. After his knocking was greeted by silence, he opened the door of the room and saw Brenner pacing back and forth, his face covered with his coat, uttering animallike sounds and making strange gestures. Beilin called his name, but Brenner did not respond. He stopped pacing only when he bumped into Beilin, trembling. According to Beilin, “his face was very sickly and a strange fire, a fire of ‘beyond boundaries’ burned in his eyes.” Beilin tried to persuade Brenner to allow him to light a fire and fetch him some food, but in vain. Brenner demanded that he must be left alone until he finished writing, and then he would come to Beilin’s house to rest and recover. He wrote for eleven consecutive days, and then went to Beilin’s, completely exhausted, but demanded that Beilin start reading the play with him right away and give his opinion of it. If it was

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not his best work thus far, he would throw the manuscript into the fire. This is my last word, he said. His friend’s agitation was plain to see and Beilin sought to pacify him. He praised the work. “I exaggerated my praise somewhat,” he wrote later. However, he advised Brenner not to be too hasty about printing it. But Brenner ignored his advice and went directly to typeset the play himself. This was the only way, he claimed, that he would be able to free himself of the obsession.37 This description of Brenner—pacing his room and bellowing like a wounded animal, removing the mirror from the wall so that the man looking out from it would not distract him—is one of a mentally ill man. It is difficult to explain the connection between his creative ­powers and his bouts of depression. Psychologists agree that most people are unable to create during a bout of depression, but the description of Brenner as he wrote Beyond Boundaries is of a man suffering such an attack. It was possibly not a very severe one, so he was able to function despite it. According to both Beilin’s description and Brenner’s letters, he worked even during bouts of depression. He worked for up to eighteen hours a day in any mental state. This was perhaps his own form of occupational therapy. Brenner’s mental problems began back in Homel, but it seems that the attacks were not continuous, for had he sunk into depression to the point of being incapable of functioning, he would have been unable to hold his own in the Russian army. It seems that he suffered a bout of depression on receiving the news of the pogroms in Russia in 1905. The news of Chaya Wolfson’s death deepened his depression even further. But depression did not prevent him from working. His behavior in London was nevertheless extreme. The credibility of ­Beilin’s description is beyond doubt. In his letters to Schoffman from that time, there are a considerable number of references to Brenner’s attacks of madness. When Beilin’s memoir “Y. H. Brenner in London” was published in 1922, there were people still living who could have confirmed or refuted his words, but there was no refutation of his description. What happened in London possibly reflects a particularly severe attack that never recurred with such force. Brenner saw himself as mentally ill, as a permanent sufferer from depression. What is interesting, then, is the unusual relation between his lifestyle and his ability to work even while depressed.

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Despite the prevailing descriptions of the East End as an almost closed Jewish world with no contact with the rest of the city, London penetrated Brenner’s consciousness. The great city offered high culture and leisure possibilities that Brenner had never known. In one of his ironic-jocular letters to Schoffman, Beilin described the city’s leisure time pleasures—in addition to the time he spent with women who were not his wife. According to Beilin, there was a museum with a statue of Diana, vocal recitals, walks in the parks.38 Every now and then, they would go into a pub. Brenner would get tipsy with one glass and become rowdy. Then he would find fault with Christianity, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, swear that he was not influenced by Dostoevsky and was sick and tired of him.39 Beilin recounts that sometimes they would stand in line for theater tickets, and when they eventually got inside, Brenner would tire of the play after one act and leave.40 Brenner does not mention visiting the theater or attending a concert, but there is evidence of the influence of the environment on him. The Maeterlinck translation and its publication in Hameorer was apparently the outcome of Brenner’s familiarity with Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird, which was playing in London at the time, and on which Rudolf Rocker lectured at the anarchists’ club that Brenner frequented. It was at that club that attempts were made to produce Yiddish plays that, in all probability, left an impression on Brenner. Some of the plays were original, while others were translations from English.41 He also attended political assemblies, lectures on Hebrew and Yiddish culture, and even on subjects connected with Russian revolutionary culture. It therefore appears that his cultural world expanded as a result of living in the big city and was no longer restricted solely to literature. A certain sensitivity to painting is clearly evident in Brenner, which he probably acquired in London on his wanderings through the city’s museums with Beilin. In one of the articles he wrote in London, he mentions Samuel Hirszenberg’s painting “Exile,” and he even decorated his room with Rembrandt reproductions that he had been given as a present, which he loved (the same reproductions that Beilin saw Brenner tearing down). In his novel Min hameitzar (Out of the depths) Brenner mentions Bartolmé Murillo’s works (as will be discussed in Chapter 5),42 which were on show at the National Gallery in London. Lamed S ­ hapiro recounts a conversation in which Brenner, somewhat regretfully, states that the best music and

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the most superior paintings were created for the church, for the glory of Christianity.43 This reveals an interest in and even a certain understanding of music and painting, of which there is no mention in either his letters or his works. Beyond Boundaries is the only full-length play that Brenner wrote.44 Secular drama in Hebrew was a very new genre. A few works had already been written in Yiddish, some good, some less so. Yiddish theater was familiar to Brenner, especially Jacob Gordin’s play God, Man and Devil. Peretz Hirschbein also tried his hand at writing Hebrew plays, as did Ben Avuya (Yitzhak Wilkansky). The choice of this genre for Beyond Boundaries apparently derived from the influence of both Jewish and non-Jewish London on Brenner. The play was written in Hebrew, but how could its protagonists speak a language not yet spoken, certainly not in London? The protagonists therefore hold a dialogue in Yiddish, which Brenner “translates” into a Hebrew that resonates with the sounds of popular Yiddish. Brenner’s need to experience literary writing of a kind he was unused to is part of his innovativeness and perhaps might explain the trembling excitement with which he awaited his friend’s verdict on the play: this brainchild of his was precious to him, for it marked his ability for renewal. The setting of the play is also different from his previous works; it does not take place, like the stories, against the backdrop of Russia, life in the shtetl, the various extern circles, or the prisoners’ column. This time the plot unfolds in London, and the setting is Whitechapel, the crowded, filthy Jewish quarter that housed Jews who cut themselves off from a reality that was, with all its shortcomings, authentic and complete but not yet rooted in the new reality. Brenner calls the East End Jews “the exiled Jews,” meaning that Russia was their homeland. Beyond Boundaries deals with emigrants in a state of transition: London is not their final destination, but a temporary haven on the way to New York, Palestine, or Canada. The play examines the breakup of a family, which represents the crumbling of Jewish life during emigration. It is the story of three siblings: the elder brother and his daughter; the sister, her husband, and their child; and the younger brother, recently arrived from Russia. The elder brother, a pious Torah scholar, feels it incumbent on himself to publish the Tola’at Ya’akov commentary on prayer that had been left by their father. The book represents

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not only the advantage of the cultural-spiritual value of a man of the old culture in materialistic London Jewish society but also the distance between that culture and the new reality and the devotee’s inability to adapt to the new place and its culture. Fanny, his young and beautiful daughter, adopts the customs of London, behaves foolishly, and becomes pregnant by a vain young Jew whose only redeeming feature is that he speaks English and dresses in the local fashion. The sister’s husband leaves her and goes to the United States. The couple are modeled on Kalman and Sarah-Shifra Marmor and their relationship: the man talks like a highbrow but is dependent on the work of his wife, whom he leaves for his Poalei Zion ideals. Brenner depicts the husband with irony bordering on sarcasm and identifies with the deserted wife. There are two characters in the play that appear to be modeled on Brenner himself. One is the brother Yochanan, a tubercular writer who had spent time in a Russian jail. Secular in his views, possibly a territorialist or perhaps an unconventional Zionist, he vehemently opposes Marxist thought. He is suffering from writer’s block and sees himself as being past living. He rids himself of Doba, a woman to whom he was attracted, despite his usually feeling repelled by women. The second character is Eliahu Hizkuni, a man who met Yochanan on the boat to London, cared for him devotedly when he was seasick, and since then has bound his fate with that of the crumbling family. Hizkuni’s character is that of a secular holy man. Yochanan regards him as a Jesus-like figure: “You have come to carry the burden of each and every one so that it is lightened. . . . You take the transgression on yourself.”45 Brenner’s two doppelgängers are not free of sin. Both are tormented by their lust: Yochanan desires Doba,46 and Hizkuni wants Fanny, the young daughter. As Yochanan says, “beyond the boundaries there are no righteous men.”47 Both have suffered mental illness and recovered. Hizkuni suffered from delusions of grandeur during his service in the Russian army, while Yochanan dreamed of taking his own life but changed his mind at the last minute. He also suffered from an ocular migraine but came through the storm. His torments caused him an “ascent,” a more profound understanding of the meaning of life. Yochanan’s redemption is in creating. Even if he is lost, his work will endure: “I am no more—and the letters of my soul remain.

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That is the secret!”48 Hizkuni ends the play with a mysterious statement in the style of the Kabbala: “I am who I am.”49 There is even a hint of a doppelgänger relation between Hizkuni and Yochanan as well in a stage direction in which “they both lie on the ground face to face. They are silent for a long time.”50 Why did Brenner employ doppelgängers? Does Yochanan represent Brenner as he sees himself, a writer whose soul is beset by a constant struggle, and is Hizkuni, an ideal character who travels the world doing good works, perhaps the person Brenner would want to be? Hizkuni is depicted as the guardian of Yosefl, the boy abandoned by his father, and he even tells his friend, “There is someone in the world to be a father to.”51 The child represents not only innocence, total purity, but also the continuation of the personality of a father, a sort of father extension. Hizkuni is perhaps meant to atone for Yochanan’s sins, perhaps as a way of liberating Brenner from the guilt feelings that torment him. The experience of Beyond Boundaries is one that goes beyond the boundaries of morality and the senses. Brenner was very pleased with his play, especially because, like its protagonist Yochanan, he had suffered writer’s block for about a year. Now he was not only surprised by the burst of energy he was enjoying but also by finding the play to be a work of value. He asked B ­ ichovsky to so inform Zeitlin: “Tell him that something most profound has been born, but he should take care to judge [it] only when he has read the fourth act to the end.”52 He wrote to Rabbi Benjamin, telling him that he had just finished writing something “that in its quality surpasses everything I have written so far.”53 Beilin wrote to Schoffman: “Read Beyond Boundaries twice. The last act, a hundred and one times, and then read it again.”54 Schoffman and Rabbi Benjamin both expressed their admiration. “Behold, this is Brenner! Wonderful!” Schoffman wrote.55 “The ending of Beyond Boundaries works well,” Rabbi Benjamin wrote to him, “it is what I have prayed for.”56 But Brenner’s pleasure over Hameorer’s second year and his new work was short-lived. As early as the end of the first week of January 1907, he was complaining that he was “poorly.”57 A few days later, he wrote: “I am agitated and my head aches.”58 He told Rabbi Benjamin that he had asked Bogadin to buy him a book because “I do not leave the house and my life is very hard.”59 His reclusion was partly vol-

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untary, partly enforced. According to Beilin, there were times when they tired of each other’s company. Brenner’s incessant self-inquiry, his grimacing and groaning, were troubling. When he was depressed, Brenner tended to focus on himself and ignore everything that was happening around him. They therefore agreed that each of them could ask to stay away for a while, with no reasons or explanations given. This arrangement prevented quarrels.60 It was during one of these separations that Brenner explained that “old age has come upon me. I do not leave the house. No one visits me. Were someone to come, I would send him away. Apart from that, there is nothing.”61 His illness was mental: “I am strong in body,” he wrote, “but there is no cure for my spirit.”62 Brenner maintained a lively correspondence on Hameorer business despite his illness. In the journal’s second year, he even began paying a modest author’s fee. As the number of subscribers increased, reaching some three hundred in Russia, Hameorer was no longer dependent on Brenner’s income, and for a few months it stood on its own two feet.63 At the same time, some four hundred copies were being distributed in the United States, which brought in sixty rubles a month.64 The journal’s biggest problem was the difficulty of obtaining worthy material. Although Berdyczewski and Rabbi Benjamin came to Brenner’s help with their submissions, in general the standard of published writing continued to be random and uneven. The Pochep-Homel group was disappointing. Zeitlin did not keep his promise, and it was only after innumerable requests from Brenner that he sent an article for publication; but as we have seen, it too was incomplete. Anochi and Gnessin did not publish anything at all in Hameorer. In spring 1907 two unrelated events occurred simultaneously in Brenner’s life, both of which ended in frustration and heartbreak: the first, his affair with Sarah-Shifra Marmor; the second, his relationship with Gnessin. They were the reason behind his decision to leave London in early January 1908. As noted earlier, Kalman Marmor had gone to Philadelphia in February 1906, leaving his wife and son, Shmuelik, in London. In contrast with the idyllic picture Marmor paints in his memoirs, his family life was not plain sailing. Sarah-Shifra did not trust the fidelity her husband, whom she had supported with her work as a seamstress during his studies in Freiburg. On their honey-

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moon she had demanded a notarized promissory note in the sum of two thousand rubles as a guarantee that he would not leave her once he had completed his studies.65 This demand introduced an abrasive note into their relationship, and the tension between them mounted in ­London.66 Marmor was very busy with his activities as the Poalei Zion propagandist; he traveled all over England and spent little time at home. Making a living was placed squarely on his wife’s shoulders. Then an additional source of tension appeared. After her ­mother’s death, Sarah-Shifra took her four brothers and sisters into their home. Her siblings did not accept their elder sister’s authority, and the M ­ armor home became a living hell. Matters came to a head with Sarah-Shifra cursing and shouting, and in a moment of rage she threw a pair of scissors and a hot iron at her husband.67 Marmor sought ways of staying away from home, and when the invitation to edit a journal in Philadelphia at a reasonable salary presented itself, he was happy with the chance of making an honest living and escaping from his wife. Sarah-Shifra waited impatiently for the tickets to the United States, but Marmor was in no hurry to send them. He demanded that his wife come to the United States with their son only. Thus, he assured her, his salary would be sufficient for their subsistence and their life would be serene and peaceful, but under no circumstances would he agree to her bringing her siblings. If she brought them with her to the United States contrary to his wishes, he would not be prepared to live with her. “You are a sister, not a mother,” he admonished her. Sarah-Shifra refused to abandon her siblings, thus providing her husband with an excuse for staying away from her. Relations between Brenner and Marmor remained close. Brenner published a letter Marmor wrote on his way to the United States and also wrote some pieces for Der Yiddisher Kampfer, the journal Marmor edited. On Marmor’s instructions he visited his home to pick up the issues of the journal that Marmor had sent and to give Marmor’s letters to his wife.68 She would sometimes add a few words to Brenner’s letters to her husband,69 and thus a third correspondent was added to the correspondence between Marmor and his wife. The couple sought his opinion and responded to things he said or that were attributed to him. Sarah-Shifra was a good-looking and delicate woman, unlike the shrew described by Marmor in his letters to Brenner. The grief of

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the  woman deserted in London touched Brenner. As early as April 1906, he mentioned this in his letter to her husband. He contended that “Sarah’s brothers are good,” probably because she had complained that Marmor did not want them, and added: “You should bring her to you as soon as possible. Her life here without you is hard.” And, as a sort of further inducement, he mentioned their son: “Shmuelik, a wonder.”70 Marmor replied immediately. “Do not judge me until you have walked a mile in my shoes,” he wrote. “I simply do not have the strength to be a father to children that are not mine. I am barely happy with my own.” If Sarah-Shifra were on her own, then fine, but he was unable to support a family of seven. He even rebuked Brenner: “With all the due respect I have for you, I cannot believe that if you were in my place, you would accept such an onerous burden.”71 Brenner replied that he was not judging him, especially because there was no clear reason to do so. Marmor admitted that he owed a debt of honor to his wife, who had supported him, but Brenner sought to change the character of the discussion: “Do not forget that there is more than a matter of gratitude here. There is also the matter of great human responsibility,” he wrote.72 Marmor contended that he did not feel moral responsibility, but in any case, what responsibility did he have toward his wife’s siblings? “True, I am bad, evil, and wicked, but this is a lost cause, I shall die without repentance even at the gates of Hell.”73 Marmor liked to adopt the pose of a Nietzschean, free of bourgeois moral fetters. In the draft of the angry letter he wrote to Brenner, he challenged him: “I told you even then, when we were together day and night in one room, that I feel no moral obligation toward either the wife or the child. I further said then that this might be a fault, but I am unable to change my nature.”74 He later explained that he “sought to quell [his] pangs of conscience by presenting [himself] in the most negative way.”75 In the United States Marmor had an affair with another woman.76 He wanted to hint about it to his wife but did not dare write about it explicitly. He wrote her that he wanted a wife who would be his life companion, who would not block his way and not worry him with arguments of good and evil as she did. “I am no angel, but a bad man with no moral conscience, who does not fight against the dictates of his heart,” thus hinting about the other woman in his life. Love is not an emotion that can be imposed, to commit oneself to it for eternity, he argued. “Love

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is an emotion about which honesty and justice have nothing to say”; in other words, marriage vows are perhaps valid, but not the promise of eternal love. And in general, he explained to Sarah-Shifra, men have always been polygamous—only women are loyal to one man.77 The correspondence between the Marmors was very intense. SarahShifra’s letters bordered on hysteria, whereas Kalman’s were cold and distant. Each of them suspected the other of infidelity, but at the time a woman’s infidelity was considered an unforgivable sin, whereas the man’s transgression was excused by his polygamous nature. In early March 1907, about a year after Marmor sailed for the United States, the crisis between them reached a climax: Marmor had heard rumors about an affair between Brenner and his wife. At the same time, Brenner, “confused by the wife’s sorrow,” wrote him a letter in which he insulted him harshly and tongue-lashed him, fully accepting Sarah-Shifra’s version of their relationship and accusing Marmor of deserting his wife and son. Sarah-Shifra, Kalman, and Brenner engaged in a three-way correspondence. Sarah-Shifra swore undying love for Kalman and denied all the rumors that had reached his ears, so he said, through friends and enemies alike.78 Marmor felt in Brenner’s letter “that you harbor a dual hatred of me, hatred of the man and the husband.”79 To Sarah-Shifra he wrote that he would not agree to live a lie, even if “the compassionate, honest, moral ones and so forth” (that is, Brenner) were to crucify or tar him. One moment, he was ready to leave his wife and even saw an advantage in their having ostensibly reached a decision together to start a new chapter in their life,80 but only a few weeks later he was again nurturing his relationship with Sarah-Shifra. He mocked Brenner: according to Brenner’s perception of morality, Marmor should also have certain obligations toward the woman he was living with in the United States. He turned what Brenner had said to Sarah-Shifra against him, to the effect that she should forget Kalman (to form a new relationship—with Brenner), and he plucked emotional strings: remember only the bad, the man who took your youth, and so on, and forget all the good and the beautiful days of our life together.81 Marmor later gave an account what had happened between him and Sarah-Shifra: “Both were very young with a fiery temperament, they would quarrel and make up. . . . But it was enough that a third person

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interfered for them to make up and forget everything they had said against each other. Their love was truly very strong.”82 It seems that this is a description of Marmor’s emotional development, not of SarahShifra’s. At the beginning of May, Marmor was still maintaining his coldness, but two weeks later he wrote her that over the past ten days he had written to her every day but had not sent the letters. He told her that he was thinking of traveling to Palestine soon and asked her to meet him in Paris. They did not meet in Paris, but their reconciliation began in August 1907 during the Eighth Zionist Congress in The Hague, where they and little Shmuelik met.83 Marmor did not bear a grudge against Brenner. Even when the clash between them reached its peak, when Marmor answered the “confused” letter and called Brenner a podlets (scoundrel), he concluded his letter with the words, “I still love you and everything I held against you I have drowned in this letter. Now I am your loyal lover.” He also added a postscript: “Have you read the critique of H ­ ameorer’s second year by Tashrak [pseudonym of Israel Joseph Zoin, who wrote for the New York Yiddish press]? It would be to the benefit of Hameorer and its American readers if you were to answer once and for all and shut his mouth.”84 It appears that the struggle for the woman’s heart had not hurt him to the depths of his soul. In his memoirs, written decades later, after the deaths of both Sarah-Shifra and Shmuelik, M ­ armor tried to minimize the importance of the family conflict and even presented his refusal to assume responsibility for his wife’s siblings in a distorted fashion. He did, however, take the trouble to mention, with no logical connection, that Brenner had asked Sarah-Shifra to divorce Marmor and marry him.85 In his memoir about Brenner, Beilin wrote that Brenner was “a monkish man from a bygone age, a cloth did not cover his table, a flower did not draw breath in his room, and its walls did not hear the voice of a woman.”86 He goes on to explain that Brenner knew avid lust but lived a life of abstinence: “The mystery of sex cast a real fear upon him, and the emotion of profound chastity together with the theory of ‘despised and rejected of men’ [Isaiah 53:3] erected a wall of iron between him and the woman, and he did not go to her.” Beilin doubted that Brenner was capable of profound love, because his moral sense directed him toward other missions in his life. “The demands

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of youthful blood aroused only the shadow of love, which sometimes seemed to him to be love,” he claimed.87 Brenner’s relationship with Sarah-Shifra began out of pity for and identification with the suffering, abandoned woman, but with time it became deeper. The rumors that reached Marmor about a developing relationship between his wife and Brenner were well grounded insofar as they concerned Brenner. Several letters that Brenner wrote to Sarah-Shifra hint at a developing love affair between them, or at least indicate that she did not totally reject him and gave him reason to believe that she enjoyed his courtship. One of these letters is extremely close to being a love letter that Brenner, with all his inhibitions, was able to  write. He opens it with the words “My Precious Sarah,” a salutation he had not used in his previous letters to her, and ends it with “I press your beloved hand,” another heartfelt expression of love, similar to expressing longing for a kiss. He addresses her in the second-person singular, which also indicates intimacy and closeness. In the letter he adds, “I have very good thoughts about you that slowly bring me relief.” He asks how she is, whether she needs anything, and offers his help. He supports her in her dispute with her husband. “Are you serene and strong in spirit? Be so. You have every right to be.” At the end he asks her to write him a few words, “No need for many.”88 The letter is undated but appears to have been written in the spring of 1907. There are two short letters from Brenner to Sarah-Shifra from August 1907. The first opens with “My Beloved”; the second, with “Beloved and Precious.” He was to have come to her to read Dickens together and wished to explain why he had to postpone his visit.89 The letters contain a great degree of intimacy and closeness, indicating that the relationship was not one-sided. Sarah-Shifra’s letters to Brenner have not been preserved. In Marmor’s letter to Poznansky from 1932, written when all the parties except for Brenner were still living, Marmor describes Brenner’s amorous pursuit of his wife. He would come to her and they would read literature together. At a certain stage he began entreating her to divorce Marmor and marry him. It was then that the child, Shmuelik, intervened. At first Brenner had praised him to the heavens, describing him as a future genius, but now the boy was standing in his way and hindering his efforts to win his mother’s heart. With the acumen of a

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child (according to Marmor), Shmuelik realized that Brenner intended to steal his mother from his father. And so every time Brenner came to their home, Shmuelik would appear and sit next to Sarah-Shifra, not allowing Brenner “to be too intimate with her.” Marmor reports that “when Brenner saw that the boy was stopping him from attaining his objective, he began displaying hatred toward him.”90 The boy’s attitude distanced Sarah-Shifra from Brenner and prevented him from winning her heart. In the summer and fall of 1907, the Marmor family was reunited, and Brenner realized that he no longer stood a chance. On the eve of his departure from London for Galicia, he wrote her a parting note.91 It was written in the third-person plural: she is still beloved, but unattainable. In his play Erev uvoker (Evening and morning), which he wrote a short time later, Brenner reconstructs the story of his love for Sarah-Shifra and her return to her husband. Appearing in the play is Eliezer, Brenner’s alter ego, who is in love with Hadassah, Sarah-Shifra’s alter ego, the mother of a child, with a husband, ­Yehezkel, who (like Marmor) is away on a political mission to Russia. As with Brenner and Marmor, Eliezer is a partner in Yehezkel’s political activities. Yehezkel asks Eliezer to look out for his wife in his absence, and he does so. Despite the difficulty, he quells his desire and does not reveal his love to her. They spend an evening together, and he reads her a story he has written in which he reveals his love for her and is so agitated that he starts crying as he reads. He conceals his turbulent feelings from her. She does not understand why he refuses to be alone with her, and he quickly leaves when she goes to attend to the baby. At this point Brenner writes a few words that express his attitude toward women in general: “A liaison with a woman and detesting her . . . no, no . . . I mean, and getting cold toward her.” 92 At a certain moment, the sexual tension builds in Eliezer, but he overcomes his passion painfully: “A moment, a moment . . . it is lost forever, for eternity. . . . Woe is me . . . the ‘good’ has won . . . ‘purity’ has triumphed . . . ‘the family element’ has won . . . a moment . . . a moment. . . . I shall grieve for it until the day I die . . . desire has been vanquished.” 93 When Beilin read Evening and Morning, which was published in Hashiloah in early 1908 when Brenner was already in Lvov, he apparently reacted emotionally to his friend’s unrequited affair, which only now had been revealed to him. Brenner was quick to deny any connection between the play and

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the Sarah-Shifra Marmor episode: “Evening and Morning—you attribute far too much importance to it. In fact nothing took place.” But after this absolute denial he qualifies his statement: “In that manner [sexually] most certainly not.” 94 Later, Brenner included Evening and Morning in a list of his autobiographical works. Brenner’s affair with Sarah-Shifra Marmor reveals the nature of his relationships with women. It becomes clear that he had recovered from the sense of loss he had felt with the death of Chaya Wolfson. He had not lost the strong urges that gave him no peace and that perhaps aroused the sexual fantasies about which he had told Beilin during the long nights they spent walking the streets of London. His becoming close to a woman is connected with a sense of compassion: he is not seeking the pure virgin but is attracted to a woman who needs his help, who has been badly treated, a woman for whom he can be redeemer and savior—a sort of inverted Jewish version of Sonya from Crime and Punishment, who brings redemption and purification to the sinner. In this case it is Brenner who strives for purification by taking the burden of the abandoned family on himself. In both the Chaya Wolfson and Sarah-Shifra Marmor relationships, Brenner knew deep in his heart that he would be unable to attain the woman: Chaya because she was in Russia and he was unable to go back there; SarahShifra because she was profoundly connected with her husband and hoped he would come back to her. Seeking the woman and longing for her were a substitute for fulfilling his love. For Brenner, attraction to a woman is mixed with abhorrence of the sex act. Sex both frightens him and arouses feelings of revulsion and guilt. From this standpoint Beilin was right when he stated that Brenner never fulfilled his desire and remained a tormented monk. Uri Nissan Gnessin’s visit to London in spring and summer 1907 opened an unbridgeable rift in his and Brenner’s friendship, which had begun in their childhood. The last time that Brenner had met Gnessin was in late 1903, when he was in the safe house in Russia awaiting the papers that would facilitate his escape. When they last met, following the publication of In Winter, Brenner was already a well-known writer, whereas Gnessin had not yet published anything worthy of mention. Now Gnessin had acquired a reputation after Frish­man published “Hatzida” (Sideways), which immediately gained

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Gnessin a place among the young modernist writers. The contact between Brenner and Gnessin continued, and its warmth did not abate during the years of their separation. As far as he was able, Gnessin had come to Brenner’s aid in distributing Hameorer, and he tried to urge Bichovsky to greater effort in this matter. The collaboration in publishing Nisyonot was another aspect of their friendship, but it also exposed Gnessin to Brenner’s outbursts of anger when Brenner was disappointed that his friends from Pochep—including Gnessin—were not contributing to Hameorer. Gnessin found it hard to withstand his friend’s angry outbursts. “I am somewhat afraid of you,” he wrote to Brenner; “your last letters to Vilna were so angry.” He tried to explain that the reason Brenner’s old friends—Zeitlin, Anochi, and Gnessin himself—were not writing was that their creativity had dried up. “My good brother, why do you not seek to understand them,” he said, trying to pacify him.95 He also suggested to Brenner, who was claiming wretchedness, that he should leave London, to which Brenner replied: “For what? To replace one [bad situation] with another? I am not a fool.”96 Brenner’s reply shows that his situation in London was not as bad as might be inferred from his letters. Gnessin’s situation, however, was grave. To put it simply, he was starving. In summer 1906 he began thinking about leaving Russia and moving to London, even though “I am sure that it too will not offer me respite,” he wrote to his friend.97 Brenner encouraged him to come—or rather encouraged him a little and discouraged him somewhat. He even sent him some money for his travel expenses.98 In July 1906 Brenner began dreaming about establishing a Hebrew cultural center in London. He had not changed his opinion of the city. “Of course, to expect something special in London—there is none,” he wrote to Schoffman, in reply to his question of whether coming to London was worthwhile. “But where can you find one?” This was his way of recommending to the writer that he should come. He detailed all the people who would be coming: Gnessin, Ben-Eliezer, Zeitlin, Anochi, and perhaps even Rabbi Benjamin. “I do not think that we will die of hunger here,” he wrote to Schoffman in his cautiously qualifying way.99 Brenner’s hopes did not come to fruition; none of the writers he had mentioned came to London. Gnessin was stopped at the border into Galicia and was unceremoniously returned to Kiev.100

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Gnessin’s situation in Kiev deteriorated. “I am starving,” he wrote to Bichovsky when Bichovsky complained that he was not writing. “At night I do not light a candle and in the daytime I roam like a dog.”101 To another friend he wrote: “It is winter and I do not have a palto [Russian: overcoat], only lecher [Yiddish: holes]; when I want to eat, I have no bread, only troubles, and when my teeth chatter with the cold, the landlord of my beautiful apartment does not heat it but laughs. I still have not paid him.”102 Once again Brenner came to his aid. Starting at the end of November 1906, he sent money for his journey, while Gnessin was busy arranging his travel documents. Brenner instructed Bichovsky to transfer Hameorer’s revenues in Russia to Gnessin, but Bichovsky was in no hurry to do so, and Gnessin was hurt and insulted.103 Frustrated by all the trouble he was taking, Brenner could not understand the delay in Gnessin’s arrival. He wrote him an angry letter, one that alarmed his friend with its irascibility. “Oy, what are you doing, Yosef Haim—what are you doing to me,” Gnessin replied. “Why did you write that letter—am I not beleaguered enough without it?” He pleaded with him: “Do not do this again, my brother, my good brother. I do not want wrath.” On Brenner’s pessimistic attitude toward London, Gnessin replies to him: “I know what awaits me in London. It seems to me that I have already written to you [about it]. But I am not going either ‘for me’ or ‘for you’ and not for anything at all.” And as an explanation of his coming, he adds: “I cannot find myself a place and that is all.”104 Over the next few months, Brenner and Gnessin maintained indirect contact through Bichovsky. Brenner would instruct Bichovsky to send money to Gnessin and inquire what was happening to him but did not write to him directly. He had almost despaired of his friend’s coming to London; meanwhile, Gnessin wrote to Bichovsky that he was unable to write to his irascible friend. “In any case he gets angry, and it is burdensome for me to even think about it.”105 In March 1907 Gnessin finally received his travel documents, but he decided to stay and spend Passover with his parents. It was then that the direct correspondence between him and Brenner resumed.106 As soon as Gnessin reached London in April 1907, he was drawn into Brenner, Beilin, and Schoffman’s group. “Gnessin will be coming here this week,” Beilin wrote to Schoffman, “and will stay with me. Perhaps he will console me.”107 For the first time since the Homel

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days, Brenner felt he belonged to a group of friends. But in early May 1907, another bout of depression assailed him. “I have been ill in my soul all this time (including today), and so I did not find the strength to write to you,” he wrote, explaining the lateness of his reply to Berdyczewski.108 However, the three friends wrote a joint letter to Schoffman that was all jocularity and joy. Gnessin told him about his journey to London, then concluded: “Now, I think, you will also agree that I am worthy of the earth bearing me. And I am happy!” Brenner cleverly invented titles for Schoffman’s stories and even wrote a few humorous lines in a mixture of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian, while Beilin addressed the matter of women and suggested that Schoffman should come to London.109 Schoffman was envious of the group’s togetherness: “I envy you, dear ones,” he wrote to them, “somehow finally there—all together. And I am now on the other side of ‘The Mountains of Darkness.’ The devil knows where I am.” He concludes the postcard with the words, “Be well, my brothers, may you be well.”110 The happy idyll rapidly palled. In June, H. Y. Epstein, who headed the Hebrew association in New York, informed Brenner that its members had grave reservations about the content of Hameorer. The poems of Yitzhak Katznelson reeked of decadence. Epstein contended that the translation of “Salome” by the vilified and ostracized Oscar Wilde, whose plays were banned in New York, had no place in Hameorer. “We must consider the readers and also the tradition of our literature, which thus far has been modest and suited to accepted morals,” he reproved Brenner.111 A month later, Epstein informed him that the association had decided to withdraw its fifteen-dollars-a-month funding of the journal.112 At the same time, Brenner complained to Berdyczewski: “I have no material for the next issue, and I am deeply distressed.”113 Matters reached a crisis in early July: Brenner was forced to leave his typesetter’s job with Naroditsky to make room for Gnessin, who was unemployed. He went to work as a typesetter on the Yiddishen Jour­ nal, a Yiddish yellow paper that employed Beilin as a correspondent.114 It was hard, unsatisfying work that kept him busy for many hours a day. Beilin and Gnessin passed their leisure time together in a serene and apparently jovial atmosphere, while Brenner spent his time working at the press. The letters to Schoffman written by the three of them

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tell the story of Brenner’s increasing loneliness. In their joint letter, Beilin tells Schoffman that Hameorer is evidently “dead” and that “its death throes will cease together with the seventh issue.” And he writes jokingly that Brenner was seeking a bride with a dowry so he could open his own press, but there were no gullible virgins available. When he got back to his room after a long, exhausting day’s work, Brenner found his friends’ letter waiting for his addition. He told Schoffman that Hameorer was about to close down mainly because there was no material worthy of being published in it. To compensate the subscribers, he wished to publish a special anthology of Schoffman’s stories, which would be sent to them instead of the remaining issues of the journal for the year, and asked for his consent to this plan.115 There is a vast difference between the lighthearted style of the two friends and Brenner’s fatigued and depressed writing and also between Beilin’s attitude toward Hameorer’s death throes and Brenner’s sense of commitment to its subscribers and his desire to end the journal’s appearance with a top quality publication such as Schoffman’s stories. But the crisis was only temporary. A few days later, Brenner’s mood took a turn for the better. Now he wanted Hameorer to continue appearing until the end of the year and urged writers to send him material.116 But on 17 September 1907 (Yom Kippur Eve), Gnessin informed him out of the blue that he was going to Palestine after the High Holy Days. Gnessin’s leaving, after his serving as the journal’s editor for the last few months, signaled the closing of Hameorer. Beilin wrote to Schoffman: “What should have happened a long time ago has finally come about: publication of Hameorer has ceased.”117 Gnessin agreed to deal with the publication of issues 8 and 9. “He is the publisher, he is the executor,” Brenner wrote to Rabbi Benjamin, explaining: “I am working in a different place and do not have the heart for all this.”118 The accepted view was that Brenner closed Hameorer and left London for financial reasons, because he was unable to meet the journal’s expenses, but this appears to be a false representation of the actual circumstances. First and foremost, Hameorer closed down because of the paucity of literary material that reached Brenner. Competition in the revived Hebrew press drew away subscribers. More than anything, the closure of Hameorer expressed Brenner’s cumulative mental fatigue, not financial problems. Beilin wrote: “After Brenner’s depar-

London, 1906–1908

ture from London, among the mountains of papers we found checks from various banks made out to the editor, who had not taken the trouble to cash them but threw them into ‘the basket.’ That was when he was complaining to his friends about being short of money.”119 The closure of Hameorer and the relationship between Brenner and Gnessin were intertwined. Beilin described how Brenner prepared for Gnessin’s arrival in London: “He was then in the state of a lover awaiting the arrival of his fiancée. He was waiting all aflutter.”120 ­Gnessin had been Brenner’s soul mate. It was Gnessin who extricated him from his repentance crisis. He also broke his circle of loneliness and visited him during his military service in Oryol and after his desertion in the safe house. With Gnessin’s arrival in London, Brenner expected the wall of loneliness that encircled him to again fall down. Although Beilin was a close friend, the friendship of Pochep was not the friendship of London. The renewed encounter with Gnessin revealed how far apart the two friends had drifted, how different the two grown men were from the youths who had forged a friendship. Gnessin came to London after a year of terrible hardship in Kiev. His health had deteriorated; he had heart disease that had been exacer­ bated by the harsh conditions of his life. He was a gentle aristocrat who did not reveal his suffering in public. The silence that had always surrounded him became increasingly impenetrable. He suffered alone and proudly, while Brenner became ever more extroverted, revealing all his torments, crying out in pain, and expecting people to console him in his sorrow. One had a physical illness that his friend did not discern, while the other had a mental illness that his friend did not comprehend. Brenner interpreted Gnessin’s reserved and cautious behavior as that of a pampered rabbi’s son used to getting special treatment. He saw it as arrogance, as if in his behavior Gnessin was hinting that his own suffering was harsher than his friend’s. Gnessin, on his side, despised Brenner’s public demonstrations of his torment, his cries of “Oy vey.” He saw before him a healthy young man who would not stop bemoaning his bitter fate—and this at a time, when he, Gnessin, was already doomed to die and was in constant pain. He did not view Brenner’s mental state as a real illness but as a sort of preening, part of his tendency toward self-dramatization. And so each of them was focused on himself and blind to his friend’s suffering.121

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London was not kind to Gnessin. Unlike Brenner, who was insensitive to the beauty of nature, Gnessin needed the wide-open spaces and green landscapes that he so loved in Pochep. London’s gloomy damp and frequent rain exacerbated his discomfort. But apart from that, he found himself increasingly disgusted by Brenner. It was a disgust whose foundations were physical and whose justification was spiritual. Did Gnessin’s disgust express a physical revulsion caused by Brenner’s ambiguous, suspect sexuality? Gnessin justified his revulsion by focusing on Brenner’s loudness and his unseemly behavior. An unpublished letter demonstrates their difference in style. In it Brenner wrote to Rabbi Benjamin: “I wrote you a bitter postcard today. You must have received it.” To this, Gnessin added: “And I, Redler, have nothing to tell you. Except that I did not write you a bitter postcard today and you did not receive it.”122 In his ironic echoing of Brenner’s words, Gnessin reveals his reservations about Brenner’s extroverted wretchedness. He also did not like Brenner the editor’s posing, his pretensions of being a preacher at the gate, admonishing and saving the last surviving lovers of Hebrew. In his eyes the pathos of “we will stay the last ones on the wall” and “for it is to awaken you, brother, that I come” was both arrogant and pompous. The fact of the matter is that he did not like the idea of Hameorer from the outset. It seemed to him to be too close to a political pamphlet. And so the news that the journal would close down as a consequence of his leaving left him unmoved. He was far distant from Brenner’s sense of mission and his pretensions of serving as a “spiritual center” for young modernists. Gnessin’s distancing did not escape Brenner, but he could not understand why. Because he always felt that people were physically repelled by him, he tended to think that his suspicions of his friend were false. Not only was Gnessin’s attitude toward him strewn with pangs of conscience, with ups and downs, but Gnessin admired Brenner, his personality, his devotion, and his kindheartedness. Therefore he would change his attitude toward him now and again and make up with him, but not for long. In the moving piece Brenner wrote for the Hatzida anthology that he edited in Gnessin’s memory, he described the moments of reconciliation and what came after them: “Then we both realized that I am not to blame, that he is not to blame, that we are not to blame, that it is only the catastrophe that lies heavily upon us.

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And yet in all those days and all those hours, I saw that I was a thorn in his side.”123 As noted earlier, the joint letters the three friends wrote to Schoffman from London reveal a close association between Beilin and Gnessin, one that left Brenner, who was working twelve hours a day, alone in his solitude. “The jokers are not here now,” he wrote in one of his letters.124 Beilin describes Brenner’s loneliness on Yom Kippur, after the decision to close Hameorer had been made. He and ­Gnessin spent all day walking around outside the Jewish quarter. Brenner was not with them, and it was only in the evening that he went to Beilin’s house and found them both there. His eyes were red and puffy from weeping. He said that the sound of the prayers coming from the synagogue facing where he lived had distressed him. He had fled White­ chapel and walked around North London until, tired and depressed, he sat down on a park bench. Around it children were playing noisily, and two young women sat down next to him. In that simple, natural, human setting he felt he was more alone and abandoned than ever and started crying. The two women were alarmed by the man crying unashamedly and moved away, and he just sat there alone, weeping unceasingly.125 In retrospect, Brenner described his relationship with Gnessin as one would describe a relationship with a lover. “It was impossible not to love this tall, gentle, sensitive man, pure of soul and spirit,” he wrote. “He had such gracious gestures, aristocratic by nature, and yet filled with a restrained simplicity bordering on the shyness of a six-year-old girl.”126 Brenner acknowledged that he was envious of his refined, aristocratic friend, but he claimed that he did not admire him. “Concerning the difficulties of our external life, he was even less capable than me of withstanding the battle.” He concludes: “There was too much nobility and softness in Uri Nissan, too little stubbornness and iron for me to admire him.”127 It seems that this description was Brenner’s attempt to position himself, after the fact, on a loftier plane than his friend. While Uri Nissan possessed a grace and charm that Brenner did not, Brenner was blessed with a vigor that enabled him to cope with life, but Gnessin was not. In other words, after all of Brenner’s cries of misery, in his own way he chose life. Gnessin, in his own way, chose death.

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Their separation and Gnessin’s death some five years later troubled Brenner, as if the two things had happened because of him, yet another reason for his guilt feelings. A small incident between them did not cease troubling him until he saw a need to confess it in the article he wrote in memory of his friend. Gnessin made a printer’s error in the final issue of Hameorer. In Brenner’s apology to the readers for the delay in the issue’s appearance, the closing of the journal, and the publication of Schoffman’s stories instead of the final issue, Gnessin did not set “please accept it [the journal] kindly,” but “accept me kindly.” Brenner detected the error after the apology had been printed and his heart fell: he looked ridiculous! He reprimanded Gnessin, who did not react; he just smiled apologetically, but his look spoke ­volumes. “If it were possible to put into words everything that look said, then those words would have pierced me more than his most piercing story.”128 Brenner could not forgive himself for his pettiness, but that was being wise after the event, once he heard about his friend’s illness after his death. At the time, he felt that Gnessin had deceived him, ending Hameorer’s life in such a foolish manner, and even on the eve of ­Gnessin’s departure, he did not forgive him. This was another example of the distancing between the two friends who no longer understood one another. But Brenner was unable to bear a grudge for long: he hastened to send his regards to Gnessin in Palestine through Rabbi Benjamin, who was also there.129 Gnessin, however, cut himself off from Brenner completely “And from then to the day he died,” Brenner wrote painfully, “I did not receive a single line from him, no casual regards.”130 When Rabbi Benjamin met Gnessin in Palestine and asked him how Brenner was doing, he replied: “Not bad, the main thing is that he will still write stories,”131 as if to say that the man and the writer should be separated—he did not admire the man, but he did appreciate the writer. It was Brenner’s custom to immortalize in his stories figures that played an important role in his life: Sander Baum, Chaya Wolfson, and Sarah-Shifra Marmor. But his relationship with Gnessin was given no literary expression. If writing is a process that frees the writer of the pain of loss and enables him to cope with it by creating the necessary distance through the artistic medium, then Brenner’s not writing about Gnessin hints that this episode remained a sore wound. Much

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later, Brenner found another way of perpetuating his friend’s memory: he named his only son Uri Nissan. Gnessin left London on his way to Palestine in early October 1907.132 Brenner and Beilin remained in London, in the calm after the storm. Hameorer had already been closed down, and Brenner was working at the Yiddishen Journal press, where Beilin worked as well. It was exhausting, even debasing work; according to Beilin, the paper was not even worthy of being called “yellow.” Why Brenner did not go back to working for Naroditsky is unknown, just as it is unclear why he left him in the first place: the ostensible excuse—that he wanted to get Gnessin a job—is flimsy. It was possibly part of the punishment that Brenner meted out to himself: he had failed in his two love affairs, one with a woman and the other with a man. He again created a situation that made no demands for action on him: not toward the woman—with whom his attraction was mixed with loathing, so that in some way or another he was pleased that she had not responded to him—and also toward the man, who was moving away from him and erecting a barrier between them. In the final accounting, Beilin was perhaps right when he contended that none of Brenner’s loves were deep. A depressive person has difficulty in forming a meaningful and lasting emotional relationship. Years later, Brenner’s editor Poznansky described his relationship in a letter to Beilin: “I was close to him—to the extent that the concept of closeness is appropriate with regard to Brenner.”133 The following months were a time of settling accounts and commitments. Brenner was engaged in publishing Schoffman’s stories; printing had been delayed, and they only appeared in January 1908. In his heart he had already made up his mind to leave London, and he began saving for the journey.134 During this period of “recess,” Brenner received a letter from Maximovsky, who wrote: “Ahad Ha’am asked me to tell you that he would enjoy seeing you. If you would like it too, please inform him when you are free.”135 Brenner was not one of Ahad Ha’am’s disciples. In the great debate on Jewish culture, he stood with Berdyczewski; as a Nietzschean, a pessimist, and an existentialist, he had nothing in common with Ahad Ha’am’s thinking. Ahad Ha’am’s middle-class, moderate evolutionary doctrine did not suit his worldview, and, more particularly, it did not suit his stormy temperament. Ahad Ha’am’s disregard of belles lettres and his demand to enlist

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Hebrew literature for national objectives ran completely counter to Brenner’s credo as a writer. But he did admire Ahad Ha’am as a critic, his integrity as a man, and his willingness to fight for the “truth from Eretz Yisrael.” Hameorer published several pieces that dealt with Ahad Ha’am, including a lecture by Maximovsky.136 The invitation to Ahad Ha’am’s home was a mark of respect for Brenner, a display of appreciation from a man not much given to praising others. Brenner had almost certainly not forgotten that Ahad Ha’am had rejected his first story, “A Piece of Bread,” for publication in Hashiloah. But years had passed since then, and Brenner had become a famous writer, whereas Ahad Ha’am had left Odessa and his “court” for London, where he was the Wissotzky tea company’s agent, alone and far from his confidants and admirers. Had Brenner known Ahad Ha’am and his life circumstances, perhaps he might have found a common language with him, as two exiles cast ashore on a desert island. But Brenner did not know him; he only knew his public image, and that made him apprehensive. He had heard that Ahad Ha’am was “a man who cast terror into the hearts of his confidants and behaved like a pedantic rabbi.” He therefore dithered about going to meet him—he wanted to, yet he did not. In the end he demanded that Beilin accompany him. As a result of Brenner’s deliberations, he and Beilin arrived at Ahad Ha’am’s house an hour late. Brenner’s anxiety heightened. He wanted to leave, but Beilin stopped him. When they eventually went inside, Ahad Ha’am expressed his displeasure with their tardiness and informed them that he had made an appointment with someone else for that hour. He was waiting for his next visitor, and every other minute he glanced through the window to see whether he had arrived. In the meantime Brenner sprawled in an armchair, crossed his legs, and started whistling, “as if to say ‘here I am and I am not at all impressed by you.’”137 Beilin’s broad hints that he should mind his manners did not help. A conversation did not develop. Ahad Ha’am inquired whether Hameorer was still coming out, and Brenner was insulted because Ahad Ha’am was unaware of the journal’s fate. He did not say a word throughout the meeting. Beilin, who was unknown to Ahad Ha’am, answered his questions. The doorbell finally rang and the guest came in. The two friends quickly found themselves outside and burst into laughter.138

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Brenner never accepted the blame for the meeting’s failure. He felt that Ahad Ha’am was hostile toward him both because of his views and because he had made a bad impression on him. In his eyes the meeting was a sort of continuation of his failed meeting with Judah Lieb Peretz in Warsaw, from which he had emerged disillusioned and hurt. Ahad Ha’am, however, thought that Brenner was hurt because he had cut their meeting short and told him he was expecting someone else.139 Beilin’s description of the meeting illuminates the insecurity Brenner felt in the company of people from outside his own cultural circle. His rudeness was aimed at covering up the terror he felt, and in all probability he did not manage to open his mouth in the course of the meeting because of it. Brenner had difficulty dealing with people from worlds different from his own, and Ahad Ha’am represented a different generation, a different social class, and a different worldview. In mid-1907 Brenner again mentions the idea of leaving London. Not only had Gnessin’s stay in the city not eased his misery, it had compounded it. His relationship with Sarah-Shifra was frustrating, even though he had not despaired of it. And each time he did not have sufficient material for Hameorer, he sought ways of escaping. At the end of June 1907, he wrote to Rabbi Benjamin that he had almost made up his mind to go to Palestine. Seeking spiritual respite after the storms of London, he asked his friend, “Will I find something of this kind in one of the colonies?”140 But his enthusiasm for Palestine was short lived. There was something in that country that deterred him. “Once again I am not going to Palestine,” he told Rabbi Benjamin a month later. “I hate the Chosen People and the dead land, ‘Eretz Yisrael,’ so to speak.”141 He would rather go to Galicia. “What have I got to lose? I want a change of place.” In Galicia, under the enlightened rule of Emperor Franz Josef, Hebrew culture was burgeoning, and along with the German and Polish cultures, there was Hebrew cultural life. His good friend Schoffman was in Lvov, and he heaped praise on the city. Brenner was afraid of Palestine and did not want to go to New York, a distant, strange city. Galicia seemed to be a good compromise, something like an enhanced version of the Pale of Settlement but without the restrictions of the tsarist government.142 By early January 1908, he had made up his mind to go. A new upsurge of energy and happiness began. Although he had just announced that he was turning his back on editing,143 he began planning

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a new literary series that he would perhaps publish in London, possibly in Lvov, which would include the works of Rabbi Benjamin, Bar-Tuvia, Zeitlin, and Brenner himself. It would be completely different from Hameorer and would be called “Makhshavot” (Thoughts). The series would be modest, not vociferous, not as binding as a ­journal. The renewed appearance of Hebrew journals since 1907 did not satisfy him. He wanted a new tone, a different ideological direction, and once again he was fired with enthusiasm, despite all his torments. The London period was central to Brenner’s development. Not only was he exposed—for the first time in his life—to the great metropolis and its cultural possibilities, he also took part in the central process in the life of the Jews during that period: emigration. England was on the main route between Europe and the United States. Many of the Jews who were en route to the goldeneh medineh (golden country) passed through London, including Shapiro, Persky, Marmor, and Maximovsky. London was a place in which one did not stay; it was a way station, a terminal. It was a sort of mélange of the shtetl and the New World, an odd mixture of old and new, of acculturation trends and efforts to preserve Eastern European Jewish life. Even though from the standpoint of Hebrew culture London was shallow water, it was where Brenner was able to sense the dominant trends in the Jewish world. Brenner came to London as a well-known writer. His In Winter endowed him with status among the Hebrew readership, which also included the majority of the Yiddishists. Although he was not considered the leading author, the publication of Hameorer provided him with extraordinary standing among his contemporaries. It gave him the status of a cultural leader, an initiator, a man who saw himself as worthy of being a trailblazer in shaping an audience as well as writers. Among the young modernist writers who appeared during that decade and who in one fell swoop propelled Hebrew literature into the leading currents of world literature, he was a guiding light. He proved that there was no need for expensive apparatus to publish a journal. For the first time, a Hebrew literary journal was published that had no connection with the current cultural and political establishments. It was a precedent of paramount importance in the development of the young spiritual center in Palestine. It was in London that Brenner rewrote Around the Point and wrote “From A to M” and Beyond Boundaries,

London, 1906–1908

his most important works from that period. The most admired of the three was the novel Around the Point, which was regarded as a faithful representation of the life of the Jewish intelligentsia in the Pale of Settlement. In view of his hardships—material, but mainly mental—at the time, it is impossible not to be amazed by the output of this man, who for at least one year carried Hebrew literature on his shoulders.

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Brenner left London feeling frustrated and miserable: Hameorer had closed down, Gnessin had left him and gone to Palestine, and SarahShifra Marmor had gone back to her husband. He spent his last night in the city with the Beilin family. A red chest bound with rusty iron that contained his writings was all he owned. In the night Beilin could hear his groans through the wall and did not sleep a wink. The next day, he accompanied Brenner to the station, and that was the last time they saw one another.1 Brenner left London in the second half of January in 1908. On his previous journey across continental Europe as a deserter fleeing for his life from tsarist Russia, the money in his pocket barely sufficient for him to reach London, he had hurried to reach his destination. Now he was self-confident and at home on the continent. Even though he had no passport and feared that the authorities might give him trouble, he made two stops on his way to Lvov: in Berlin, where he visited the writer and public figure Reuben Breinin, and in Breslau, where Micha Yosef Berdyczewski lived.2 Reuben Breinin was one of the colorful figures in the Hebrew cultural milieu at the turn of the century. He was a biographer, critic, a lively and prolific storyteller, and a warm and cordial host. At his fine Charlottenburg home, he held a sort of literary salon attended by writers and intellectuals passing through the city. Born in 1862, Breinin came from the literary generation that preceded Brenner, and Brenner did not know him personally. Furthermore, Breinin’s friendly letters to Brenner inviting him to contribute to Hameorer had elicited no response from the writer. It is therefore very strange that Brenner decided to break his journey and visit Breinin in Berlin. His visit to

Lvov, 1908–1909

Breinin’s home was a surprise one: he went there directly from the railway station without prior notice. Nevertheless, Breinin welcomed him warmly. According to Brenner and Rabbi Benjamin, the visit lasted one day; another version has it lasting for several days; and, according to Breinin, for two weeks.3 Breinin was impressed by his sincerity, the purity of his heart, his simplicity, and the absence of any kind of posturing.4 In a letter to Beilin on his arrival in Lvov, Brenner wrote: “I was in Berlin for several days, in Breslau I suffered some troubles, but in return I saw an entire world.”5 It appears that Brenner toured Berlin and was in no particular hurry to get to Lvov. If it was not simply a tourist trip, the objective of Brenner’s visit to Berlin remains an enigma. Brenner’s next stop was Breslau (present-day Wroclaw), a city with a German and Polish history, which since the mid-eighteenth century had been under Prussian rule. At the time of Brenner’s visit, Micha Yosef Berdyczewski was living there. In Breinin’s view, Berdyczewski’s writing was incomprehensible, anachronistic, and ignored the central issues on the Zionist agenda.6 Not so with the young writers: they saw him as the great rejecter of the traditional Jewish cultural frameworks, of which Ahad Ha’am was considered the high priest. Whereas Ahad Ha’am poured cold water on the youngsters who wanted to write fine literature, Berdyczewski encouraged them to create a Hebrew corpus of belles lettres. With his stories Berdyczewski heralded a new direction taken by Hebrew literature, focusing on descriptions of the protagonists’ spiritual and emotional life, in contrast to the Hebrew classicists of Bialik’s and Mendale’s generation, who described the social and physical environment. His admiration of Nietzsche and his application of Nietzschean theories to the Jewish milieu added a theoretical-philosophical dimension to the young peoples’ identification with him. Berdyczewski had managed to do the impossible: to get away from a Ukrainian provincial town and a radically conservative environment, to complete his university studies and acquire a broad education, including mastering German to the level of being able to write in it—everything that the “young” authors dreamed of doing. Like his writing, his personality was shrouded in mystery, which added to his charm. His not being identified with any of the current political trends boosted his status above the shallow discourse of the Jewish general public. Brenner’s coming to visit

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him in a remote provincial town was something of a pilgrimage to a great teacher, to a kindred spirit. Berdyczewski lived in Breslau with his wife and five-year-old son, isolated from everything happening around him. In the eyes of the German Jews, he was a Russian Jew; in the view of the Russians, he was Germanized.7 He had despaired of Hebrew literature and took no interest in what was happening in it. During those years he wrote mainly in German and hoped to make his name in society at large. When Brenner approached him, asking to publish some of his works in Hameorer, Berdyczewski consented. Since then, he had regularly sent pieces for publication in Hameorer, while Brenner scrupulously fulfilled his wishes in editing them like a pupil respectful of his teacher.8 The meeting between Berdyczewski and Brenner in Breslau was significant for both of them and left a profound impression, especially on Berdyczewski. Brenner appeared at his modest home without w ­ arning. His appearance—ungainly body, long unkempt hair, threadbare clothes, and a strange hat—surprised Berdyczewski with its neglect. Berdyczewski wondered about the contradiction between the external appearance of the man, who looked like he had just escaped from custody, and his personality. “The man is a true poet and a precious soul,” Berdyczewski noted in his diary.9 Brenner’s visit lasted only a few hours, which were devoted to talking, touring the old city, and playing with Emmanuel, Berdyczewski’s son. Brenner insisted on buying the boy a present, a wooden boat he could sail in the bath. The Berdyczewskis were shocked by Brenner’s lifestyle: he was homeless, a vagrant with no fixed livelihood, forced to do physical labor as a typesetter for ten hours a day. The visit upset Berdyczewski. Brenner had made him rethink the fundamental questions of the Jewish people: “Why does this man have to endure this terrible suffering? Why is he hounded from country to country? Where is he going? What should I wish him?” The question of Brenner’s ambiguity regarding Judaism also arose: “While he is no longer a Jew in spirit, for he curses ­Judaism, sees destruction and perhaps even wishes for it,” nevertheless, “again and again he is pushed back into the bosom of the Judaism he hates, and on its behalf his heart is filled with pain.” The experience of uprootedness, which Berdyczewski described so well in his stories, shook him to his very core when he actually encountered it in

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Brenner. Brenner’s soul-searching, the harsh conditions of his life, gave ­Berdyczewski no peace: “For a long time after parting from him I was unable to regain my composure.”10 But Brenner was not all suffering. Rachel, Berdyczewski’s wife, gained the impression that he was neither sad nor depressed. He had taken on physical labor as something beyond dispute and did so uncomplainingly.11 Even Berdyczewski discerned the latent force emerging from the description of the suffering protagonist, Brenner’s alter ego, in Beyond Boundaries.12 Brenner, however, felt that Berdyczewski was “abandoned and lonely.”13 The conversation between them continued afterward in their correspondence. A gloomy, depressive tone shrouded these letters, as if each of them was seeking to encourage the other with pessimistic conclusions regarding the expected fate of Hebrew culture and the handful of brave, loyal souls standing guard over it. Berdyczewski employs the image of burning candles standing alone until they flicker out to symbolize the loneliness of the loyalists of Hebrew literature, who are about to perish. And Brenner responds, adding: “Black are the candles gradually being extinguished.” In the margin of that letter the fun-loving Schoffman added a note that lightened its serious tone: “But the candles are beautiful as they burn ‘each in its own place,’ and their extinguishing is beautiful too!” This remark, which contains a hint of mockery of the two correspondents’ self-­ dramatization, was an apt one, for despite the gloomy despair voiced by Brenner in the letter, he also urged Berdyczewski to write a story for the anthology he was already planning, “despite everything.”14 It seems that Brenner adopted Berdyczewski as a sort of father figure in place of the father he had abandoned, physically and spiritually, in the shtetl of his birth. The great respect in which Brenner held Berdyczewski, his willingness to bow to his will and conciliate him, has something of a father-son relationship.15 “I am endeavoring to do everything according to the advice in your last letter,” he writes in a tone that cannot be found in his correspondence with others.16 ­Bredyczewski was a father who kept his distance, did not make demands, and yet created an aura of belonging, concern, and care. Unlike Brenner, the introverted, reclusive Berdyczewski had no need of public approbation. Brenner was motivated by the zeal of a missionary cultural entrepreneur, whereas Berdyczewski was free of it.

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Brenner reached Lvov in early February 1908. Lvov (the German Lemberg, now Lviv in Ukraine) was the capital of East Galicia, a region that since the fourteenth century had been under Polish rule; with the division of Poland, it was annexed to the Habsburg Empire, which in 1867 became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the early twentieth century, Lvov was the fourth-largest city in the empire (after Vienna, Prague, and Trieste), a city of some 150,000 inhabitants. A ­ lthough it was far inferior to London, it did not resemble Homel or Oryol in the least. It was an elegant city with impressive cathedrals, a museum, fine buildings, and beautiful streets and gardens. There was a university that was founded at the end of the eighteenth century; beginning in 1871, its teaching language was Polish. Three national movements— Polish, Ruthenian (Ukrainian), and German—fought for supremacy in Galicia. According to the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, eighty percent of the population of Lvov was Polish, ten percent, German, and eight percent, Ruthenian. The rulers spoke German, some of the peasants spoke Polish and some Ruthenian, while the city’s inhabitants spoke Polish. The encyclopedia entry also notes that thirty percent of the city’s inhabitants were Jews, but it does not mention with which national group they were associated.17 The Jews of Lvov found themselves in the middle of the RuthenianPolish debate on the city’s national identity. The Jews chose to espouse Polish as their main non-Jewish language, but there were some who preferred German. It seems, however, that the majority remained loyal to Yiddish. The Galician Jews were the flesh of the flesh of the Pale of Settlement Jewry: they had the same mentality, the same conservatism, and the same spirit of change, but all in moderation. Jews did not suffer persecution, and there was a sense of liberty that was unknown on the other side of the border. The struggle over identity was one of the factors in the national awakening of Galician Jewry. An additional agitating factor was Jewish refugees and emigrants from Russia, especially deserters from the tsar’s army at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, who brought with them something of the atmosphere of the public debates that raged across the border. As we have seen, this was how Schoffman had reached Lvov. Compared with London, Lvov was a half-Jewish city. Its Jews were divided between those who favored integration into the local cul-

Lvov, 1908–1909

ture and society (whom the Zionists termed “assimilationists”) and the ultra­orthodox Haredim. A small minority supported nationalist trends. The Zionist movement was at low ebb following the death of Herzl. In Russia the debate persisted between the Zion Zionists and the territorialists, the supporters and opponents of the practical work of settlement in Palestine, which was finally agreed on at the Eighth Zionist Congress at The Hague in the summer of 1907. In Galicia, an unsophisticated cultural province, however, there was no sign of all this. There were a few notable personalities in Lvov, such as the Zionist leader Adolph Stand and teacher and intellectual Solomon (Shlomo) Schiller, who was admiringly known as “the Galician Ahad Ha’am.”18 There were also some Hebrew writers living in Galicia who had come from Russia in the wake of the pogroms (Schoffman, Beilin, B ­ ercovich, Kleinman, and others) and remained there for only a short time. They looked down on the local writers, feeling that they did not take literary initiatives.19 But in Galicia there was a strong trend of learning Hebrew, and a readership of Hebrew literature had formed there.20 Before leaving for Lvov, Brenner had been in touch with Kleinman, editor of the Lemberger Tagblat, and arranged for a typesetter’s job on the paper. Kleinman suggested that he revive Hameorer, which the Committee for the Revival of the Hebrew Language in Galicia was prepared to publish with Brenner as its editor. Brenner declined. He did not believe “in the possibility and necessity of Hebrew literature,” he replied to Kleinman.21 But after just two weeks had passed, his mood changed, and he already had his new initiative, publishing the Makhshavot literary anthologies in Lvov. Hashiloah, Sinai, and H ­ aolam were already active, but this did not deter him. They were journals focused on Judaism as a spiritual concept, a subject that had no interest for him. His anthologies would give expression to “a tragic Hebrew soul.”22 It was in this optimistic spirit that Brenner left London. Brenner always had need of soul mates with whom he could feel free and accepted. In Russia this role had been filled by Gnessin and his group; in London, by Beilin. Now it was taken over by Gershon Schoffman. The intellectual and emotional bond between them had existed for some years, ever since Schoffman had stood by H ­ ameorer and given his stories to Brenner gratis. Beilin, their mutual friend, added the personal dimension to the two writers’ mutual admiration.

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Brenner and Gershon Schoffman, Lvov 1909. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

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Schoffman was already aware of Brenner’s emotional storms and weaknesses and was undeterred by them. Brenner greatly admired Schoffman, even though the character of their writing was very different. Schoffman was a master of the short story, whereas Brenner liked to lengthen his works. “When I go over a manuscript of mine,” he told Schoffman, “I like to add, not subtract.”23 The friends’ first meeting was in a café that Schoffman frequented, where he would sit drinking café au lait. Schoffman later recalled the encounter as a time of intoxication that mitigated the loneliness of both of them.24 But Brenner’s initial reaction was somewhat restrained. “Schoffman—all right,” he wrote to Beilin, that and no more.25 Over the next few weeks, Schoffman accompanied him on his search for a place to live. According to Schoffman, Brenner looked for a squalid, dank, and neglected room and refused to rent a better one—only in a room such as this would he feel at home.26 But it seems that this is a later description, influenced by the Brenner myth. For a month and a half, Brenner was unable to find suitable accommodation, and during this time he apparently lived with Schoffman. In the end they rented an apartment together. Life in Lvov was not easy for him. He wrote to Beilin: “I cannot find decent lodgings, I have no livelihood, no friends, there are no Hebrew readers; students and literary journals and so forth—a fiction! Only the sun is better here than in London.”27 He pondered the idea of either returning to London or going to Palestine. The only consolation he had in Lvov was Schoffman. “Schoffman—exactly as I imagined. I very often gain great pleasure from him. And he from me, so it seems.”28 The friendship between the two grew. They spent leisure time together, traveled together, and met other people together. On 16 March 1908, Brenner wrote to Bichovsky that he was about to go to Palestine, but four days later he informed Beilin that there was a plan to publish Revivim, so he had agreed to remain in Lvov.29 At the same time, he found a suitable apartment and began to feel more at ease in the city. He and Schoffman would write joint letters to Beilin, in one of which Schoffman added jocularly: “Brenner is now living here like a king in a village. If you could see, Beilin, this room he is living in, this painted floor, this cleanliness, this contentment, this . . . the Polish girl—a groyl [terrible]!” The protesting Brenner added

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a denial in the margin: “(Absolutely untrue! Y. H. B.)” And Schoffman goes on: “After all is said and done—not bad, not not bad, but good, taki [Yiddish: actually, truly] really good, very good indeed.”30 Brenner’s spirits were high: his plans to publish Revivim as a small Hebrew monthly, a successor to Hameorer, which he absolutely refused to revive, were progressing well. At the same time he had a burst of creativity: he sent his short play, Evening and Morning, which he wrote in Lvov, to Hashiloah; he published articles in the Vilna Hed Hazman (Echo of the time) and embarked on writing a long story (“One Year”).31 This was a welcome change after the writer’s block he had experienced since writing Beyond Boundaries at the end of 1906. This sabbatical of Brenner’s caused Klausner much concern, and when he heard that he was with Schoffman, he wrote: “Give [Brenner] no peace until he returns to our literature,” adding, “such a precious vessel should never be considered a lost cause! Do not despair of him under any circumstances!”32 In April Brenner wrote to Bichovsky: “My life here—nishkosheh [not bad]! A big apartment and vegetables and milk. In a certain sense, a kind of spiritual rest.”33 His complaints about his health lessened, and it seems that his mental stability also improved. In reply to Beilin’s question—“Schoffman, have you already seen Brenner stretch out on the floor and drum on his backside?”34—Brenner responded, referring to the self-flagellation that his friend had witnessed in London: “No, I have not yet stretched out on the floor since I have been in Lemberg. And Schoffman has not seen it.”35 One of Brenner’s pleasures was the friendship he forged with the Abramson family, which lived in Tarnopol, a Galician provincial town. The father, Abba Reuben Abramson, a teacher and intellectual, and his sons, Chaim Shalom (who later wrote as Chaim Shalom Ben-Avram) and Moshe (who later wrote as M. Hayug). The boys initiated and published a journal called Hadegel (The flag), which impressed him. A few months later, they were surprised to find in the important Hed Hazman an article by Brenner that he had dedicated to them and their work.36 April was a month of high spirits and hopes for the future. Brenner stopped working as a typesetter and devoted most of his time to writing. He and Schoffman spent the Passover holiday with the Abramsons

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in Tarnopol. It seems that this was the first time since leaving Pochep that he had taken his place at the Passover seder table. The Hebrew atmosphere and the warmth with which he was welcomed made Brenner happy, and he wrote to Beilin: “At this time I feel myself not in the best of health, but in general—not bad. I find some consolation in Schoffman, as does Schoffman in me. There are some sparks of happiness here. And in fact such that I had not hoped to find. In general it is better for me here than in London.” In the margin of the same letter, Schoffman added: “I am grateful to Brenner for the [good] luck. I cannot understand how I could have lived now (especially now) without Brenner.”37 But at the end of April came the fall. The plans to publish the monthly came to naught. Brenner felt that he had invested all his strength for nothing. He was forced to inform the writers he had solicited that the monthly would not be coming out and “matched” them with a new journal called Sifrut (Literature), which Fishel Lachover was about to publish in Warsaw under Frishman’s editorship. Now Brenner felt bad; he complained incessantly about shortages and advised Beilin not to return to Lvov, “for we shall starve here!” Contrary to Brenner’s penury, Schoffman noted in the letter’s margin: “Brenner exaggerates, his poverty and ‘starvation’ are absurd!”38 At the end of May, the winds of hope started blowing again: although publishing a monthly was unrealistic, a literary journal of some one hundred pages was possible. For this enterprise the few hundred gulden placed at Brenner’s disposal by the lovers of Hebrew literature, the “Young People of Galicia,” was sufficient.39 The leading contributor was a Jewish teacher, Chaim Itzkovitz, who found a kindred spirit in Brenner. He managed to save some money every now and then and gave it to Brenner for the glory of Hebrew literature.40 Brenner insisted that the first issue of Revivim bear the Hebrew letter aleph (number one), signifying that it was not a one-time journal.41 During summer, Brenner was working on the journal. Each time it seemed that the journal had hit a snag, either because of financial problems or because his friends were in no hurry to send him their work or because of printing problems, he would announce that he had made up his mind to go to Palestine at the end of the summer. But once the crisis passed, he would announce that he had decided to postpone his

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journey. Toward the end of August, the first issue of Revivim appeared, and in September he was already working on the second. A few months earlier, Brenner received a letter from an unknown young man from Lodz, a Polish city under Russian rule. The young man, Menachem Poznansky, inquired of the writer whether he could find work as a typesetter in Lvov. He had heard that Brenner had worked in this profession and would, perhaps, be able to advise him. Brenner replied that he would be able to find work, although poorly paid, but that the cost of living in Lvov was high. But he did not deter his unknown correspondent: “If you must leave Russia, then there is no choice,” he wrote him.42 Somewhat like a pilgrim, Poznansky came to Lvov to be in the company of the writer he admired so much. He was careful not to reveal his feelings to Brenner but managed to impress him with his diligence, his knowledge of Hebrew, and his dedication. He became Brenner’s right-hand man and was in charge of setting and proofreading Revivim when Brenner was away. Poznansky remained in Lvov for only four months; he decided to return to Russia to enlist in the army. “Although things are always bad everywhere,” he explained to Brenner in Brenneresque style, “there is no call to increase the wandering and loneliness.”43 Poznansky also befriended Itzkovitz, another of Brenner’s admirers. On his return to Russia, he continued to correspond with both of them, and Itzkovitz would write him about things that Brenner did not. Brenner also continued to inquire about the wellbeing of their young friend in his correspondence with poet Yitzhak Katznelson, who lived in Lodz. This was the start of Poznansky’s lifelong friendship with and commitment to Brenner. Life was good for Brenner in Lvov. His ascetic lifestyle enabled him to earn a living from writing, journalistic and literary alike. Every now and then, he would travel for a few weeks, either with Schoffman or on his own, to the countryside, where his expenses were even smaller, and where he could devote himself entirely to writing. Schoffman was unemployed; he earned a living by giving private Hebrew lessons, an occupation hard to come by in Lvov. Brenner supported him financially.44 Their life together in friendship and fraternity continued until October 1908. In a later letter to Poznansky, Itzkovitz described their relationship: “As you know, during the first months Brenner worked in a print shop for low wages, he ate a plate of broth and a lot of bread

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at the Somm Dairy [a well-known dairy restaurant], and for Schoffman he opened a konto [credit account] with me so he could sit in the Avatsia Café every day and drink his mélange [café au lait] in  complete comfort and ogle the fair sex in general and the waitresses in ­particular.”45 Despite the differences in their character and view of life, the two young writers found a common language and understood one another completely. According to contemporary testimonies, Brenner was in good spirits and talked and joked a lot.46 “Then, in Lvov, when he was twenty-seven, clean shaven, his laugh broke out and charmed through all his ‘bearishness,’ and a special radiance was kindled in his kind, so-wise eyes,” Schoffman wrote. “The heretic in him peeked out and laughed through all the pious heaviness.”47 Although from the standpoint of his mental and physical state Brenner had found relative peace, he was beset by storms in the world of literature. Haolam, the journal of the Zionist organization, published an article by “The Thinker” (A. Elyashuv) that attacked the “Hebrew Young Literature” in general and Brenner’s friends in particular. “From the day the Jewish ‘community’ ceased . . . to be the leading protagonist in Hebrew literature and writers began dealing more with the individual and the soul of the individual, with the Jew’s discrete personality, our literature has become . . . somewhat tedious,” he declared. He aimed his barbs at “the Nombergs, the Schoffmans, the Anochis, and their friends,” whose protagonists are “lepers, whose bitter fate has driven them outside the camp.” Brenner, however, he included among the “classicists,” whose writing is concerned with the Jewish collective.48 Brenner set out to do battle on behalf of his friends. In a review he wrote on Haolam and Hashiloah he protested that Hebrew literature was shackled by the classicist “veterans” and did “not allow room for free, young, and unwearied thinking.”49 The Hebrew press did not give expression to the young writers’ downtrodden souls, “which penetrate mysticism, elevate into the mist, to the mysteries.” He attacked ­Haolam and Hashiloah for not giving voice to what “the free Jewish man thinks about life and the world and especially . . . about his ‘self.’”50 If, with regard to Hashiloah, he observed a modicum of politeness out of respect for its editors, Klausner and Bialik, he had no compunction about laying into Haolam. Those who disqualify “the Schoffmans and

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the Nombergs” are like Honi the Circle Maker, who slept for seventy years, and are neither conscious of or reacting to the new winds blowing in the literary world, Brenner declared.51 In response, the editor, Aaron Hermoni, published a mocking diatribe against him in the next issue of Haolam. The “lepers” controversy provoked one of the targets, Hirsch David Nomberg, a writer who worked mainly in Yiddish, to respond. He took care not to do so in public because the criticism was leveled at him personally, but he wrote to Brenner about it. He agreed with the Thinker that the Jewish personality is wretched and downtrodden, broken and helpless. But he contended that this does not prevent it from being a subject for art. “Art sought out the Jewish personality and gave it its synthesis, and ‘The Thinker’ is angry because he saw his own reflection in the mirror.”52 Nomberg subscribed to the modernist concept of literature, which seeks not to present the lofty and the sublime but rather life and the soul in all their misery, “to give character and form to chaos.” Nomberg drew a distinction between journalistic writing, which has national commitments, and literature, which is guided by artistic and aesthetic considerations.53 Brenner apparently responded warmly to Nomberg’s letter, and a correspondence between them ensued—in Hebrew. This was a renewal of contact between them. “When you were in Warsaw,” wrote Nomberg, reminding him of the meeting at the beginning of the decade, “you left an indelible impression on me.”54 In Brenner’s articles from the Lvov period, which were published mainly in the Vilna Hed Hazman and later in Revivim, his maturing talents are clearly evident. In the heat of controversy, he displays a strong tendency toward hyperbole and does not always maintain clarity in his writing. On occasion he inserts pieces more suited to a story, but in an article they read like unnecessary mystifications. For instance, he attributes “tremor of the soul” to Lachover and terms Zeitlin “a tragic soul from the upper world that from the worlds of tragedy has despite itself become mired in the basest swamp of the journal,” and he squirms as he explains his own mystical entanglement.55 He reveals his loves and hates: Berdyczewski, Schoffman, Nomberg, Zeitlin, Reisen, the young boys who edit the journal Hadegel, Fishel Lachover and his modest new journal, Sifrut, are his favorites. Ahad Ha’am, S. Y. Horovitz, the journal Heatid, are his pet hates. Their heart’s desire is

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Judaism; they are concerned about its future because of assimilation, whereas Brenner is fearful for the fate of the Jews: “The question for us is not what will become of Judaism, but we, the Jews, what shall we do for ourselves, shall we find a resting place so that we are not pushed out beyond the borders of human culture, beyond the borders of creating, . . . so that we should not remain where we are with the burden of our poverty in every aspect.”56 Brenner’s attacks against Haolam, Hashiloah, and Heatid invited reaction. The harshest response came from Bialik. Since the publication of Misaviv lanekuda, Brenner did his best not to establish writereditor relations with Bialik. He had not forgotten his seeming abuse of his manuscript. Although he admired him, and Bialik’s opinion of him was very important to him, he still felt that Bialik’s heart was far distant from his. Bialik was a loyal disciple of Ahad Ha’am, while in the Hebrew culture war Brenner was on the other side of the divide. As long as Hameorer continued to appear, Brenner was able to publish his work in it, but when he came to Lvov, when he could not find a suitable platform, and also because of his financial difficulties, he suggested publishing Evening and Morning in Hashiloah. He did so halfheartedly, because of the assurance of immediate payment. “Now I regret it,” Brenner wrote to Bichovsky.57 He wanted to ensure that Bialik would not brutally edit his work and wrote him “not to amend” the play. Bialik responded: “Your comment ‘not to amend’ is unnecessary. I know how to appreciate the value even of ‘manias.’” Brenner must have also written him something like “take me as I am,” to which Bialik replied, “You are acceptable to me ‘as you are.’ I make no demands of you, but one ‘commandment’—that you write.”58 After reading the play, he wrote Brenner some words of praise, “this time you have written something slim and beautiful,” but followed with some criticism. Brenner had put into his protagonist’s mouth “the most unclear phrases.” He preaches to him, saying that “vague phrases of this kind when coming from your hand do not make the impression you hope for.” At the same time, Bialik criticized an essay published by Brenner in Hed Hazman: “You repeat yourself, ad nauseam.” Brenner’s tone was not to his liking: “I do not like the moaning and groaning even when they come from the heart.”59 Then came several months in which he heaped praise on Brenner’s articles in Hed

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Hazman (on Hebrew literature and the poet Avrom Reisen), and he urged him to send his work to Hashiloah, assuring him that he would be paid the journal’s maximum fee, thirty rubles per galley proof. He even asked him to be his advocate with Schoffman, so that he too would send his stories to Hashiloah.60 In July 1908 Brenner sent him his new story “One Year.” Bialik’s response has not been preserved, but the story was serialized in Hashiloah 19 (1908).61 When the first issue of Revivim appeared in August 1908, it was a modest journal devoted almost wholly to literature, with pieces from Berdyczewski, Schoffman, Shimonovich (Shimoni), Schneur, Rabbi Benjamin, and others. Along with one of the installments of “One Year,” the November issue of Hashiloah contained an article titled “A Pleasant Mistake,” signed by “N.,” a transparent pseudonym of B ­ ialik’s. It consists of a frame story, a handsomely positive review of Revivim, and a core story, a devastating critique of Brenner. The quantity of venom poured into four small pages is difficult to describe. The article opens with a comparison between Hameorer and Revivim, lauding ­Revivim and condemning Hameorer. The author makes a laughing stock of Hameorer’s front page: “All those incantations and talismans and the ‘Song of Ascents’ [an allusion to Psalms 120–134, noted for their epigrammatic style] that the editor hung on the front page of Hameorer and its lintels and doorposts, which your eyes see as you go in and come out.” The Brenneresque expressions of pathos that were an integral part of the Hameorer story—“I come to awaken you”; “the camp that remains”; “Masada”—are presented as ludicrous. Bialik represents Brenner’s torn heart, bitter despair, and constant pain as whining sentimentalism and goes on to deride the public reaction to the closure of Hameorer: “The eulogies began. They wept for thirty days and thirty nights. The ‘sponge’ was wrung out to the last drop.” 62 What stuck in Bialik’s craw was Brenner’s attempt in Hameorer to create an intellectual focal point that would spark the imagination of Hebrew readers. His ire and hostility was aroused by the pretension to an alternative to the Odessa cultural leadership, an alternative that emerged from Brenner’s literary initiatives and that was also expressed in his critical articles, in which he tried to draw attention to the young modernist writers. He even hints at this: “Brenner, the same modest and honest Brenner who writes such good stories in such a slovenly

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style, suddenly saw himself as a ‘hero,’ and not just any hero but a hero with a ‘role.’”63 Brenner’s self-image as a cultural leader with a mission was what set Bialik against him: the role of shaping Hebrew literary taste was not intended for irresponsible young people! Bialik sought to damage the “modest and honest” Brenner’s credibility, pinning his literary preferences on his desire to curry favor with his friends. He called on sarcasm to humble the fashion of despair, the sense of tragedy that Brenner had turned into his brand, the secret of his leadership of the young: “Tragedy—I am not a great believer in self-professed and self-aggrandizing tragedy. Most of our Prometheuses, who croak like cranes that their hearts are pecked by eagles, are suspect, lest fleas bite them.”64 Bialik seasons his words with contempt for Brenner’s writing style, criticizes his disregard of externality, and patronizingly advises him to abandon his pretension of engaging with the paramount issues of the Jewish people and concentrate on what he knows best: writing. “He, Brenner, should endeavor to write good stories and incidentally rectify his slovenly style. The rest will come naturally, without his help; and if it does not—what is Brenner’s power?”65 In other words, Brenner should not deviate from the limited vocation dictated to him by Bialik; he would do well to know his place and not cast his eyes on loftier objectives. The issue of Hashiloah with “A Pleasant Mistake” reached Chaim Itzkovitz, Brenner’s loyal friend in Lvov and distributor of Revivim. He brought it to Brenner and was present when he read it. Itzkovitz later wrote: “If you knew how much spilled blood this article caused B. [Brenner].”66 Schoffman recalls that Brenner “flew into a rage, and with all of his reverence for Bialik, this time he uttered some harsh words about him.”67 According to another testimony, Brenner went into a depression because of it, lay on his bed, and stayed there, pale and tortured.68 Even afterward, when Brenner was already in Palestine, Bialik did not stop trying to put him in his place. His last known response to one of Brenner’s works concerns the story “Beyn mayim lemayim” (Between waters). At the end of a cordial letter inviting Brenner to participate in one of his publications, he added, seemingly incidentally: “Your ‘Between Waters’ is water in water.”69 It is hard to find another author toward whom Bialik adopted such dismissive ­criticism.

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There appears to be latent anger, which he camouflaged with mockery. Brenner, however, did not bear a grudge against Bialik the poet. His admiration of his works and his place in Hebrew culture remained i­ntact. “Only a pure soul like B. [Brenner] could later write ‘Hane’eman’ [Faithful; an article in praise of Bialik], even though the picture of the writer of ‘A Pleasant Mistake’ hovered before his eyes. No Hebrew writer would be capable of such valor,” Itzkovitz contended.70 But with regard to Bialik the man and literary entrepreneur, Brenner rejected his authority and tried to keep his distance from him. He never again gave any of his work to Hashiloah or to any publishing house connected with him. In one of Bialik’s snide comments in “A Pleasant Mistake,” he hinted that Brenner’s criticism was driven by his desire “to curry favor with ‘his friends,’” apparently meaning the writers with a proletarian worldview, most of whom wrote in Yiddish. He also mentioned “a wink to ‘Reisen,’” with the single quotation marks around the poet’s name indicating the Yiddishist camp. Thus Bialik added another drop of venom—accusing Brenner of proximity to the enemies of the Hebrew camp. Although Brenner loved his mother tongue—Yiddish—and valued its vitality and popularity, he viewed Hebrew as the Jewish people’s national language. “For more than fifty generations our spiritual life was embodied in this unspoken but living language!” Therefore, he claimed, “to the question ‘jargon or Hebrew?’ there can be only one answer: jargon and Hebrew.”71 Reisen’s unassuming simplicity, the expression he gives to the loneliness of “the proletarian intellectual of our kind,”72 and his sincerity touched Brenner’s heart, and he describes his anthology of poems as “this precious book.”73 Bialik concurred with Brenner and even wrote him that his words had warmed his heart.74 But that was before “A Pleasant Mistake.” The first issue of Revivim contains another article by Brenner that positions Reisen with “our” greatest artists, along with Bialik, Mendele, and Peretz.75 Brenner’s friendship with Reisen was forged back in the faraway days of Warsaw. Now Reisen was living in Krakow and corresponding with Brenner and Schoffman. Brenner’s letters to Reisen have not been found, but Reisen’s to Brenner have been preserved. They show a warm and cordial relationship that continued until Brenner’s death and are reminiscent of Brenner’s relationship with Lamed Shapiro. They

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were all citizens of the same republic of letters, loving its successes and grieving its losses. On hearing of the death of the Hebrew writer ­Yeshayahu Bershadsky, Reisen wrote to Brenner: “I walk around Krakow weeping and swallowing my tears.” In one of his letters he writes that he had received regards from Brenner “from one Czaczkes,” adding, “it seems there is some spark in him” [eppess a shtickl nitzotz]. This is an early testimony on the impression the young S. Y. Agnon made on his circle. Reisen tried to persuade Brenner and Schoffman to give him some of their work for publication in his journal, Kunst un Leben (Art and life). He also proposed the publication of Brenner’s novels and some of his short stories in Yiddish. At the same time, he did not stop pressing Brenner to write something original in Yiddish. In the end Brenner gave him something for publication, and Reisen undertook to pay him ten gulden for it, but it turned out that the journal was unable to pay and Reisen was embarrassed. At the end of September 1908, the Czernowitz Conference of Yiddish Writers was held, ending with a proclamation of Yiddish as the Jewish national language. Reisen and Nomberg planned to visit nearby Lvov. They wrote a joint letter to Brenner in Hebrew, which in view of what was happening in Czernowitz is interesting: “My Dear Brenner! Is Saul also among the prophets [I Samuel, 10–11] and Reisen writing in Hebrew? It is really as difficult for me as dividing the Red Sea, but because of my love for you, I lovingly accept the torture of the tongue and am writing to you in your language. I am counting the minutes until I am able to see your face this time (your actual face!).” He signed the letter, “Love you with heart and soul.” Nomberg added: “As God is my witness I am counting the days until I see your face. If God will not be my witness, then Reisen will testify that I mention you every day.” The meeting indeed took place and was a very warm one. The young admirers were amazed to see Brenner strolling around Lvov in the company of Reisen, a leading player in the anti-Hebrew ­Czernowitz conference that had just ended, as good friends.76 Brenner forgave Reisen for the unpaid author’s fee and wondered how he could have even imagined that he would be angry over ten gulden. He invited the whole group to dine at a famous dairy restaurant (apparently the Somm Dairy).77 His friendship with Reisen and Nomberg reflected Brenner’s affinity with the popular streams identified with Yiddish culture.

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The Yiddish writers sensed not only this kinship but also that Brenner’s writing was a Hebrew translation of what he was thinking in Yiddish. The multiplicity of popular Yiddish idioms, translated into Hebrew, in his works demonstrate his profound connection with the language and to his efforts to create a spoken language like Yiddish in Hebrew literature.78 Like Lamed Shapiro, Reisen did not stop trying to entice him into writing in Yiddish. Reisen sailed in fall 1908 to the United States, from which he sent repeated invitations to Brenner to come quickly to New York, where a readership of 1.5 million awaited him. Brenner could become really famous if he were to write in Yiddish, or so Reisen tried to convince him. His work would reach all the people, not only “the Klausners, the Horowitzes, and even the Ahad Ha’ams.” “It is comical,” Reisen wrote, “that my two most beloved colleagues are two Hebraists: you, dear Brenner, and Schoffman.”79 The relationship between Brenner and Reisen shows that the lines in the ideological struggle during this period were flexible. Yiddish and Hebrew were considered to be the two national languages that were vital in the fight against the assimilationists. Before the Czernowitz conference, the real struggle was not between Yiddish and Hebrew but between both of them and local languages—Russian, German, or Polish—that appropriated the Jewish intelligentsia’s commitment to its people’s culture. The local languages were the spoken languages, the language of the local culture, even for the Jewish national movement loyalists. Yiddish was considered a language through which the Galician Jewry might gain the cultural rights of a national minority, including the use of Yiddish in official documents and in schools. Hebrew, which was not spoken, was out of the question for this purpose. Moshe Kleinman, a sworn Zionist and Hebraist, edited the Yiddish journal Tagblat on the assumption that to disseminate Zionism among the masses, the people must be addressed in their own language (much like the Bund, which used Yiddish to explain socialism to the masses). Indeed, every writer preferred one of the two languages, although neither boasted exclusive use, and there was no rivalry between them. But the extremists in both camps began whetting their knives. In the first half of 1908, Moshe Kleinman wrote an article in Hashiloah titled “­Leshonotenu” (Our languages). In it he demanded that Yiddish be called “the Jewish language,” not jargon, and further declared that it

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was hard to find a Hebrew writer who did not write in Yiddish for ideological reasons. Opposition to the Yiddishists, he contended, stemmed from their demand to make Yiddish the sole national language.80 It was not the supporters of Hebrew who sought to change the existing cultural modes of bilingualism, but the Yiddishists. Although the Hashiloah editorial board had reservations about the article, it did express the views of wide circles. This position of love and respect for the mother tongue, while also viewing Hebrew as the national language for writing, was also Brenner’s position. It was unacceptable to a Hebrew zealot such as Klausner, and most certainly not to a purist such as Ahad Ha’am, who would not allow his works to be translated into Yiddish, but it was definitely legitimate in the view of the loyal Hebraists. Bialik was not far distant from this view. The Czernowitz conference caused polarization and engendered some harsh reactions, sharpening the contrast between the rival factions in the cultural war. The leading speakers at the conference were Reisen, Nomberg, and Shalom Asch. A resolution was passed stating that Yiddish was the national language of the Jewish people. It did not state that it was the only national language, but Hebrew was relegated to second place: it was decided (after a debate) that it was an individual matter for every conference participant; in other words, although Hebrew was not disqualified, giving it priority was not in the public interest. These resolutions whipped up a storm, with Zionists and ­Hebraists leading the fight against them. There were, however, papers such as Hazman that did not view the resolutions as the final word, and Hebrew writers and Zionists continued writing in Yiddish. The other side, too, displayed inconsistency: Nomberg, one of the dominant figures at Czernowitz, wrote mainly in Hebrew for Hazman. In Hashiloah, “The Observer” (Klausner?) wrote opposing this middle position, which accorded legitimacy to both languages and dulled the contrast between them. He blamed the Hebrew writers “who have completely destroyed the barrier between jargon and the Hebrew language,” thus paving the way for the Czernowitz resolution. “Only we,” cried the Observer, “the Hebrew and Zionist writers, are to blame for the Czernowitz resolution and not the ignoramuses of the conference!”81 This criticism highlights the bilingual norm that had prevailed until that time.

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Brenner was one of the Observer’s targets. Even after the Czernowitz conference, he reaffirmed his position on Yiddish as a Jewish language, even though he accorded pride of place to Hebrew.82 His position was similar to that of the Thinker, who in his article “Zwei sprachen—ein einzige literatur” (Two languages—one literature) developed the golden mean idea and saw a necessity for both languages. The Thinker emphasized that almost all the writers were bilingual, they shifted from language to language, from journal to journal, according to the dictates of livelihood and circumstances. He too saw an advantage in Hebrew, as a language with a cultural depth of thousands of years, over Yiddish, which had only a present and a doubtful future because of the competition of local languages.83 There was something heartwarming in the atmosphere of togetherness that surrounded Brenner—Schoffman, Itzkovitz, the Imber family, the Abramsons—that softened his inherent feelings of loneliness and pessimism. But not all was well: his unsatisfied sex drive gave him no peace. In one of his letters to Beilin, arguably his most intimate friend, he complained, as was his habit, about his health, saying: “A young man like me should take a wife.”84 Moshe Hayug and his brother Chaim Shalom Ben-Avram lived with Brenner in Lvov for a few months. Hayug testified that Brenner suffered from attacks of “melancholia,” when “he would pace the room, go out to the balustrade, and ponder there too. During these attacks he tried not to converse with people, so as not to disturb them.”85 Schoffman mentions outbursts of weeping: “Just as he would roll about laughing, he would also bang himself on the floor and wail with an inhuman howl.”86 I­ tzkovitz describes episodes of “stretching,” when Brenner would stretch out on the sidewalk in Lvov with arms and legs outspread, banging his head on the sidewalk, writhing and laughing hysterically.87 Brenner managed to overcome these attacks. Following such an attack, according to Hayug, Brenner was “in a gentle mood and filled with remorse” and would immediately shift into normal behavior and his regular daily routine.88 He would work unflaggingly in the mornings and afternoons, and the presence of others in the room did not bother him. He would write his works on the reverse side of galley proofs that he would bring home from the Tagblat.89 Not all of his time was devoted to working. One evening, he suggested that the whole group should

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go for a moonlight walk around Lvov. Schoffman, the two Abramson brothers, Polya Heilperin (mother of poet Yonatan Ratosh), Brenner’s friend Ernestina Lampert, and some other friends went out together, singing Russian songs along the way. This was a parting walk with the Abramson brothers, who followed their parents back to Russia.90 Dora Gluchman (later known as fiction writer and poet Dora Avrahamit) and her husband were Russian-Jewish anarchists who had fled from the Russian authorities to Lvov with their baby son. The husband worked in a print shop. In her novel Hayyim (Life), Gluchman tells the story of a strange, tattered character wandering around in one of the meetings she attended, who scolded her for bringing her baby into a crowded, smoke-filled room. It later emerged that the strange man was a well-known writer. He visited her at home, saw how bad her living conditions were, and proposed that they rent an apartment together, which he would pay for so that the child would be raised in proper conditions. At first she refused, but when the child caught pneumonia and her husband had met the writer, she agreed.91 ­Itzkovitz describes the story differently: “When Brenner found out that Dora was suffering from poverty, he went to live with her and gave her all his wages to care for herself and her baby, and he did so secretly and without much talk, as was his wont.”92 In contrast with Schoffman’s description of Brenner’s choosing to live in a dank, neglected room, Gluchman describes how he meticulously chose the apartment and checked it for mildew because a child was going to live there. The other tenants in the apartment were the two Abramson brothers, Moshe Hayug and Ben-Avram. Dora kept house for them all. In the novel, the husband becomes envious of the strange benefactor who has invaded their life and berates his wife: “This eager bear has already managed to fall in love with you.” Even if his suspicions were groundless, there was tension, and the couple decided to leave Lvov. In the end the offended writer and the husband are reconciled at the railway station as the family takes their leave before departing for ­Vienna.93 Apart from this literary version of the story, no one attributed to Brenner romantic intentions toward Gluchman. Prominent in all the testimonies is Brenner’s singular attitude toward the child.94 While he was living with the Gluchmans (apparently in October– November 1908), Brenner became romantically involved with a young

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girl, Ernestina (Tinka) Lampert, whom Brenner insisted on calling by the diminutive form of her Hebrew name, Estherkeh. One version has it that Tinka was an eleventh-grade student at the Polish gymnasium, whereas another says it was the tenth grade. Like Chaya Wolfson, Jewish culture was foreign to her. According to Hayug, she was a good-looking and charming girl, whose “self-conscious movements were reminiscent of the extern women students from Russia.”95 Hayug also reports that he had feelings for her, but that in his first encounters with her, he learned “that she is Brenner’s bride.” Itzkovitz, however, contends that she was “not pretty and was unbalanced, but had a profound soul.” Dora Gluchman described her “thin, delicate, childish” features, whereas Schoffman described her as a girl “who is most unworthy of the name. She is the representation of ugliness, a girl-monster.”96 Tinka had an unstable personality, “she was nervous, pale and sickly,” according to Itzkovitz.97 She fit the pattern of vulnerable women needing protection and compassion to which Brenner was attracted, as in the case of Sarah-Shifra Marmor. For her part, Tinka was attracted to the famous writer, if only to be able to boast about her conquest. In an article published on the tenth anniversary of Brenner’s death, Gluchman recalls how Tinka sought to show off Brenner to her classmates and wanted to walk arm in arm with him through the streets of Lvov, whereas Brenner “was completely unable to grasp the point of this walking in the cold of winter, through the deserted city streets, and without any objective, in his view.”98 Hayug testified that Tinka regarded Brenner admiringly, as an authority, perhaps a surrogate father-figure. And Brenner—was this dependency of a sickly and pampered girl what attracted him to her? Tinka Lampert would quite possibly never have gained the place she did in a biography of Brenner had it not been for the intervention of his good friend Gershon Schoffman. From the moment he intervened, the attachment ceased to be just another of Brenner’s immature love affairs that withered on the vine and became an important juncture in relations between the two writer-friends. Schoffman was like a butterfly with women: one day he drank nectar from this flower, the next he flew to a different one. He would say: “Brenner and Chaim-Shalom [Ben-Avram] are heavy-footed; I and Moshe [Hayug] have wings. We shall never bind ourselves to one woman. We

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shall unfold our wings and move on to another.”99 He possessed the carefree attitude of the hedonist who refuses to accept responsibility. For him, any woman was a challenge for seduction. As for Tinka, he regarded her seduction as a mission of friendship. Schoffman felt that Brenner was in a relationship with a girl unworthy of him; she was not beautiful and was an unsuitable partner for him; the relationship “must be opposed,” he wrote later.100 He stepped forward to save his friend from a flawed relationship by diverting Tinka’s heart from Brenner and to himself. Hayug recounts how Schoffman would stroll with Tinka in the city park, take her for coffee and cake, and charm her with his lightheartedness and irony.101 Schoffman reworked the story of love, betrayal, and rift between him and Brenner at least twice.102 The first time, in “Glida” (Ice cream), the Brenner figure is Markulis, “a tall young Galician with nervous tics who then lived with me in one room, and whom I knew to be unfortunate in the world of women.” Tinka is described as a young girl who at first glance seems not very pretty but on a second look draws attention. The narrator is attracted to her when he becomes aware of Markulis’s desire for her. She reciprocates, and Markulis is tortured with jealousy. The narrator later discovers that she in fact loves ­Markulis, and the tables are turned. He is now beset by the agony of jealousy: “I had never suffered so much from that pockmarked face with its blue eyes as I did at that moment.” Markulis celebrates his triumph over him.103 The second story, “Ahava” (Love), also deals with a triangle, two men and a woman. The men, Josef Schmid (Schoffman) and Obskurov, “the gloomy one” (Brenner), have a deep friendship. Obskurov “would hit himself on the floor and weep and weep” under the burden of his torment. Schmid took pleasure in knowing “that there is a man in the void of the world with a permanent autumn in his eyes, and it is as if he carries all the suffering of the world on his broad shoulders.” When Obskurov finds happiness with Julia, Schmid cannot bear his loneliness. He falls in love with Julia and fights for her heart. For a moment it seems that Julia is tempted by him. When Obskurov realizes what is happening, his wretchedness returns. Schmid savors Obskurov’s misfortune “[with] the heightened malevolence and cruelty of a predator at the moment its prey starts trembling before it.” Then the couple moves to another city, and the intervention of the

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third party fails. Julia dies in childbirth, and the friendship between the two men is renewed, “and in the void of the world there was relief !” These two stories are among the best of Schoffman’s works, as if the atonement he sought for sinning against his friend had heightened his creative talent. In both stories he gives the final victory in the battle for the girl’s heart to his bearlike, ungainly, wretched friend. Whereas in “Glida” there are traces of the Tinka episode, that is not the case in “Ahava,” which is a love story between two men, with the woman intervening and upsetting their relationship. It was a sort of friendly tribute to Brenner, which said: Our friendship should not be ended because of a woman. At the end of December 1908, Brenner wrote to Beilin: “I have not seen Schoffman for a few weeks now. Finally—the end.”104 In all probability Beilin wondered about the rift and the reasons for it, particularly in light of the praise Brenner heaped on Schoffman in the review he published in the second issue of Revivim, which had just appeared. Schoffman told him: “The end with Brenner was not good. It ended ‘on bad terms.’ To tell you the reason one must blush.”105 In a later letter, he admits that the friction with Brenner was over a girl, and he slurs Tinka as unworthy of being Brenner’s girl.106 He does, however, deny any guilt: “In any event, I am not guilty of [causing] any damage,” he wrote to Beilin. “On the contrary, I am sure that I greatly influenced him for the better.”107 Itzkovitz bore a grudge against Schoffman: “I cannot talk about Brenner with equanimity and always, when I remember him, I have this rancor for Schoffman. It seems to me that he alone caused [Brenner] to leave here,” he wrote to Poznansky, another of Brenner’s admirers, who was serving in the Russian army.108 In 1930 he told the story to Poznansky, describing how Brenner loved the gymnasium student, who “was smitten by ­Schoffman.” As a consequence, there was a bitter quarrel between Brenner and Schoffman. “All this caused Brenner terrible pain, and when he left Lvov he did not say goodbye to him.”109 We do not have a great deal of information on the relationship between Tinka and Brenner. In “Glida” Schoffman attributes to M ­ arkulis the statement “a girl like her should only be held and kissed—no more,”110 which apparently alludes to the fact that their relationship was not sexual and also that Brenner was conscious of Tinka’s young

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age and childishness, which also emerges from Gluchman’s description. It was, perhaps, another love affair that did not entail an end to Brenner’s abstinence. Tinka was indeed attracted to Brenner but later was infatuated with Schoffman, then changed her mind and sought to renew her relationship with Brenner. After Brenner left Lvov, when Itzkovitz had not received a letter from him in more than a month, Tinka was fearful about his fate.111 In his letters to Itzkovitz, Brenner inquired about her, and Itzkovitz would give him news of her. When Brenner was in Jerusalem, he corresponded with her directly. “You ask me to write and tell you how I feel myself,” he wrote to her. “But a person cannot always say how he feels himself; and even more so, to write it.” He fondly calls her “­little Esther” and raises the remote possibility that they will meet again sometime. “But it is possible that until then one thing will happen, that the facial features that were so close and precious to me will have completely vanished from my memory,” and so he asks her to send him a photograph of herself.112 The letter is written with a gentleness that reveals Brenner’s feelings. She, too, knew yearning. Once, when she went to see Itzkovitz, she took all the photographs of Brenner and Schoffman that were in the room and did not return them. Between her and Hayug, who was secretly in love with her, there was an exchange of letters that lasted almost until the outbreak of World War I. After the war she studied medicine at the University of Lvov, where Itzkovitz met her in the early 1920s. She had heard about Brenner’s death and inquired about his son and wife.113 Lvov emptied of the people close to Brenner. The pogroms in Russia had abated, and the warmth and intensity of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement became more important to people than liberty in the Habsburg Empire. “May the Duma [the Russian legislature] be buried, if only that there might be no further pogroms, and it seems that there will not be in the foreseeable future” was Moshe Kleinman’s assessment of the situation.114 Kleinman went back to Russia and Brenner’s links with Tagblat were severed. The Heilperin family went to Poland. The Abramsons also returned to Russia. The Gluchmans went to ­Vienna. The rift with Schoffman was painful and unbridgeable. The second issue of Revivim appeared, following great efforts on the part of Brenner, who, with Itzkovitz’s help, financed it using his

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own author’s fees. Now he was looking for a publisher for his new novel, Out of the Depths, which he had written in the fall. He offered it to Lachover, who apparently was unable to pay the required fee. Brenner feared that he would again be forced to send his work to Hashiloah, where it would be easy prey for Bialik’s editing.115 Another option, Haolam, was not a journal accepted by “the young ones.” But now the journal had moved from Köln to Vilna, and Jacob Fichman, a poet close to Brenner’s heart who had written for Hameorer, was editor of both the literary and review sections. Fichman invited Brenner to participate in the journal. Brenner offered him Out of the Depths and asked for an advance on his fee “because lately I am living only by my pen and very often do not have the wherewithal to pay for rent and food.”116 It seems that Fichman accepted his request, and with the money he was paid, Brenner was able to bring out the second issue of Revivim. Beginning at the end of 1908, Haolam published the novel in serial form. Out of the Depths is a novel about the life of the Jews in London’s East End. The action takes place in the print shop of a Yiddish yellow paper, reminiscent of the Yiddishen Journal, for which Brenner and Beilin had worked. The main characters are Russian immigrants. The story revolves around the Taller family. One of the family’s sons was a revolutionary who died in Siberia; the second son, Shmaya, is a newspaper editor married to Chaya-Rachel, who in her youth was also a revolutionary. The daughter, Chava, is a good-looking, vivacious young girl. One of the story’s two protagonists is Shtaktorov, a non-Jewish Russian who is not a Jew-hater and who works in the print shop. He had been a Marxist and fled imprisonment in Russia with the help of a Jew. It later emerges that this Jew is the story’s other protagonist, Abraham Menuhin. Menuhin, described as a man illumined by an unearthly light, is a man of mystery. In these characters Brenner has created converse images of the Russian and the Jew. Although it was to be expected that the Russian would possess a profound soul, striving for good, in the vein of Dostoevsky’s novels, Shtaktorov appears to be a man of brutal force, without a trace of spirituality, who shrugs off his responsibility to Chava, whom he seduced and who is pregnant by him. In contrast, Abraham, the Jew, is depicted as a man blessed with the positive attributes usually ascribed to a non-Jew: phys-

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ical strength, resoluteness, stubbornness, courage, willingness to sacrifice himself for others, and honesty. His role is to fight for the rights of the weak, the young, the defenseless, and to “be a father to all the orphans in the world.”117 He was in Siberia with Taller the revolutionary, and the last testament he was given by Taller guides him to “the God of compassion and mercy” as part of the Jewish heritage. The dying Taller experienced a religious ecstasy and conveyed it to Menuhin as “a responsibility to all and for all—and mercy.”118 Menuhin sacrifices himself for the redemption of Chava but does not manage to save her. He is seriously wounded by Shtaktorov, who thinks that he has stolen Chava from him. He accepts responsibility for the child whose parents have abandoned him and promises that the baby—in whom the tough earthiness of his father and the lofty spirituality of his dead uncle are joined—will survive. Power and spirit cohere in the child, bringing a message of hope for the future. Out of the Depths is the story of exiles caught up outside time and place. London is a temporary dwelling place, where Russian and Jew are equal in their isolation and their difficulty adapting to a new place. In the end the drama’s protagonists leave London for either a bitter fate in Siberia (Shtaktorov), a fate worse than death (Chava, in ­Argentina), or for an unknown destination (Lieberman, a shy young Jew who is in love with Chava). Menuhin dies, and the unnamed narrator is dying of tuberculosis. For all of them, London is foreign city where only temporary subsistence is possible. Those who manage to strike roots there—Shmaya Taller and his wife—are hypocrites who assume a false identity. They become bourgeois and lose both their souls and their East European Jewish authenticity. The description of the print shop, the Jewish print workers’ organization, the relationship between the Jewish owner and the workers, the fear of losing one’s job because of advanced mechanization, the unsuccessful strike—all touched the hearts of Hebrew and Yiddish readers alike. Years later, when Reisen wrote an article marking the appearance of a volume of Brenner’s works in Yiddish, he made special mention of the descriptions that identify with the workers’ suffering and the protest against the employer who sought police help in the novel. Out of the Depths is one of Brenner’s more mysterious novels. The Russian-Jew role reversal, with the Jew saving the Russian from exile

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to a godforsaken place, in contrast with Brenner, who was saved by a Russian from the prisoners’ column, led to a hypothesis that the entire description of Brenner’s rescue by the strong, limping Russian was nothing but an adaptation of the events in the novel, a tale invented by memoirists.119 But I see no reason not to accept the possibility that in this story Brenner employed a reversal of what took place in reality to endow the Jew with qualities usually attributed to the Russian. The figure of Menuhin is one that Brenner perhaps wanted to resemble, but it is doubtful that he really thought he could attain the purity and sanctity of his fictional character. Menuhin is an ideal figure, possessing qualities that Brenner lacks, such as proven sexual prowess and voluntary abstinence. Out of the Depths has no basis in Brenner’s biography, with the exception of his feeling of foreignness in London. The story perhaps reveals distant dreams he once had about the desirable and worthy synthesis between the physical attributes of the Russian non-Jew—his vitality, his ability to take whatever he wants—and the Jew’s spiritual qualities, first and foremost the great compassion and mercy for all of God’s creatures, especially the downtrodden and oppressed. The baby—symbol of rebirth, renewal, and hope—is Brenner’s first incarnation of “the new Jew” born in the diaspora of London. The story contains mystical elements connected with Christianity: the God of mercy and compassion, who is typically Christian, not Jewish; the naked religiosity of the heretic who rediscovers God in Siberia, which is reminiscent of the repentant sinners who attain redemption in Dostoevsky; and Menuhin, whose face as he leaves hospital “resembled the face in the portrait of That Man in the painting by Murillo.”120 (Jesus is referred to as “That Man” in Jewish sources; Murillo was a seventeenth-century Baroque painter best known for his religious works, especially of the Holy Family.) The story ends in Springfield Park, North London, where Menuhin is found dead on a freezing winter’s night, with the baby, alive and well, pressed to his cold cheek, as if in his death Menuhin had willed him to live, suggesting death and resurrection. The chapter opens with a prophecy—“The words of Abraham who spoke to me in Springfield, before the garden was closed behind us, as it is said”—and ends: “Thus spake to me in the garden of Springfield before the sun had set, Abraham the type­

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setter—the bearer—the father.” The opening form, “Thus spake to me” alludes to a mysterious divine power that is beyond the world of reality. Abraham was both the mythological father of the Jewish people and also the father as a source of responsibility, mercy, and compassion. The story’s closing words, “the keeper closed the garden,” may also be an allusion to the Garden of Eden and the expulsion of Adam and Eve after they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.121 As already mentioned, Out of the Depths is set in London. The background is specifically Jewish, but the story is universal in character. Even though, as in “One Year,” one of the central axes is Jewish-­ Russian relations, there is no similarity between the two stories. There are, however, connecting threads between Out of the Depths and the last act of Beyond Boundaries: the mystery surrounding the figure of Hizkuni and the special attitude toward the baby as a symbol of purity and continuity. Just as the protagonists of the play are not free of sin but still gain redemption, thus with Menuhin too. In the year Brenner spent in Lvov, his reputation reached every corner of the Jewish world. His participation in the period’s leading journals and newspapers in both Hebrew and Yiddish made him a leading spokesman in all matters pertaining to Jewish culture. It was also the first time he had managed to earn a living from writing and did not have to work as a typesetter. For Brenner, the year in Lvov was a happy one, with no great upheavals. The decision to leave Lvov and go to Palestine was the outcome of his quarrel with Schoffman. Much as when he left London, this time too the personal factor was decisive. The decision to go to Palestine was not an obvious one. Later, when the Brenner myth had been incorporated into Jewish education in Palestine, there was a tendency to describe his road to Palestine as a continuous journey that began in Russia but was delayed at way stations. In fact, he was still attracted and repelled, captivated and frightened, by Palestine. When he reached Lvov, before he found his way around the city, he wrote to Beilin that he had asked for advances for his stories and articles so that he could leave Lvov: “To where, I do not yet know. It depends on the financial situation. Perhaps to Palestine and perhaps nazad [back here].”122 A few weeks later, he again brought up the possibility of leaving Lvov shortly, but at a lower level of urgency: “I shall apparently not be saved from a journey to Palestine, but I

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am postponing it.”123 And a week later, in a moment of discomfort, he wrote to Bichovsky that, once he received his fee for Evening and Morning, he would be going to Palestine. Gnessin was already in Palestine, and Brenner exhorted Bichovsky not to reveal his intention of going there. “I want to come there and avoid acquaintances. My being there probably won’t last long.”124 In early April, after the plans for publishing Revivim had been formulated, he informed Bichovsky that he was postponing his journey to Palestine.125 When Isaac Wilkansky wondered whether there was a contradiction between the publishing plans in Lvov and Brenner’s prospective journey to Palestine, Brenner replied that there was none—he would be going to Palestine in another few months.126 By the end of April, he had changed his mind: he had no money for the journey. “In general, is it worthwhile going—I do not know.”127 At the end of June, he again raised the possibility of going at the end of summer. He intended to work in a moshava (colony), he wrote to Berdyczewski. This time the journey was against the backdrop of a deep but passing despair with the world of literature, “In the end, the world of literature—what difference does it make to me?”128 In July he informed Beilin that he intended to go to Palestine in another six weeks, after he received his fee for “One Year.”129 But in the meantime, Revivim was about to appear, and life in Lvov was not all that bad. When Beilin told him that he was planning to go to Palestine after the Sukkot festival, Brenner replied that he was not going just yet.130 He also advised Beilin not to go to Palestine because it was doubtful that he would find a livelihood there. “I would go to New York if I knew I could find literary work there, in the holy tongue or jargon, and would make money.”131 Meanwhile, Brenner is renting the shared apartment with the Gluchmans and feeling an obligation to his friends in Lvov. He writes Out of the Depths, to which Palestine has no relevance. He falls in love with Tinka and publishes two issues of Revivim. December 1908 brings the opening of the rift with Schoffman. But Brenner is still in Lvov. “And I am getting old [he is twenty-seven] and I again wanted to go to America and I wanted to go to Palestine and I wanted to go to a small town. And fohrt [despite it all] I have remained in Lvov.”132 He advises Beilin, who wants to return to Lvov, not to do so, for it is very difficult to find Hebrew pupils there. But if he insists on coming, then

Lvov, 1908–1909

so be it: “If we see that here it is impossible for us to do anything, then both of us are definitely going to Palestine,” he wrote to his friend.133 In the middle of January, he had still not made up his mind. When Devorah Baron, a young writer he had nurtured, sent him an essay for publication, he answered that he would definitely publish it, “if I publish anything else in Galicia,” meaning that he was still of two minds.134 But a few days later, he informed Lachover that he was leaving Galicia that very day, and in matters pertaining to Revivim he referred him to its publisher, Itzkovitz.135 This time he was going to do it. At the same time, Rabbi Benjamin came to Galicia from Palestine to win people over to the idea of settlement in Palestine. Brenner made a special trip to Drohobych, to the south of Lvov, to meet him. He waited for him in the railway station, surprised him, and even carried his suitcase. They were both emotional at meeting again, “in the lamplight and in front of strangers and with a slight trembling in both of us,” according to Rabbi Benjamin in his recollection. That night they had slept in the same room and had an endless conversation. These three days were Brenner’s parting from Galicia.136 He left the country secretly. Traveling to Palestine was not considered a commitment to stay in the country. Many good, keen Zionists had come as visitors, stayed for a few months, and retraced their steps. So it was for Marmor, Gnessin, and, after a short time, for Bialik too. Jabotinsky also toured the country. Ahad Ha’am visited Palestine several times but chose to wander from Odessa to London. Leaving Palestine did not carry a stigma. It was a harsh country that could not provide a living for all who came to it. It had a surfeit of educated intellectuals who were unable to eke out an existence from intellectual work. The country’s spoken language was Hebrew with a Sephardic accent, and anyone used to the Ashkenazi accent found it difficult. Brenner’s hesitancy with regard to this terra incognita in the Near East was a combination of anxiety over making a living and fear of the Holy Land—for after all, traveling to Palestine was unlike traveling to any other country. The destination bore hopes and dreams that the heart refuses to reveal to the lips. Disappointment with Palestine would constitute a crisis for Brenner, even if he would not admit to harboring hopes of seeing a different form of Jewish life there. He therefore did his utmost to lower his expectations: traveling to Palestine was no different from traveling to New

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York, it simply cost less; one could make a living here and one could make a living there; he was not going for ideological reasons, and so on and so forth. But his hesitations and postponements reveal what he refused to articulate; the fear that he would be disappointed with Palestine was a paralyzing factor. Even though the journey to Palestine had no commitment attached, intertwined in it were so many contradictory feelings, expectations, and possible outcomes that it did not resemble any other.

S i x   In Palestine, 1909–1911

Brenner immigrated to Palestine as a hidden tzaddik, a righteous man who sought to stay out of the limelight and remain anonymous. His efforts to conceal his identity stemmed in part from a genuine need, because he had possessed no papers since his flight from Russia. When he met Rabbi Benjamin in Drohobych, his friend lent him his laissez-passer. Taking on a borrowed identity was rife among young Jews who left Russia illegally. The writer Shlomo Zemach described how he borrowed a passport from a young Galician Zionist he encountered along his way; from Galicia he took a train to Vienna to obtain a visa for Palestine at the Zionist Organization offices and perhaps even a discounted boat ticket, just as in Brenner’s story “Agav orkha” (Incidentally). The official who processed the passengers was a small, bespectacled, irascible man, just like the one who processed Zemach. But Brenner’s official was an educated man who had translated Herzl’s Der Judenstadt into Hebrew. Amazingly, this educated man did not discover the secret of “Feldman” alias Brenner, even though Brenner was well known, at least among lovers of Hebrew.1 Brenner had met local Zionists in Lvov, and his heavy, sturdy figure and gloomy expression were etched in their memories. Two people who traveled with him from Vienna to Trieste, and from there by boat to Palestine, recognized him right away. But he insisted on maintaining his pretense and asked them to keep his secret. In pieces written about Brenner decades later, authentic memories are sometimes mixed with the pictures Brenner painted in his stories. Mendel Singer and Jacob Cohen, the fellow passengers who had recognized Brenner, attributed to him the idea of a commune, in which the young people on the boat who sailed steerage and had to provide

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their own food would share food among themselves. According to their descriptions, Brenner contributed a great deal to the success of the commune, making sure that the weak and needy were also included in it. Singer describes him as keeping to himself, spending most of the time reading, but he was still well liked by the other passengers as a pleasant man with simple manners. Cohen recalls how he made himself responsible for the passengers, took care of them, and went to purchase tickets for them. Both mention Brenner’s decision to continue his journey northward, to Haifa, and perhaps to Beirut. Singer contends that Brenner, like the narrator in “Atzabim,” did not manage to disembark in Jaffa because his papers were questionable. Without further ado he was returned to the ship, which continued on its way to Haifa, where the Ottoman authorities’ inspections were less meticulous and passengers were allowed to disembark without undue difficulty. Cohen explains that stormy weather conditions prevented them from disembarking in Jaffa. He recalls that Brenner was suddenly assailed by doubt: perhaps it would be better if he did not disembark in Haifa but instead continue as far as Beirut, where he would find work as a typesetter—the fear of Palestine had beset him. But along with the fear, there was also excitement. When he saw the shore of Palestine he burst into terrible weeping that shook his whole body, and it was impossible to calm him; “as he wept the onlookers stared at him, wondering whether he was mad.”2 It was not only because of the passport and visa that Brenner wanted to conceal his identity. He had not come to Palestine as if to a last refuge and did not expect to remain there. He wanted to try his hand at agricultural work but doubted his ability to endure it. Fear of disappointment, displays of weakness, and inability to cope with hardship were intermingled. Palestine both attracted and frightened him, arousing longing and terror alike. His arrival under the cloak of anonymity enabled him to come, see, and, if he wished, leave. But Brenner was not just another unknown; he was already considered one of the most prominent Hebrew writers. Brenner arrived in Palestine with his reputation already established. He did not have to prove his talents and abilities. He could, if he wished, withdraw from the public eye and still gain general approbation. In this respect he was an extraordinary case among the members of the Second Aliya.

In Palestine, 1909–1911

A. D. Gordon, the future icon of Labor Palestine, was unknown when he immigrated, and so were Hapoel Hatzair leaders Yosef ­Aharonowitz and Eliezer Shohat. Shlomo Zemach was a youth who had fled his family home. David Ben-Gurion was a minor member of the ­Poalei Zion party. Berl Katznelson, one of the most important leaders, had not yet gained his place in the public eye, and Agnon reports that he was not impressed by the feverish young man to whose home Brenner brought him. Agnon himself was an unknown young man when he immigrated, and it was only in Palestine that he made his name with his story “Agunot” (Forsaken wives). The country’s reality elevated new public and cultural heroes and eroded the standing of heroes of the past. Brenner was one of the few whose feathers were not scorched by Palestine’s burning sun. Brenner’s first steps in the country brought him disappointment. He went to Hadera to work tilling the soil as an agricultural laborer and realized within only a few days, like the protagonist of Shkhol ­vekishalon (Breakdown and bereavement), that he was physically incapable of doing the work. Later, when Jacob Ya’ari-Poleskin published an article in Yiddish on Brenner’s life in Palestine, he included the following sentence: “Brenner’s happy days as an agricultural worker did not last long.” Brenner responded with a sad sigh: “‘Did not last long.’ And were there any days that were not long?” He asked Ya’ari-Poleskin to revise his statement that he worked in agriculture for a certain period, when in fact this period lasted no longer than six days.3 Brenner reached Palestine about two weeks after leaving Lvov, between 10 and 12 February 1909. Itzkovitz, who feared for Brenner’s fate, managed to agitate Berdyczewski, Rabbi Benjamin, and Bar-­ Tuvia in his search for him. He received a first postcard from him on 24 February 1909, in which Brenner wrote that he was working in a moshava, which means that he may have remained in Hadera for more than just a few days. He gave Tantura, near Hadera, as his address for letters and royalties4 but still asked Itzkovitz not to reveal his whereabouts. His efforts to remain incognito ended in failure. As early as 12 February 1909, the Jerusalem newspaper Hatzvi published the news that “the author Y. H. Brenner has arrived in Palestine. He disembarked in Haifa.” Itzkovitz complained at the time: “I concealed your whereabouts in vain and did not reveal where you were

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to anyone. I knew in advance that you would be unable to hide from your acquaintances.”5 Brenner soon realized that he was unable to continue with agricultural labor. Scholar Ada Zemach wonders about the speed with which Brenner despaired of agricultural work; after all, he was used to hard work from the time of his military service and afterward as a typesetter in London, so why did he throw up his hands after only a few days of working in the fields?6 In two of his works, “Beyn mayim lemayim” (Between waters) and Mikan umikan (Here and there), he describes tilling the soil as the supreme test of the Jewish people’s ability to be reborn. Drawing on his own experience in “Between Waters,” Brenner writes: “Who can imagine the pain of the wretched Jewish intellectual who comes here wanting a whole different life, in physical labor, with the smell of the field—and after a few days, he realizes that his dream was but a pipe dream, . . . that there is no hope for the nation here, and that the main thing is that he himself is unfit for any kind of labor.”7 This was also one of the seminal experiences of the Second Aliya ­workers. The agony of adapting to agricultural work for young people with no previous experience of physical labor often ended in heartbreak. Laboring every day from dawn to dusk under the burning sun in exhausting, monotonous, and uninteresting work was a test that even the most loyal settlers who dreamed about working the land had difficulty withstanding. Whoever could, looked for work as an official or teacher, in editing, and so forth. Some escaped the fatiguing routine of work in the fields for the excitement of guard duty. Those affected by malaria left Palestine to convalesce, and many of them did not return. Others continued on to the United States. Within less than a month after his arrival, Brenner found his place in Jerusalem on the editorial board of Hapoel Hatzair. He did not try his hand at agriculture again. Brenner was among the second, later wave of immigration, which included Berl Katznelson, the poet David Shimonovich (Shimoni), future leader Yitzhak Tabenkin, and others. The country to which he had come was not desolate. It was already showing the first signs of becoming a cultural center, a development that apparently even predated the formation of a modern economy. Boris Schatz founded the Bezalel School, which nurtured artists in the plastic arts, in Jerusalem in 1906, and he also established workshops that employed hundreds of

In Palestine, 1909–1911

Jerusalemites in the production of Oriental-style objets d’art, which were in great demand abroad. A Hebrew gymnasium was founded in Jaffa under the principals Yehuda Leib Metman-Cohen and Benzion Mosensohn. It was the first secondary school in the world in which the teaching language was Hebrew, and it became a lodestone for hundreds of Jewish youngsters from the Diaspora whose parents sought to give them a general, nonreligious education with a Jewish national character. Following the establishment in 1908 of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa with Arthur Ruppin as its head, Ruppin’s wife opened the Shulamit Conservatory in 1910. The conservatory was attended by young people seeking a musical education. Envious of their counterparts on the coastal plain, the Jerusalemites hastened to establish their own Hebrew gymnasium. The leading newspapers were also published in Jerusalem, the most prominent of which were those owned by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, with frequently changing names: Hatzvi, Ha’or, and so on. In the view of the ascetic Brenner and his Second Aliya comrades, these papers were yellow. Apart from local and world news, they also published—under the eye of Hemda BenYehuda—news of Paris fashions, gossip, and so forth, which were considered inappropriate for the revivified Jewish society. But they were the only dailies available. There were also the ultra-­Orthodox Haredi papers that spouted fire and brimstone at the wanton youngsters who displayed their lewdness in public. The number of intellectuals and Hebrew writers living in Palestine at the time was completely disproportionate to the total Jewish population. On the eve of World War I, there were some 85,000 Jews living in Palestine, most of them Haredim (ultraorthodox), living in the holy cities, mainly Jerusalem. The so-called new Yishuv (“settlement”; the term refers to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine) was located in the moshavot, West Jerusalem, Jaffa, and later Tel Aviv, with a small population in Haifa, and numbered approximately 12,000 souls. The main distinction between the “new” and “old” Yishuv was not based on attitude toward religion—many in the new Yishuv were observant Jews—but on occupation. The majority in the new Yishuv earned a living and were not dependent on the welfare and charitable institutions that reigned supreme in Jerusalem. During the Second Aliya p ­ eriod (1904–1914), some 35,000 immigrants came to Palestine, most of whom

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reached the country’s shores because they had heard that it was possible to make a living there or because the journey was less expensive, easier, and less of a risk than the voyage to the United States. The influence of the ideological factor on the immigrants was minimal. Those who went down in history as members of the Second Aliya were a small minority, most of whom left the country and continued their journey throughout the world in search of peace of mind and a life of dignity. According to different estimates, there were between 1,200 and 2,000 Jewish workers in Palestine on the eve of World War I.8 But a large portion of the thousands of people constituting the “new” Y ­ ishuv were Zionists and consumers of culture, even though their worldview was either bourgeois or petit bourgeois and disdainfully dismissed by the socialist hard core of the Second Aliya. Around the Zionist institutions such as the Palestine Office and the Odessa Committee of the Zionists in Russia, or philanthropic bodies with Jewish national leanings—such as Ezra, a German-Jewish organization that supported modern education; Alliance Israélite Universelle (Alliance), a Paris-based Jewish organization founded in 1860 to safeguard the human rights of Jews around the world; and the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA)—a bureaucracy was formed that espoused nationalist aspirations (or at least some of their officials did) and was also a potential audience for consumption of culture. Residing in Jaffa was Ben-Zion, who tried to bring out a literary journal, Haomer, which with all its weaknesses was an expression of the new life materializing in Palestine. Living in Neveh Zedek was the new immigrant Shmuel Czaczkes, who arrived in 1908 and was known by his pen name, S. Y. Agnon. They were joined by dozens of writers, journalists, and semi-intellectuals who tried their hand at writing. Among them were ­Aharon Reuveni (who was not yet writing in Hebrew), Shlomo Zemach, Aharon Avraham Kabak, Rabbi Benjamin, Azar (Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitz), Devorah Baron, Rachel Katznelson (Shazar), Zvi Schatz, poet Rachel Bluwstein, and many more who were well known—or less so—who will be mentioned later. They had access to several Hebrew journals abroad, notably Hashiloah. The most respected bimonthly journal in Palestine was Hapoel Hatzair, which was first published in 1907 by a political party of the same name. The members of the rival Poalei Zion party initially attempted to publish a journal of their own in Yiddish, Der Anfang (Beginning), but it failed.

In Palestine, 1909–1911

The Poalei Zion Hebrew language journal, Ha’akhdut (Unity), began publication in 1909. Hapoel Hatzair was a Zionist party oriented toward the agricultural worker. Although its worldview was essentially socialist, it distanced itself from parties with Marxist and class outlooks and addressed all young Jews who were touched by the distress of their people and were prepared to dedicate their lives to reforming Jewish society in Palestine. The notion of “conquest of labor” through agriculture and establishing a Jewish society that lived by the sweat of its brow was the central tenet in Hapoel Hatzair ideology. The party’s leader and editor in chief of its journal was Yosef Aharonowitz. Born in 1877, ­Aharonowitz was four years Brenner’s senior and ten years older than Berl Katznelson and Ben-Gurion. He was as straight as an arrow, a realist who did not flinch from sober observation of the Palestine reality and its complex issues. He was a man of simple demeanor, with no flamboyancy or posturing, and no political scores. He was tolerant of opinions different from his own and a great enthusiast of literature and culture. Under his editorship, Hapoel Hatzair became the most important journal in Palestine from both literary and journalistic standpoints. Philosophers and writers, from A. D. Gordon to S. Y. Agnon, saw it as their literary home.9 Aharonowitz invited Brenner to work for his journal, even though he did not join the Hapoel Hatzair party. In early March 1909, Brenner became a member of the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board and was entrusted with not only writing for the journal (the 23 April 1909 issue contained two pieces by Brenner) but also editing it. The offices and press were located in Jerusalem. Tel Aviv had not yet been thought of. A few neighborhoods in Jaffa, such as Neveh Zedek and Neveh Shalom, had already set themselves apart the narrow, filthy alleys that engendered a sense of foreignness in the new immigrants. Although the tumult of an Eastern coastal city, with its smells, sounds, and characters, held a sort of exotic attraction, it also bore the threat of alienation. Yeshurun Keshet recalls his encounter with the city as “an impression of complete foreignness, of a world not mine that will not melt away and will not mingle in my blood and spirit—a piercing impression secretly warning: Asia is upon you!”10 Jerusalem was less intimidating. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi described it as “a mélange of peoples, religions, and races; a motley crowd of Jews,

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Muslims, and Christians. . . . Nowhere else in the world can one find any semblance of this mixture of colors, types, and dress, the confusion of languages and accents that one hears wherever one goes in Jerusalem.”11 From the mid-nineteenth century, the majority of Jerusalem’s inhabitants were Jews from Lithuania, Bukhara, the Caucasus, and the Maghreb. All the tribes of Israel came and gathered here, preserving their customs, language, dress, cuisine, but also changing them. Into this bubbling cauldron came a few “Muscovites,” nonobservant Russian Jews who roused the ire of the orthodox establishment because they tried to organize the first print workers’ strike in the city. They belonged to Poalei Zion and were led by Ben-Zvi (Israel’s future president). The strike failed, but the organizational activity did not cease. It was a time of great hopes: the revolution in 1908 of the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire led to expectations of the democratization and a constitution that would ensure equality and rights for the Jews. The “red slip” that restricted entry into Palestine was revoked for a while. Jerusalem’s “shtetl” character, typified by intrigues among the Jews, did not change, but life slowly went on along a track of progress. “­Jerusalem, this typical Eastern city accepts everything with trumpeting, exaggerates in everything, and makes mountains out of molehills, but that is its virtue, quick to understand and quick to forget, and even the more important things that should be remembered, it is always quick to forget.” This is Ben-Zvi’s summary of the qualities of the Holy City for his good friend Kalman Marmor, who visited Palestine in 1908 and was overwhelmed by its wonders.12 There is no information on the circumstances through which Brenner was given employment at Hapoel Hatzair. The offer of work editing and writing in Palestine probably seemed a sort of miracle to him that should be seized with both hands. Even in Lvov, his livelihood was not assured, much less in a country such as Palestine, where unemployment, shortages, and malaria were the lot of the brave souls who settled there. Itzkovitz wrote him that he should not worry about money; he would send “as much as you need.”13 But it was a promise that Itzkovitz found hard to keep, and Brenner did not rely on it, even though from time to time he did receive royalties from him. Itzkovitz also kept in touch with Brenner’s family in Russia and apparently continued to send them money. Ben-Zvi assumed that it

In Palestine, 1909–1911

was the financial arrangement that attracted Brenner to Hapoel Hat­ zair. “Brenner has just been here,” he wrote to Marmor, “and asked me about you and how you are. He does not belong to the party but H. H., which has financial means, has brought him into its editorial board.” It appears that Brenner had forgotten his bitterness over Sarah-Shifra Marmor and was a friendly “bear,” who wished only well for his friend M ­ armor. His attitude toward Schoffman, who had just caused him to leave Lvov, is an example of Brenner’s trait of not bearing a grudge for long. Itzkovitz had still not forgiven Schoffman, who was the reason that Brenner was now far away, whereas Brenner had already written to a mutual friend, “How is the writer of ‘Me’idakh gisa’?”14 A few months later, he recommended to his friend Ginsburg from the Homel period, now living in Lvov, that he get to know Schoffman “if you still have the desire to encounter an interesting soul.”15 He adorned his first story from Palestine, “Between Waters,” with an epigraph drawn from one of Schoffman’s stories.16 It is quite possible that Brenner’s readiness to forgive and forget derived from his present tranquility. His first months in Jerusalem were happy ones. To his friends abroad, he described his life with rare optimism: “The sun is shining; every now and then I buy almonds and eat them. Good!”17 “Life is very good for me here”18—this sentence recurs several times in his letters from this period. He does, however, attempt to dissuade his friends from coming to Palestine. At the end of March 1909, he renewed contact with Asher Beilin in London: “Here I am, sensing the old love for you,” he wrote.19 Beilin, who was unemployed after being fired from the Yiddish yellow paper where they had both worked, was preparing to go to Palestine, but because of news of unrest in the Ottoman Empire, he had delayed his departure. He asked Brenner to write him “that there is no danger entailed and that the Jewish girls are beautiful there too, and that the Arab girls are also worthy.” He wanted Brenner to state categorically that “I regret having come” or “you should come here.”20 But Brenner refused to say one way or the other. When Beilin pressed him, demanding an unequivocal answer, he replied: “You want me to write ‘in all seriousness’ that you should come, but I cannot tell you that even light-mindedly.” And he explained: “The climate of the country is harsh, malaria is rife, there is no way of making a living, none!” But he immediately reversed

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himself: “Unless you want to come here, come what may, then there is nothing more to say.” In London Beilin met Marmor, who had returned from Palestine and who told him that “it will not be bad,” to which Brenner sarcastically replies: “First, it will be bad and worse; second, for ‘not bad’ one does not journey beyond the Mountains of Darkness, one does not lose what money one has. Not bad! . . . Then why is he leaving the country if it is not bad? Why is everybody leaving if it is not bad?” Finally, Brenner tells him plainly: “Beilin! You know I love you; you know that I want to see you, but I tell you categorically: Do not go!” He concludes the letter in an existentialist vein, ending with a piece of concrete advice: “My brother! Life is unbearable! Unbearable everywhere. There is no way out and no escape. Stay where you are.”21 He also wrote in a similar vein to others but drew a clear distinction between his own situation and his advice to them. “That you should go to Palestine—no, I do not advise it. . . . Life here is very, very hard. Everything is expensive, there is no means of livelihood, there is sickness, and so forth,” he wrote to a friend from Lvov.22 “My own life here is very good; but no conclusions should be drawn from that,” he wrote to a young writer from Galicia.23 To another friend he wrote that his health and wellbeing are “almost wonderful,” adding, “I would inform you of happy events from Palestine with pleasure—but alas, there are none.”24 Brenner was not prepared to take responsibility for Jews coming to Palestine. Anyone wanting to come should come, but he was not prepared to be a Zionist propagandist, not even indirectly. Between the lines of his letters, one can see the problems that troubled Brenner on both personal and national levels. In answer to ­Beilin’s playful question about the beauty of the Jewish and Arab girls in Palestine, he said that, as far as he was concerned, neither possibility existed: “I have only two-and-a-half years left before I reach thirty. My blood does not cease boiling, especially here under the sun’s rays, but of that—I must surely despair! The time for free love is not yet here, and to take a Jewish wife—there is no one to take!” He added, half jokingly, “at times I regret my great and strong sexual instinct, which is stifled because of certain conditions, but are there not greater concerns than these?”25 Brenner permitted himself this forthrightness about his enforced abstinence only with his close friend Beilin, his

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companion during those long nights of walking and self-exposure in London’s streets. Brenner’s situation was not exceptional. The majority of the Second Aliya came from religiously observant homes, and with all the freedom they allowed themselves far from the eyes of their parents, relatives, or acquaintances, not many allowed themselves to cohabit out of wedlock. Starting a family under the impermanent conditions of a worker’s life—with work one day and unemployment the next, unable to provide for a wife and children even when he was working—was irresponsible. This resulted in abstaining from sex for years.26 There were probably young people who did not repress their urges, but the vast majority maintained their innocence. “We were a group of hundreds of boys, with six or seven girls among us, and we did not frequent prostitutes,” is how Zemach described it.27 The depression, termed “the great despair,” that was rife among the members of the Second Aliya did not stem solely from the meagerness of Zionist perspectives but also from the frustration of these young people who were unable to find an outlet for their sexual urges. Brenner was in a similar situation. He lived in the home of the Katinka family, and one version has it that he wooed their daughter and taught her Hebrew.28 But without a relationship with a man or woman like those he had in Lvov with Schoffman and Tinka Lampert, and even with Itzkovitz and the rest of his friends there, his sense of satisfaction and feeling of happiness were impaired. He was in good health, he was earning enough to live on, and his work allowed him to write. It was a fertile period for writing. In May 1909, only some two months after settling in Jerusalem, he informed Lachover that he had written two new stories, “Incidentally” and “Between Waters,” in addition to the articles he published in Hapoel Hatzair and other journals. Still, the loneliness was hard for him. He also had difficulty accepting the pleasantness of life: the urge for self-affliction, that degree of masochism that Beilin had seen in him, gave him no peace. Even when life was good, the essence of living was torment. Brenner’s misery was directed toward the national sphere as well. “I do not believe in the fulfillment of Zionism,” he wrote to Beilin, “and not only I”29; and in another letter: “We should completely despair of the hopes of ‘redemption.’ To your tents, O Israel! [I Kings 12:16].”30

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He defined his despair of Zionism as loss of faith: “And as for me and my ‘faith,’ I shall tell you the truth: I have stopped pursuing that damsel called faith. One can live without her too!”31 The quotation marks he places around the words “‘redemption”’ and “‘faith”’ were intended to emphasize his heretical attitude toward these two basic concepts in Zionist discourse. When Lachover asked him whether he would write “the Truth from Eretz Yisrael,” like Ahad Ha’am, he replied that his truth is one and the same in the Diaspora and in Palestine. In the two stories he wrote at this time, he questioned the value of the change in living conditions that had occurred for Jews with the move to Palestine. In “Incidentally,” the pioneers are depicted as small people who cannot rid themselves of their avarice and egotism. In “Between Waters,” he is very specific: “There are no hopes for a people here” because “our people, the Jewish people, do not possess the talent for living worthily.”32 The Yishuv in Palestine was no different from the Jewish communities in the Diaspora.33 The new Jew able to live the life of a free man had not emerged in Palestine. The pious Jews in Jerusalem who lived off haluka (charity), the moshava farmers who needed Baron Rothschild’s support, the Arabs who did all the work, the idle Jews, their cowardice and feebleness in the face of Arab aggression, the signs of French culture in the moshavot, which in Brenner’s view signified superficiality and vanity—all demonstrated the gap between the high-flown rhetoric in the press and in public discourse and the wretched reality. For Brenner, these were all signs that a culture was developing in Palestine of a poor, weak minority living in the shadow of the constant threat of a strong and aggressive majority. In other words, the Yishuv in Palestine was no different from the Jewish communities in other places. And if it was no different, Brenner wondered, why should we suffer and torture ourselves? The Jews remained the same uprooted wanderers moving from one exile to another. “Unfortunately, Palestine is a tourist country for our brothers as well. They come to see—and go back.”34 As mentioned earlier, Marmor had visited Palestine the previous year and had returned to London. Gnessin came in 1907 and went back to Russia in 1908. Bialik visited in the spring of 1909 and returned to Odessa. Jabotinsky visited in the summer of 1909, also as a tourist. In 1911 Frishman came to Palestine at the head of a Haynt newspaper

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delegation, but just for a visit. Even a dyed-in-the-wool optimist such as Ben-Zvi complained that “if people do come from abroad, then it is just to see the ancient and new in our life—and they go home”; indeed, “the best of our friends and Zionists in general sit yearning in the Diaspora, and that is enough for them.”35 Brenner maintained that the Jewish trait of wandering had not changed, and that the Jews’ mental attitude toward Palestine did not cross the line of commitment to it. As far as he was concerned, he was no different from the rest of the Jews: for him there was no great difference between Palestine and anywhere else in the world. For the time being he was staying because there was nowhere else that appealed to him. In other words, his stay in Palestine was a default response, not a heart’s desire.36 When he was in London or Lvov, each time he faced a crisis, he would talk about going to Palestine, but now that he was there and encountered similar circumstances, he would raise the possibility of leaving the country. To his dying day Brenner continued to hold the view that Palestine was just another Diaspora. Was this mere talk, or did he really mean it? The answer to this question was apparently different in different sets of circumstances. But his deeply embedded pessimism painted reality in gloomy hues. He felt at ease in the shadow of catastrophe and liked to emphasize the gathering storm clouds. He knew he fit the category of “the well-known whiner,” a Cassandra.37 But he had a profound need to create a distance between himself and his environment, as if this distancing would enable him to see it open-eyed and critically and not err with flights of fancy that were not anchored in real life. At the same time, he needed human warmth, hope of friendship, a quality that ran counter to the stern gaze with which he examined himself and his surroundings. Berdyczewski, the reclusive monk, had no need of the company of like minds; his family was sufficient for him. Brenner needed friends and colleagues. He needed human company and the interest it held, from which he drew his characters and plots. Everywhere he went, Brenner became a magnet that attracted all around him. “I wonder,” Agnon wrote, “if there was a Hebrew writer except for Bialik who led a flock after him as Brenner did.”38 He loved the attention and yet was disgusted by it; he needed it, yet recoiled from it. He sought the seclusion so vital for his work but also a supportive, indulgent, loving group. He was constantly driven as well by

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the urge for enterprise in the sphere of culture. Whenever he came by a few pennies, he had already formed an idea about publishing an anthology, a journal, or a book. Thus, these two inclinations—maintaining distance and the urge for involvement—were constantly clashing within him. In spring 1909 Bialik came to Palestine, accompanied by his good friend Joshua Chana Ravnitzky, and stayed for some two months. The Yishuv celebrated his arrival with flowers and festive attire; it organized processions and displays, and choirs competed with speakers. Bialik wrote to his wife Manya about the reception in his honor in Jaffa: “they spoke and sang, sang and spoke, so much so that I was covered in a cold sweat.”39 Bialik did not like this outpouring of sentiment and the large servings of praise heaped on him. The simpler and more natural the ceremony, the more it spoke to him, whereas the more pronounced the flattering artificiality, the more sick and tired of it he became. The foreignness of the Palestine landscape—the sabra (prickly pear cactus), the donkeys, camels, and Arab villages—alienated him. His loss of privacy because of his admirers’ bear hugs deterred him from expressing his true feelings: “Not only am I ashamed to weep in front of others but also to feel. And perhaps I am no longer able to feel, not for myself and not before others,” he complained to his wife (perhaps to allay her fears that he might have met his secret love, Ira Yann, who was in Jerusalem teaching at the Bezalel School).40 Brenner does not mention Bialik’s visit in his letters, and likewise, his name is absent in the letters Bialik wrote from Palestine, even though there were but few writers of Brenner’s stature in the country. Bialik’s visit presented them both with an opportunity to meet and get to know each other, perhaps even to erase the memory of the old bitter­ness. But it seems that neither of them made any effort to have such a meeting, and they possibly even avoided doing so. Hatzvi reported that Brenner was among the public figures who welcomed Bialik and praised him at a reception held in honor of the visitor at Beit Ha’am in Jerusalem, the same Beit Ha’am that is the backdrop for Brenner’s ironic description of a memorial service for a guard who fell defending the fields of the Jezreel Valley in “Between Waters.” The paper did not go into detail about what Brenner said at this gathering. A scrap of information was added by author Dov Kimchi (Berish

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Meller), who describes Brenner’s mounting the podium and repeatedly saying of Bialik: “He has ability.”41 It is hard to claim that Brenner praised the poet to the skies. Except for this, there is no sign that these two great mountains actually met, much less held a face-to-face conversation. Had Brenner not forgiven Bialik for “A Pleasing Mistake”? Did Bialik bear a grudge against Brenner for his refusal to accept his editorial authority and his authority on literary matters? It seems that their contemporaries were aware of the tension and alienation between them. Zemach mentions that Brenner and Bialik had a disagreement but does not say about what.42 Agnon, who at the time was attached to Brenner, apparently knew that there was no love lost between the two. On the eve of Bialik’s arrival in Palestine, Agnon wrote to Brenner that he had read Bialik’s “Megillat ha’esh” (Scroll of fire) and gave his impression of it: “There is not even a little warmth in it.”43 But when Agnon was in Bialik’s company at the home of Simcha Ben-Zion (who was also one who liked to edit and revise the works of others, and of whom the jokesters said that he had even edited the great medieval poet Yehuda Halevi), he stuck to him there and even accompanied him, so he says, on his travels in Palestine.44 According to Agnon, on one of these tours the conversation turned to Brenner. “I like Brenner,” Bialik said, “because he is genuine.”45 A few months later, when Brenner and Agnon were walking in the sands of Neveh Shalom, Agnon told him what Bialik had said, probably to make him feel good, or perhaps in an effort to bring the two giants closer to one another. “Brenner stuck one foot in the sand” and asked, “And what does he say about ‘A Pleasing Mistake’?”46 Yet in one of his letters to Brenner, Agnon quotes his saying of Bialik, “fohrt a meshorer” (a poet nevertheless).47 Thus, although Brenner admired Bialik more than any other Hebrew writer, and although Bialik truly admired Brenner, even if with some reservations, there was no room for conciliation between them. When Brenner informed Lachover that he had written “Incidentally” and “Between Waters,” he suggested that he give them to Sifrut or another of Lachover’s publications, adding, “I do not want them in Hashiloah,” without any further explanation.48 And when Klausner warmly invited him to participate in Hashiloah, after explaining that Bialik had retired from editing the journal’s literary section, Brenner replied cordially and courteously but declined. Klausner did

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not give up and a short while later again invited Brenner to contribute something to Hashiloah’s 150th issue, marking its twenty-fifth anniversary. “I hope that the harsh words against Brenner the journalist will not prevent Brenner the author from participating in the anniversary celebrations of Hashiloah, in which this author has published a selection of his stories,” he wrote.49 Brenner declined the invitation. The months that Brenner lived in Jerusalem yielded at least two stories and one important article, “Bapa’am hame’ah” (For the hundredth time). In its content the article is no different from the stories: Palestine is nothing but a medium-sized ghetto, “uglier, far fuller with inherent tastelessness, idleness, mendicancy, and human despondency.”50 And in the article, as if reinforcing the words he puts into the mouth of the narrator in “Between Waters,” he repeats: “There is no vacant motherland that has been awaiting us for two thousand years, and the main thing, there is no Jewish people, no living Jewish people, filled with strength, . . . talented enough to create a life for itself, talented enough to face its enemies, to create a community of living people.”51 The fervor of these words expresses their suppressed pain. Not only does the writer not see a future for the Jewish people, he has no respect for its past either, and without a people one cannot possess a living literature. In Mendele’s generation, the writer was able to describe a resilient, whole Jewish society. But in this generation, the Jewish collective had been shattered to smithereens, and there was no longer room for a national literature but only for “the song of the individual soul.” This was the reason, Brenner contended, that the young literature engaged with individuals and not the nation.52 The article was important to him. He demanded that Lachover should publish it before the two stories, which in all probability were more sought after by both publisher and readers. He stressed that he had revised it four times and shortened it. “I was meticulous with every word,” he said, adding that the article “is written with the last of my very substance.” These remarks were made to reinforce his demand “not to cut out even one word.”53 Itzkovitz took Brenner’s article and “Between ­Waters” as an expression of his dissatisfaction with Palestine, “especially with today’s culture.”54 Brenner’s ingrained pessimism regarding the future of the Jewish people, the Zionist enterprise, and Hebrew literature was on the level

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of ideas. In his day-to-day life, he was working feverishly, incessantly. He signed an agreement with his friend from the Pochep days, Hillel Kruglyakov, who had opened a shop selling books, stationery, and textbooks in Jaffa, and gave him the exclusive distribution rights for his works, which he intended to publish in Palestine after he had edited and proofread them. But he did not forget his friend Itzkovitz in Lvov and removed him from the exclusivity agreement he signed with Kruglyakov.55 The first of eight planned volumes of Brenner’s works appeared in early 1910.56 He wanted to establish a popular publishing house that would sell inexpensive books, but the plan did not come to fruition.57 When Lachover proposed the idea of publishing a monthly devoted to literature and topical matters that Brenner would edit, he jumped at the chance. But objectively speaking, Brenner wrote, the place of a literary journal “is in a cultural center and not here” (a nod to his deep-rooted pessimism); subjectively, however, there are quite a few good writers and poets in Palestine, “and to publish literature here has been my heart’s desire for some time.”58 He was enthusiastic over Lachover’s proposal and even suggested that his name as editor be omitted for fear that he, “the well-known whiner,” would put potential subscribers off. Brenner’s enthusiasm over the proposal, which ­Lachover retracted it even before he received Brenner’s reply, reveals his need to initiate cultural activity, to be at the center of enterprises, to be the leader of a network of writers. In that same letter to Lachover, he wrote and crossed out the following sentence: “In general I should say that if the man in me has, perhaps, signed off all his accounts, the writer in me is still ready to work a little—and that should be exploited.”59 However, Lachover had not done his sums properly, and once he did, he informed Brenner that his proposal was impractical.60 In August 1909 Brenner began to think about leaving Jerusalem and moving to Jaffa or its environs. For a while he hesitated over whether to move to Jaffa or perhaps go back to Lvov, where there was a possibility of work in one of the territorialist organizations that dealt with Jewish emigrants.61 “‘The big world’ is attracting you again,” he was gently rebuked by his friend Kruglyakov, who hoped Brenner would settle in Palestine.62 But this was a passing fancy, either because the position in Lvov did not materialize or because he preferred Palestine. Yet there was something still bothering him: in early September 1909,

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the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board announced that Brenner wished to state that he had “resigned from his position as a member of our editorial board, but this will not prevent him from participating in our journal in the future with his literary work.”63 Brenner’s motives are unclear. Hapoel Hatzair was a Zionist journal, and despite its harsh criticism of all manner of things taking place in the Yishuv, particularly the nonemployment of Jews in agriculture and construction and the absence of commitment to the Hebrew language and speaking it in public, it was fired with belief in the future of the Zionist enterprise. Did Brenner feel unable to identify with this policy without living a lie, even though he was able to continue publishing his work in the journal? This was Ben-Zvi’s feeling; he wrote to Marmor: “Brenner has left the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board because he ‘is not a Zionist.’”64 Itzkovitz, however, thought that Brenner “stopped being a permanent Hapoel Hatzair writer because there, too, he was unable to print the harsh truth because of which he was and is still suffering.”65 His very cordial relationship with the editor, Aharonowitz, was not impaired by this step. Aharonowitz responded to Brenner’s reservations about Zionism, his pessimism, his doubts about the future of all that ­Aharonowitz held dear, as he would to the wounds of a lover. Brenner was allowed to criticize anything and everything, for despite what he said or wrote, his associates had no doubt that he was in their camp. In the Zionist Labor movement, a tradition was taking shape that held that it was both permissible and desirable to expose every wound as long as the criticism came from within and from a welling heart (aptly manifested in Brenner’s case) and not from outside with the mocking cynicism of Schadenfreude. But Brenner’s departure from the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board was only a partial departure. A few months later, he approached his friend and erstwhile adversary from the London days, S. B. Maximovsky, “on behalf of the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board, in which I still have a hand, although unofficially,” inviting him to write an essay for the journal.66 In September 1909 Brenner moved to Ein Ganim near Petach Tikva. His mail was sent to the Hapoel Hatzair office in Jaffa, which had also moved to the coastal plain “because of the stagnation of public life in Jerusalem,” as Ben-Zvi put it.67 This is what Itzkovitz meant when he wrote: “He is in Jaffa for the time being. Whether he will remain there

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for long even he does not know.”68 In Ein Ganim Brenner found himself surrounded by people close to his heart. First and foremost of these was David Shimonovich, the promising young poet who had been in contact with Brenner since the time of Hameorer, when Brenner had published some of his poems. When Shimonovich reached Palestine in the summer of 1909, Brenner was still living in Jerusalem. He informed Brenner of his arrival but did not go to visit him because he had been hired as a guard in the Rehovot vineyards. Brenner wasted no time and one morning took himself off to Rehovot to visit the young poet. Had Shimonovich made such an impression on him with his poems that he felt the need to hasten to see him personally? Or was his loneliness so onerous that he sought a kindred spirit? Brenner spent the day in the guard’s hut and even stayed over in it. Shimonovich wrote his impressions of Brenner: “Spiritually he is crippled. Without hope. . . . He says that the song of his life has already been sung.” Shimonovich, who was

Brenner and fellow writers in Palestine. From left to right: S. Y. Agnon, A. Z. Rabinovitz, Brenner, and David Shimonovich. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

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very happy to see Brenner and felt a deep connection with him, feared for him: “What will become of the man for whom the star-studded sky, the wind whispering from the mountains, and the howling of the jackals in the vineyards, no longer mean anything?”69 The young poet was happy with his work as a guard and accepted a life of relative scarcity with the ease of youthfulness. Brenner, however, viewed Shimonovich’s straitened circumstances as further proof that Palestine was no place for intellectuals.70 When Shimonovich’s months of guard duty were over, he went to Jaffa, where he and Brenner shared a room at the Odessa Hotel. They would stroll along the beach together. Discovering the beach as a leisure-time location was part of the Palestine experience. The young people would lie on the sand, talking and singing to the lapping of the waves: “Just imagine the impression made by this sight on a new immigrant, who finds enlightened people lying in their clothes in the sand,” wrote an incredulous young immigrant from Galicia to his wife.71 The beach north of Jaffa was deserted: “Behind the strip of sand . . . lie creeping vineyards, and the howling of the jackals would accompany us and burst into our talks.”72 It was there that Brenner and his friend walked. They were sometimes joined by Aharonowitz, Agnon, Rabbi Benjamin, members of the local intelligentsia—teachers and kindergarten instructors and simple workers, some of whom had come to the city to show Brenner a manuscript. The first meeting between Berl Katznelson and Brenner took place in Shimonovich’s room in the Odessa Hotel. Katznelson, who had recently arrived in the country, took to Brenner at first sight: “This was my most important meeting here so far,” he wrote afterward.73 In his view, Brenner’s despair was different from that fashionable among the people of the time who flaunted their heartbreak and also from the cynical despair of the people leaving the country who greeted him in the port. “Keen, genuine despair—so much so that one’s heart is sick” is how Katznelson described Brenner’s mood. A rapport of kindred spirits was formed in their conversation, “and in his every word, every idea he expressed, he was one of us for me.”74 Katznelson was not overwhelmed by the force of Brenner’s personality. In him he saw the weaknesses typical of the Jewish intellectual’s way of thinking. Yet it was precisely for this reason that he felt close to him, for he too had been through this crucible. It was the authenticity of feelings, the emotional storms, that spoke to

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Katznelson more than the depth of ideas. “There was so much from the heart there, such a close feeling of the travails of our life, and whatever he may say, even when the content is not of the profoundest and even naïve and one-sided, the words do not pass you by.” ­Katznelson sought neither cognitive consistency nor intellectual fireworks in Brenner. He saw him in his exertions and liked his struggle with the truth: “He struggles and sways from side to side, dismisses everything with a gesture, totally immersed in his heresy, and in the midst of it all there is a heart so wounded, such sincere and serious feelings.”75 The circle that began forming around Brenner consisted of people six or seven years his junior, about the same age difference as between him and Bialik. Although there was an age and status difference between them, Brenner behaved as if it were nonexistent. Although they viewed him as an admired and powerful person, they felt a need to protect him. Brenner’s strong, sturdy physique radiated strength, but his bowed head created the impression that “an invisible burden was weighing down his broad shoulders.”76 Katznelson wrote: “I feel I want to console him, stroke him, give him surcease, tell him what my heart feels for him.”77 Brenner treated all the young people like a father concerned for his children. For one, he found lodgings; for another, he looked for work. “There are many aspects of his kindness. It is his caring for his fellow man, his food, his bed, for every person he encounters.”78 At the young peoples’ gatherings, along with his perpetual gloom he also revealed the optimistic, cheerful side that he concealed behind his despairing appearance. After all, he was not yet thirty years old. Shimonovich recounts how he would burst into laughter on hearing a Russian malapropism, “a resounding laugh that would frighten the jackals in the vineyards.”79 Brenner, who eschewed the pleasures of life, dragged Shimonovich to the beach because the sea was beautiful and even sat with him in a simple Arab beach café drinking tiny cups of coffee. This was a positive Mediterranean experience. When he saw the look of enjoyment on his friend’s face from the coffee, the sea, and even his own good spirits, he scolded him, saying, “in his eyes gleam those sparks of playfulness I like so much—olam hazehnik [man of this world]!” The event took on comic proportions when Shimonovich decided to demonstrate his integration into the Levant by smoking a narghile and found himself in the sea, for he slid from his stool after

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momentarily losing consciousness. Brenner burst out laughing at the sight of the young Jew trying to smoke a narghile as if he were a native Turk and being punished with a ducking in the sea. There was something innocently hedonistic in it, and for a moment Brenner stopped thinking about the nation’s troubles and his own misery and gave himself up to the pleasures of this world.80 On Rosh Hashana 1909, Brenner and Shimonovich walked from Jaffa to Petach Tikva, where they stayed at Hotel Rabinowitz, a refuge for any needy worker. That evening, they attended a celebration at the home of Skiabin, one of the farmers whose almond trees had come into fruit. Brenner spoke in praise of Herzl, then everyone raised a glass and then another “to all our brothers laboring to augment the reputation of our people.”81 Because of a sick neighbor who needed quiet, the happy band was forced to move the celebration to Ein Ganim, where Brenner delivered a speech about the Jewish intelligentsia and Hebrew literature, rebutting Klausner, who had claimed in Hashiloah that the greatest moment in the life of the nation, the moment worthy of perpetuation, was when the Jews bared their necks for slaughter before Gaius Caligula rather than have him place a statue in the temple. Brenner rejected this view outright and saw it as the source of the decline of the nation that had prioritized the Torah, temple service, and charity. The Torah had become sophistry, temple service had become prayer, and charity had disappeared completely.82 Ein Ganim was a workers’ moshav settlement established in 1907, one of the attempts to settle impoverished workers on the land without large investment by the settlement organizations, in this case Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) in Russia. The idea was born because an agricultural worker’s wage—even if he was permanently employed, which was uncommon—was insufficient to sustain a family. In the moshav the worker had a house and smallholding, which was cultivated by his wife and children. They grew vegetables, raised chickens and perhaps a cow, which would furnish the family’s needs and would thus supplement its income.83 But the investment in Ein Ganim was inadequate for ensuring the smallholding’s economic resiliance, and there was not always work to be had in Petach Tikva. There was, however, something in Ein Ganim that left its mark on the people of the period. In Jaffa, an increasing number of “despairing” people were on their way

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to ships that would take them back to where they had come from. In Jerusalem, tradition reigned supreme. Ein Ganim breathed the air of a new, refreshing, nonreligious world. Life in Ein Ganim in the winter of 1909 had a primal, irreplicable quality to it, the joy of discovering Eretz Yisrael. The small houses, the mist-shrouded mountains on the horizon, the young population, all endowed it with the charm of creation. For Katznelson, “the innovation, the freshness, the youthfulness anoints everything here.”84 The only oldster in the group was the fifty-five-year-old A. D. ­Gordon. Brenner’s encounter with Gordon was not documented, and Brenner never described it. But a few days later, Brenner introduced Katznelson to Gordon. Katznelson knew of Gordon from his articles in Hapoel Hatzair, but his appearance was not as he imagined it: “I would never have imagined Gordon like this: outside, by the house, on a torn mat, sat a Jew of about fifty, . . . barefoot, bareheaded, wearing patched trousers.”85 In Here and There, Brenner depicted Aryeh Lapidot in the image of Gordon: “Lapidot’s face was one of the faces of those elderly Jews that is never forgotten after seeing it for the first time,” he writes, adding years to Gordon and connecting him with the Jewish dynasty from time immemorial. Shimonovich remembers him as if he were the same age as himself.86 For the few youngsters far from home, Gordon and his household were a sort of surrogate ­family. His age, character, and his being a father made him an endearing figure. Toward evening, young men and women would gather round him, some to talk and others to sing.87 According to Shimonovich, Gordon hoped that the Ein Ganim atmosphere would affect Brenner and save him from the evil spirits tormenting him.88 Despite the scarcity and the self-neglect rife among the single workers, Shimonovich and Katznelson loved the place: it gave them a sense of homeland. Brenner’s constant grief stood in stark contrast to the optimism and satisfaction felt by his friends. But this did not disqualify him in their eyes; rather, it aroused in them a desire to console him, to find a way of helping him free himself of his sorrow. It was in Ein Ganim that the special relationship between Brenner and Katznelson was cemented. David Zakkai describes how several young people gathered on the sand outside Gordon’s house and the talk came round to the poet Tschernichovsky. Katznelson was the lead-

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ing speaker. Brenner listened attentively, every now and then challenging the speaker with a question; “and suddenly his face lit up, and with great warmth his eyes rested on the speaker and from him onto one or another in the group. There was a feeling that he was saying to himself: Here on the sands something new, tangible, will possibly begin.”89 On Katznelson’s initiative, the Ein Ganim Workers Club was opened. The idea was to offer the lonely, neglected workers a place where they could have a glass of tea, a cheap meal, read, and talk about literature. At the club, according to Katznelson, “expression was given to both despair and faith and certainty [in the future] and also to seeking [the right] paths and to literary and cultural problems.”90 Brenner spoke at the opening of the club, offering his wish: “May your light be great, may those who come here be worthy of their mission.”91 There was a sharp contrast between Brenner’s literary—and particularly his journalistic—persona and his flesh-and-blood personality. Brenner the author and journalist was completely thorny: he exposed every fault, every weakness, and plunged his fingers into every bleeding wound. He wielded a mercilessly sharp pen. Brenner the man was all compassion, concern, love of his fellow man. The sharp edges of his personality were revealed in his writing, sometimes with vivid exaggeration, as if all the aggressiveness within him was channeled into the written word. But in his everyday life he was a soft, gentle man who responded to all. Hotel Rabinowitz was where the workers gathered, where debates were held between the members of Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatzair, where the work “exchange” was conducted, and where criticism was leveled at Yishuv dignitaries and the Zionist movement. Within a short time Brenner became the focus of interest.92 Everybody knew him and shared their secrets with him. When Shimonovich wondered how he managed to get to know so many people, Brenner explained: he is an author who writes fine literature, so he is curious about people. In his explanation there is an echo of Agnon, who contended that Brenner possessed no imagination and drew all his characters from reality. But Shimonovich viewed Brenner’s reply as evasive and felt that the real explanation for the direct relationships people formed with him was the love of humankind he radiated, which was manifested in his willingness to help all comers.93

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After a short while in Ein Ganim, Brenner found a room with the Pasilov family and went to live there. The room was spacious but had no ceiling. Birds nested between the tiles and rafters and would spatter their droppings on Brenner’s small desk, at which he wrote a great deal that winter. The Pasilov family’s young son, Henich, wanted to help Brenner and would set traps for the birds and then later set them free. Brenner was in two minds about this: although he was pleased with the boy’s practical sense, it was an “act of Esau.”94 This episode formed the basis for the character of Amram, Aryeh Lapidot’s grandson, the new Jew in Here and There. It seems that Gordon’s hope that the atmosphere of Ein Ganim would positively influence Brenner came to pass. But perhaps it was only a brief period of tranquility that preceded another bout of depression. The Ein Ganim days were good for Brenner. For the first time in his life, he halfheartedly recommended to one of his friends that he come to Palestine.95 He even encouraged the writer H. S. Ben-Avram to immigrate and was prepared to help him financially.96 To another friend, he wrote: “I am living in a moshava and have a very good life.”97 At the time, he received a letter from a soldier in the Russian army, ­Menachem Poznansky, who told him about his army service, reminisced about their joint work in Lvov, told him that he had read everything Brenner had published, and finally inquired, “Are you thinking of staying in Palestine for a long time?”98 Brenner did not reply directly: “‘How am I?’ Everything you might imagine. In general, good. And indicative of this is that there is no desire to die. Right now, at this moment, night, a lamp, silence, a postcard.”99 In this restrained statement to a loyal admirer is a hint of cautious optimism that sees in the simple experience of living a sort of guarantee against the death wish. He did not say anything explicit about Palestine but hinted that he had no intention of leaving at present. A further expression of this new sense of rootedness can also be found in Brenner’s article “Min hamishol” (From the path), which he dedicated, “Respectfully, to B. Katznelson in Ein Ganim.” After including Palestine in the list of countries in which the Jewish people had reached a crisis point over the past fifteen years, he explained in a footnote that the Palestine crisis pertained only to the exaggerated political hopes pinned on it. But with regard to Jewish labor in the

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country, it was assured: “There is no crisis for those who have raised the banner of ‘Come what may, here we stand and work, here we live and die.’”100 This bore a faint echo of Hameorer’s “We will stay the last ones on the wall.” Brenner was not expressing belief in the realization of Zionism but simply stating that there were some people, like Katznelson or Gordon, who had bound their fate to the country and to labor. There was neither sarcasm nor irony in this statement, only a simple declaration of something he believed in. In the same spirit, he backtracked from what he had written only a few months earlier in his article “Rishmei sha’a,” in which he voiced doubts about the existence of “the fields and vineyards and the Jewish workers.” Now he felt “that this was nothing but bad language.”101 The winter of 1910 was good for Brenner. He wrote his story “Atzabim” (Nerves) and his novel Here and There and at the same time was busy with the La’am publishing house, which had been founded by Hapoel Hatzair and offered “popular science books for the Jewish masses in Palestine and Turkey.”102 This was a series of popular science and nature booklets, the type of Narodnik-inspired publication popular in Russia, aimed at educating the masses. The Yiddish cultural activists also published booklets of this kind. The first were edited by Brenner, who used the nom de plume B. Ze’ira and whose subject was “man and nature.” La’am was very successful, with 40,000 copies distributed during its first year. Although La’am had difficulty balancing its budget, it sustained itself by raising funds from its loyal supporters in Palestine and abroad through the sale of subscriptions. In its third year, it even decided to extend its scope by including topical social subjects in the booklets.103 During that winter, Brenner also showed great interest in the fate of the young Hebrew theater. Menachem Gnessin, Uri Nissan’s younger brother, drew his attention to the early efforts of Hebrew dramaturgy.104 Brenner translated Shalom Asch’s play, Hayikhus (Pedigree) for Gnessin’s young company, and it was performed once in Jaffa. 105 One of the more popular plays was Jacob Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil, which was translated from Yiddish into Hebrew and produced by Hapoel Hatzair in Jaffa and Jerusalem as a party fundraiser.106 ­Diasporin, one of the leading characters in Here and There, hopes to produce God, Man, and Devil on the Yiddish stage in Jaffa and play

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the Jewish Faust as an expression of high culture, rather than stage one of Avrom Goldfaden’s popular comedies, which in his view were cheap. Brenner was impressed by a young actress, Lisa Varon, who displayed a striking natural talent in Yiddish and Hebrew plays alike, even though she spoke little Yiddish and no Hebrew at all because she was Sephardi. He tried to promote her career through his contacts with New York Jewish activists.107 When he read in a newspaper about the establishment of an association to found a Jewish theater in London, he wrote to his friend Beilin and asked his advice about Lisa Varon. Beilin cooled his enthusiasm: there was no Jewish theater in London, it seemed that there would be no such theater in the near future, and there was no chance that the girl would be accepted by such a theater if it was indeed established, and anyway, there were local young people who were hungry, so it was not worth her while to come, and she would do better going to the United States.108 And indeed, Gnessin and Varon, whose performances were well received in Jaffa, were unable to find either a sufficiently large audience in Palestine or gain appropriate stage experience there. Gnessin went off to study, while Varon went to seek her fortune on the New York stage, and Brenner mourned the loss of this wonderful talent.109 The Yiddish and Hebrew theaters in Palestine were caught up in the war waged by the Hebrew loyalists against the public use of Yiddish in Palestine. The majority of immigrants had difficulty with Hebrew. As long as Yiddish was limited to use in private, it was accepted with understanding. Theater became the arena for the circles of intelligentsia concentrated around the Hebrew gymnasium in Jaffa (later the Herzliya Gymnasium) who waged their war against public displays of jargon. When Yehudah Loeb Landau’s Bar Kokhva was produced in Yiddish in Jaffa, the performance was attended by hundreds thirsty for a little entertainment in their mother tongue, whereas it was opposed by lovers of Hebrew angered by “the triumph of jargon,” so much so that families were divided on whether or not to go to the theater.110 These displays of Hebrew zealotry were not to Brenner’s liking. Although he was gradually persuaded that Hebrew would be the country’s spoken language, he totally rejected the hostile attitude of the teachers’ and students’ circles toward Yiddish. He was reluctantly dragged into this debate as a result of his participation in a ­literary

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evening in honor of Z. Y. Anochi, his friend from their youth, who was in Palestine. Anochi had come to Palestine to convalesce from tuberculosis, and the evening was arranged to raise funds for his subsistence. The writers S. Ben-Zion and A. A. Kabak were to attend, Gnessin would recite poetry, and Anochi would read from his famous Yiddish monologue, “Reb Abba.”111 A fine hall was chosen for the occasion. But the gymnasium teachers opposed the event and decided that teachers and students would not attend. If it was going to be an event of popular culture, they said, then perhaps it might be held in jargon, but this was an event of high culture and should be held only in Hebrew.112 Because of threats against the participants and out of respect for Anochi, it was decided that only Anochi would speak, with Brenner delivering the opening remarks. The event was moved from the large hall to the small workers club, to endow the evening with the character of a closed event. But all the efforts to prevent a scandal were to no avail. When Brenner rose to make his opening remarks—in Hebrew—some members of the audience caused a disturbance, and he was forced to stop. Anochi, however, managed to read from his work and was loudly applauded. At the end of the evening, those present accompanied Anochi to his lodgings, and afterward some went to shout abuse at Metman-Cohen and Mosensohn, the gymnasium’s two principals. On their way there, they sang Hebrew songs and probably some Yiddish ones too, as was customary at the time. In an item that appeared in Ha’or, written by an anonymous reporter from Jaffa, the participants in the event were accused not only of shouting abuse at both the Hebrew language and the gymnasium but also of singing jargon songs. On behalf of the workers club committee, Shmuel ­Warshawsky (Yavne’eli) robustly denied the allegation, at the same time declaring that at the workers club “everyone is free to speak the language he likes best.”113 In his opening remarks, Brenner declared: “I myself am neither a Hebraist nor a jargonist, and I take a dim view of both.” He vehemently opposed disturbances, the “waste of energy on a war of zealotry,” and stated that “any hand that enriches our life with something is welcome.” He argued that, if children are forbidden to read the great Yiddish writers, such as Judah Lieb Peretz, then Hebrew is not strengthened thereby, and the younger generation are prevented from

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getting to know their people.114 Thus Brenner, the great critic of Jewish history, the Jewish people, rejecter of the Diaspora, demands that Palestinian Jewish youth must be given the opportunity to know its people without barriers and restrictions. We can find an echo of the Anochi and Lisa Varon affairs in Here and There. Diasporin is an actor seeking to open a Yiddish theater in Palestine. As mentioned earlier, he chooses Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil, but the production encounters difficulties because of some Hebrew zealots, and he is unable to perform in Palestine. He is embarrassed and confused. He, an assimilated Jew who knew no Jewish language, viewed the use of Yiddish as a kind of penance for having been cut off from Jewish culture—after all, Yiddish is a Jewish language, unlike the Russian he spoke before he became a nationalist, so why is he being attacked because of it? When his dream of being an actor is shattered, he decides to leave Palestine. Thus, Brenner voiced his opinion in the language debate in favor of tolerance and against zealotry. August 1910 brought the onset of a fresh bout of depression. Some testimonies have it that since his arrival in Palestine Brenner had several outbursts of weeping. On one occasion in Ein Ganim, one of the workers heard the sound of weeping in the dead of night, and when he went outside, he saw Brenner standing weeping, facing the moon, crying out: “You illuminate everything, only upon us you do not cast your light.” The worker called Gordon, who came and put his arm around Brenner’s shoulder: “It is late,” he told him, and led him back to his room.115 Another time, during a nocturnal walk in Ben Shemen, Brenner fell to the ground, hugged and kissed the clods of soil, and wept bitterly: “Land of Israel, will you be ours?”116 When he lectured on Peretz Smolenskin at the Petach Tikva workers club, he suddenly remembered the writer’s children who had converted Christianity and burst into tears. The audience was embarrassed. Then he asked for a glass of water, smiled, assured the audience that he would not cry again, and finished his talk.117 At a Passover seder, after drinking too much, he was beset by anxiety and feared that he was about to suffer an attack of his sickness. He burst into tears, and it was difficult to calm him.118 Brenner was aware of the eruptions of his sickness and their cyclic appearance. He knew it was hard to be around him when he was depressed, and he avoided meeting people then.119 During a

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particularly severe bout of depression, he was incapable of writing. His way of overcoming his sickness was nonstop work. In May 1910 Shimonovich returned to his home in Russia. Brenner parted from him painfully. Shimonovich reports that, as they parted, Brenner was assailed by “the depression I knew so well, which would attack him quite frequently.”120 Parting from his young friend was not easy, and after several weeks had passed without any news, Brenner suffered an anxiety attack.121 During this time, Shimonovich was on his way home to Bobruysk and called on Bialik in Odessa. Following a cordial conversation, Bialik wrote to Brenner and invited him to contribute a story to Moriah, the journal that he edited, but (as noted in the preceding chapter) he also excoriated Brenner’s “Between ­Waters.”122 It appears that Bialik’s letter did not alleviate Brenner’s depression, although he seems to have taught himself to regard criticism with a certain distance. The criticism of “Between Waters,” which presented his work as “weak” because the publishers were pressing him to publish it, he rejected outright.123 “I do not consider my work weak at all (just like every other author!). All it lacks is poetic pathos and exaltation—that I do not deny!” he wrote to a fellow writer.124 The majority of the story’s critics sprang to the defense of the Yishuv against Brenner, rebuking him for criticizing it when he was only a recent arrival, without getting to know it. His criticism, they contended, was exaggerated, not representative, and not credible. In contrast, his longtime admirer L ­ achover attacked him from a different direction. He wrote to Brenner: “For my part the story’s only deficiency is that it is far too Zionistic.” He argued that the atmosphere in Palestine had affected Brenner, and so “the despair is not deep and abysmal and does not derive from the depths of the heart.” He particularly did not like the character of Shaul, the idealistic teacher who loses his beloved and his hold on life. For him, Shaul seemed shallow, in contrast with the light but convincing character of David Yaffe, the vain Don Juan who wins the girl (a recurring pattern in Brenner’s stories).125 Brenner’s reply to Lachover has not been preserved. He did not deign to reply Bialik at all. In a letter to Shimonovich, who asked him about this, he unburdened himself of all his bitterness toward the poet and his sense of injury. But whoever copied the letter (perhaps Shimonovich himself?) took the liberty of deleting the more acerbic expressions, thus making the letter fragmented.126

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In the letter to Shimonovich, Brenner also mentioned his mental state, but on this occasion he diagnosed his illness as apathy. Because of it, he was forced to resign his post as secretary of the Palestine Teachers Association, where he was employed during the summer. Worse still, “the apathy, which is unceasing, does not allow me to write. What can I do?” he wrote with resignation. But he did not accept the semiexistence to which his illness condemned him: “If my present mood continues, it will be bad in the usual sense. Losing one’s mind is not good. And I, so it seems, am doing everything I can. I am fighting my illness.”127 A few weeks later, he was still complaining of “the apathy that has been eating away at me for a long time, to the brink of despair.”128 But at the same time, he was writing long letters, negotiating the publication of the second volume of his works, reading manuscripts, and so forth. It is unclear whether it was because of the cyclical nature of the illness that his depression passed or whether the feverish work in which he was immersed helped him overcome it. In mid-November 1910 he announced with relief, “recently I do not have the same degree of melancholia, . . . on the contrary: I am writing something,” by which he meant Here and There. His ability to write is an expression of his recovery, of his heightened lust for life. He feared that the same menacing thing from which he had recently freed himself would reoccur and take over his life. But he had learned to live in the shadow of fear: “And anyway, why should I be afraid? It was here— and I am [still] myself—until someday, of course.”129 His anxiety about the moment when he would submit permanently to “the great tranquility”—either death or madness—was constantly present, arousing a sense of living on borrowed time that mandated feverish activity while he was still capable of it. Brenner’s recovery was accompanied by a step that shows that he had put down roots in Palestine: he invited his siblings to come to Palestine. Over the years that had passed since he left home, he sent money to his parents and diligently kept them informed of his whereabouts. At the end of 1910, he wrote to his parents, suggesting that they send one brother, Meir, and one sister, Lyuba (Ahuva).130 And indeed, in 1911 Lyuba and Binyamin came to Palestine. Binyamin was the youngest of the brothers and came instead of Meir. They lived

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with Brenner in Neveh Zedek. This was a silent declaration that he had no intention of leaving Palestine. The 24 November 1910 issue of Hapoel Hatzair contained an article by Brenner on the question of apostasy. The article sparked a controversy that crossed the borders of Palestine, the Hebrew language, and perhaps even the borders of the Zionist tribe, and it went down in history as the “Brenner affair.” At the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, conversion was common among young Eastern and Central European Jews, accompanying openness to European culture and increasing secularism in Jewish communities. According to data published in Haolam, in the course of the nineteenth century more than 200,000 Jews converted, of which 84,000 were in the Russian Empire; 44,000 in Austro-Hungary; 28,000 in Great Britain; 22,000 in Germany; and 13,000 in the United States.131 The various churches were very active in missionary work among Jews. Stories of Jewish girls fleeing their homes to find refuge in a nearby convent cast terror into the hearts of parents who were helpless in the face of the church.132 Literature gives expression to this phenomenon. Brenner’s “He Told Her” is the story of the father who hears about a female convert brought to one of the villages, where he goes to persuade her to return to her people but in doing so loses his life.133 In Here and There, the mother of the maid in Diasporin’s sister’s house in Krakow is “an apostate.”134 In Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye the Milkman,” one of the daughters converted.135 A Jewish woman who wanted to marry a non-Jew was often required to convert. One noted apostate was Daniel Chwolson, who converted to obtain a university position and achieved greatness in Russian academia. It was jokingly said of him that he converted out of “recognition”; that is, he “recognized that it was preferable to be a professor in the academy of the Pravoslavic faith in St. Petersburg than the head of a yeshiva in Vilna!”136 Chwolson typified the new fashion: no longer the conversion of people who left Jewish society and became haters of Jews and Judaism, but conversion for material aims without hostility toward the faith and society they had abandoned. The old stigma attached to apostasy in Jewish society was no longer valid: the very use of the term “conversion” instead of “apostasy” hints at a certain acceptance of the phenomenon. There were many who justified

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their conversion—or at least found license for it—without its bringing ostracism and without their being forced to sever their ties with Jewish society. The poet Konstantin Abba Shapira converted in a gesture to a Christian girl who attended him during his illness, whom he later married. His conversion did not lead to the exclusion of his poems, the most noted of which was “Beshadmot Beit Lekhem” (In the cornfields of Bethlehem), from the corpus of Hebrew poetry. Chwolson became the advocate of Jews in relation to the Russian authorities, and Jewish lobbyists sought his assistance. When he died, he was eulogized in many Jewish newspapers.137 Like Moses Mendelssohn’s daughters, who chose Christianity and distanced themselves from the Jewish people, the children of Shapira and Chwolson knew nothing of Judaism. They became believing Christians, and one of them, so they say, even became an anti-Semite. Stormy controversies over the appropriate attitude toward Christianity raged in the Jewish press. Those who contended that there is grace and loving-kindness in Christianity also found themselves under attack by defenders of the Jewish faith. A few years earlier, S. M. Lazar accused S. Y. Ish-Horowitz of preaching apostasy. Rav Tza’ir (pseudonym of Chaim Tchernowitz) published a series of articles titled “To the Deniers of Judaism” in reply to young writers such as Ben-Yisrael (Poppes), whose article claiming that the New Testament is part of Jewish literature was published in Hashiloah a short time after the appearance of Brenner’s article in Hapoel Hatzair.138 Brenner’s article, “Ba’itonut ubasifrut: Al hizayon hashmad” (In the press and literature: On the phenomenon of apostasy), filled several pages, with an introduction that was far longer than the body of the article. Only at the end does it emerge that Brenner sought to say that the problem of conversion, about which so much had been written in the Jewish press both in Hebrew and Yiddish, was not the main problem of the Jewish people, that the hundreds, even thousands, of young people who chose to convert were not the flesh of the flesh of the Jewish collective even before to their conversion; they had neither joined in its celebrations nor suffered its pain and had contributed nothing to it. They were young people whose assimilation predated their conversion, and as far as Brenner was concerned, there was no significant difference between the two situations. He viewed conversion to Christianity as

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a symbolic, external act that was no cause for alarm, and there was certainly no point in preaching against it in articles that presented “the light in Judaism,” because anyone who had converted would not have done so because he recognized the superiority of Christianity. Had Brenner stopped at these statements, the “Brenner affair” would never have happened. But on the way to his conclusion, Brenner attempts to prove that for him—“a free-thinking Jewish man”—there is no difference between Judaism and Christianity because religion, any religion, with its symbols and revelations, is of no importance. It was clearly understood by the young people, whose soul was torn, “without a complete Hebrew language, without a Jewish homeland, and without a Hebrew culture,” that “a Jew and a prayer shawl and phylacteries are not one and the same.” And so, to lessen the importance of apostasy, when measured against the atrophy of the Jewish people, Brenner develops the concept of “the free Jew” for whom Jewish nationality is separate from the Jewish religion. With his nonreligious nationality, the free Jew challenges attempts to shackle him to any religious worldview whatsoever. Brenner defines his national awareness as “secular, atheistic, atheological,” which permits him to think whatever he wants about religions and beliefs, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. To demonstrate that he sees no difference between Judaism and Christianity because he rejects both, he declares: “A Jewish man can be a good Jew, devoted to his nation heart and soul, and without fear of this legend [Christianity], as if it were treifa [unclean], but he can respond to it with a religious thrill as the gentile Leonardo da Vinci did.” And he immediately adds: “For me it is strange, for me it is also hateful—like any lie in religiosity, like any ongoing tradition, like any intentional illusion that is always to man’s detriment and fills the terrible void of the complex enigma of life with empty verbiage.” He differentiates between Jesus, the creature of Christian mysticism, who is of no interest to anyone who does not believe in God, and Jesus the historical figure, who is extremely interesting; was he “a good shepherd,” “a pure spirit,” or was he “an idler”? Brenner contends that in all probability the historical Jesus was all three and possessed many other qualities and characteristics that are difficult to fathom because the sources provide contrary explanations. In the sacred texts of all religions, one can find “love of man

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and respect for the eternal sublime values,” which in practical religion are then translated into superstition and religious wars. Brenner seeks to demonstrate the rupture between religion and life: Jews who convert do not do so because they are convinced that Christian theology is the true one, and it is a pity to waste energy on scholastic debates of this kind; rather, “the main issue in our life is the question of a place of productive work for us, the Jews.” Brenner concludes the article with a declaration of loyalty to the living Jewish people: “We shall be stronger than flint, working and creating as much as possible; we shall increase the labor of our people and its material and spiritual assets. We, the living Jews . . . do not cease to feel that we are Jews, live our Jewish life, work and create Jewish means of labor, speak our Jewish language . . . defend our national honor and fight the battle for our existence in every manifestation of that battle.”139 It seems that Brenner’s critics did not reach his lofty call for loyalty to the Jewish people at the end of the article because their ire was ignited long beforehand. Brenner wove provocative statements into the article that hardly reinforced his arguments but certainly roused his readers and diverted their attention from the article’s main thrust to its details. For example, in the statement “I, for instance, see no greatness . . . in groveling and pleading before some father in heaven who will provide,” the words “some father in heaven” in reference to the Almighty sounded insolent and challenging, making a mockery of the faithful Jews. Another statement also fired his critics: “a long, long time ago I freed myself from the hypnosis of the twenty-four books of the Bible . . . many nonreligious books of recent generations are closer to me, greater and more profound in my view.” And if that were not enough, he added: “Even the New Testament is our book, a part of us and flesh of our flesh.” He did, however, qualify these remarks and emphasized the historical importance of the Pentateuch as “remnants of memories from distant times,” embodying the spirit of the people and its humanity down the generations, but this qualification was lost between “the hypnosis” and “the New Testament.” Add his contention that it was permissible to regard the Son of God “legend” with a religious thrill and his mocking reference to “their and our priests,” and we have a series of statements that intensified a controversy, a conflagration that possibly should never have come about.

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Brenner did not write his article in a void. Twenty years earlier, in his article “Avdut betokh herut” (Slavery in freedom), Ahad Ha’am wrote: “I can write any sentence I wish on the beliefs and views handed down to me by my forefathers without fearing that it might sever the connection between me and my people; I can even adhere to the ‘scientific heresy bearing the name of Darwin’ without its endangering my Judaism; in short, I am my own man and my opinions and emotions are mine alone.”140 This statement was interpreted as a clear distinction between religion and nationality, and as a declaration of the individual’s spiritual autonomy, of his right to believe in whatever he wished, without his beliefs and views impairing his connection to his people. Brenner, writing “a Jewish man can be a good Jew, devoted to his nation heart and soul,” is concurring with the young Ahad Ha’am’s article, while taking issue with the old Ahad Ha’am. A short time before Brenner wrote his controversial article, Ahad Ha’am published, “Al shtei hase’ipim” (Of two minds) in Hashiloah. The article takes issue with a book by Claude Montefiore that in his view attempts to compare Judaism with Christianity and blurs the differences between them. Ahad Ha’am interprets the book as intending to bring Jews and Christians closer to one another by stressing the similarity between the two religions—with the scales tipped in favor of Christianity—and sets out to refute the book’s arguments. In this context he addresses the nature of Judaism as a religion while ignoring the entire complexity of the concept of Judaism that is both national and religious. The article reflects several of Ahad Ha’am’s basic views, mainly his view of Judaism as an abstract concept and of the spirit and ethics of Judaism as if they were absolute, known, and agreed values, a sort of innate quality of the Jewish people. His statements regarding Christianity are patronizing, and he also returns to the notion of a “chosen people.”141 Brenner’s attack on “Al shtei hase’ipim” gives primary place to a view of Judaism not as a religion or an abstract concept but rather as a matter of flesh and blood Jews, their needs, desires, and pain. He presents Judaism and Christianity as two faiths with no real differences from the standpoint of credibility or superiority—and the atheist is sick to death with both of them. As far as Brenner was concerned, Ahad Ha’am had recanted the national, liberating concept he had announced in “Avdut betokh herut” and now espoused instead a traditional, reclusive Judeo­

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centric perspective, closing the window on the big progressive world. “But we, his fellow free Jews, have no attachment to Judaism, and yet we are no less a part of the collective than those who put on phylacteries and grow their sidelocks.”142 Brenner’s article contained several hints of the earlier debate between Ahad Ha’am and Berdyczewski on the appropriate character of Hebrew literature. Ahad Ha’am contended that Hebrew literature should engage with national issues and did not believe that belles lettres had a place in Hebrew. Berdyczewski demanded that Hebrew literature should deal with all the topics that interest people as people. And now Brenner defined the sphere of subjects that interest “young Jews,” writing, “I hear them talking about relations between people, between man and woman, between one people and another, between class and class; they talk about and are interested in the enigma of life and existence in general, about the material and spiritual worlds, about the various directions of human poetry, the different currents in world literature, the paucity of our own literature.” This is a sort of program in the spirit of Berdyczewski’s views, in which “nothing human is foreign to me.” By contrast, he alludes to Ahad Ha’am’s article derisively, writing that the free young Jews would never “even think of sitting and engaging in the folly of theology.”143 Concealed beneath Brenner’s heretical anarchism was a layer of religious yearning that emerged occasionally even in this article. Echoes of religiosity can be heard in the references to “the enigma of life and existence in general” and to the difficulty for young people living “a life without God.” His attack against religions that are “always to man’s detriment” and that fill “the terrible void of the complex enigma of life with empty verbiage” is from the school of Nietzschean pessimism and has nothing to do with the heresy of the Bundists and the communists. “The terrible void of the complex enigma of life” is what Zeitlin and Brenner had talked about with Sander Baum. To explain religion as “a supreme yearning for other worlds” reveals the latent jealousy of those driven out of the Eden of faith, who know that there is no way back. The scandal sparked by the article raged in two parallel channels.144 The less important of the two was the Jerusalem Sephardi news­paper Haherut (Freedom), edited by Haim Ben-Atar. This paper, which frequently clashed with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s newspapers, perhaps

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­ ecause of their nonreligious position, published an article titled “Kfira b o hasata” (Heresy or incitement) on 2 December 1910, a week after the appearance of Brenner’s article in Hapoel Hatzair. It vehemently attacked the Hapoel Hatzair people, accusing them of “inciting a movement from Judaism to Christianity” and arguing that “an end must be put to these idle and lying words! Stop masquerading! Speak the truth that you are inciting in favor of Christianity! And the question is only: How much? How much are you being paid for your work?”145 The author, who signed the article S. R., remained anonymous. The Haherut editorial board kept his identity secret and backed him throughout the weeks and months of the “affair.” Years later, the author was identified as Shmuel Rafaelovich (Refaeli), who had lived in London for some years and from there brought to Jerusalem rumors about Brenner’s connections with missionaries. But that week, the identity of the writer of the piece in Hapoel Hatzair was still unknown because the article was signed “Yosef Haver,” although the name may have been an open secret because it was composed of Hebrew abbreviations of his real name. In any event, a week later Brenner removed all doubt regarding the name of the provocative article’s author and published, under his full name, a scathing attack on Haherut; to fill the pages of “the rag,” he accused, its editor permitted himself “to publicly sell the souls of Hebrew writers to the contemptible missionaries.”146 Brenner reiterated his secular national concept, in which “the educated Jew, as long as he lives within his people, speaks its language, and takes part in its life, even if he denies the entire Law of Moses and thinks of the Pentateuch (as he would of the Koran and all the sacred texts) whatever he thinks, he will not be expelled from the national collective because of his thoughts.” But he also expressed his disgust and shock that someone was capable of interpreting what he wrote as he an incitement to apostasy.147 His shock shows that, with all his equanimity toward the Jewish religion, the very possibility of someone’s imagining that he was preaching Christianity raised his hackles. Brenner was not the only one to be upset. The Hapoel Hatzair editorial board demanded that Haherut reveal the identity of the author of the offending article so that it could settle accounts with him. When Haherut refused, the supporters of Hapoel Hatzair infiltrated the paper’s press and scattered a full frame of type.148 The Hapoel Hatzair

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editorial board swiftly dissociated itself from this act and tried to cool the hotheads responsible. From this point onward, Haherut fanned the flames of the controversy and printed articles attacking Brenner that had been published abroad. The storm did not bypass the Hebrew and Yiddish press, which published dozens of articles on the subject. But the second channel was the more significant. Only two weeks after Brenner’s article was published, Ahad Ha’am responded to it from his home in London. He had just returned from meetings in B ­ erlin, where he had clashed with the Ezra Association people about establishing the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa, and now he was greeted by an issue of Hapoel Hatzair filled with the rudeness of insolent youngsters toward their seniors and the Almighty.149 Born in 1856, Ahad Ha’am was twenty-five years Brenner’s senior and a man of the Zionist world that predated the Kishinev pogrom, the failure of the first Russian revolution, and the hardships endured by the Jewish masses. He was a man with a rationalist and ordered worldview, without Berdyczewski’s flights of fancy and intellectual prowess; he represented the decent middle-class lover of Zion, the cold analyst of existing reality who was not blessed with the talent of discerning the buds of the new trends that had started to burst forth. Brenner was never drawn by Ahad Ha’am. He perceived him as representing an artificial worldview that distinguished between Jews and Judaism, which Brenner could not stand. Their unsuccessful meeting in London reinforced Brenner’s feeling that he was a man not to his taste. On Ahad Ha’am’s side, Brenner did not fill him with enthusiasm for exactly the same reasons that Bialik had reservations about him, even though Bialik recognized his talent, which was not at all apparent to Ahad Ha’am. Brenner’s Hebrew did not fit Ahad Ha’am’s standard for the language, his psychological depths alarmed and daunted him—or at least caused alienation and lack of understanding. And finally, his radicalism, a mixture of Nietzschean heresy and Tolstoyan socialism, ran counter to the moderation of the British philosophers he so admired. Ahad Ha’am—who grew old before his time and passed his days in foggy London clerking for Wissotzky the tea trader, lonely and miserable—saw the young Zionists leaving his circle for a different culture, breaking the conventions he had put in place, and he was both fearful and angry. He wrote an urgent letter to Baruch Ladizhansky,

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his trusted friend on the Odessa Committee, who supported Hapoel Hatzair with a monthly stipend of one hundred French francs demanding that the committee dissociate itself from the rebellious journal: “I vigorously protest that the society is helping inexperienced young boys who express themselves in such a style.” To ensure that he would not be suspected of making this demand as a result of personal insult, he added: “Boys should learn, not teach. And I hope that there will not be a fool among you who will suspect me of being angry with the author of the article for things he wrote in it against me. Even harsher words from greater and better men than he have never led me to anger, and I certainly would not pay attention to the words of some youth I have never heard of.”150 His words, however, indicate that he was most definitely hurt. He was insulted that the Zionist journals remained silent in the face of the harm being done to the nation’s holy of holies out of fear that “heaven forbid, ‘the young people’ would doubt the ‘youthfulness’ of [the editors].”151 Ahad Ha’am was unaware that Yosef Haver was in fact Brenner, and when he made his demand of the Odessa Committee, he was sure the writer was a young unknown of no reputation.152 The frustration of the grand old man of the republic of Hebrew literature, who now found himself shunted aside by a new generation that had turned him from being the flag-bearer of Zionist cultural radicalism into the symbol of reactionism, erupted on reading Brenner’s provocative article. Ahad Ha’am’s approach to the Odessa Committee did not remain a secret. Ahad Ha’am hastily wrote to his friend Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen about his protest “so that ‘the young people’ will not say that I undermined their position in secret.”153 Hacohen informed the Palestine community about this development, and the information sent shockwaves through the circles of the Palestine intelligentsia.154 The Odessa Committee convened on 18 January 1911. Its members were split into the moderates (two unknown Zionists, Treivish and Reimist), who felt that a strongly worded letter to the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board would suffice, and the radicals (led by the cultural leaders, Bialik and Klausner), who demanded that the committee withdraw its support until the journal’s management appointed a new editor who would act in the spirit of the committee. The chairman, Menachem Ussishkin, joined the radicals, but to avoid suspicion of coercing the

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Hapoel Hatzair editorial board, it was decided—on his advice—to formulate the committee’s demand in cautious terms. Therefore, the decision stated that as a consequence of Brenner’s article, the committee would suspend its support in the sum of one hundred francs per issue; a clause was added, however, stipulating that “if, following the formation of a new editorial board, the character and direction of the journal should change, and its managers choose to request renewed support, the committee will discuss this question anew.”155 Ahad Ha’am was pleased and thought that the decision was a wise one because it did not demand the replacement of the editorial board and the appointment of a new editor acceptable to the committee but instead stated that Hapoel Hatzair had shifted away from the spirit of the committee and was thus not entitled to its support, with the provision that, if and when the journal returned to the fold, the committee would be able to renew that support.156 Ahad Ha’am’s reaction reflected the limitations of his vision: it was formalistic, didactic, and even feigned innocence. Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen brought Ahad Ha’am’s response to the Palestine community and in the spirit of his master expressed himself with great vehemence. Aharonowitz’s anger smoldered. He wanted to publish an article in response in Ha’or because it was a general paper and its effect would be greater than in a party paper. The wording was so harsh that Aharonowitz assumed that Hacohen was liable to sue him for slander, “but I accept any punishment,” wrote this moderate and reasonable man. It appears that Aharonowitz suggested a boycott of Hacohen and even wrote, “this man is a scoundrel.” The article, written in a moment of anger, was eventually shelved, possibly because Brenner opposed its publication. This occurred before the committee’s decision was made known.157 When the formal decision was announced, uproar ensued.158 A broad public debate was opened in Palestine but was not reported in the press, because, among other reasons, Hapoel Hatzair bound itself to a thunderous silence. The debate was shifted from the public arena to the republic of Hebrew literature. A gathering of writers and journalists in Jaffa initiated by Rabbi Benjamin, Yitzhak Wilkansky, and Azar and held on 11 February 1911 “to discuss together the insulting action of the Committee” gained considerable attention.159 People close in spirit to Hapoel Hatzair were invited to the meeting, but not only them. All those

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invited from Jaffa and the surrounding moshavot, with one exception, attended, whereas those from Jerusalem and other moshavot—including the editorial boards of Ha’or and Ha’akhdut, Shlomo Schiller (Brenner’s friend from Lvov who taught at the Jerusalem gymnasium), teachers, and literary figures—sent letters of support. The meeting was held on a cold and stormy winter evening and lasted six hours. It was attended by eighteen people, including one woman, Devorah Baron. It was a watershed event at which an intellectual “collective” in Palestine was formed. The meeting was chaired by Yitzhak Wilkansky. The first speaker was Azar, an observant Jew who had been hurt by Brenner’s article and opposed its content, but he still defended the writer: “From the day I first met this man . . . I have known that everything in him stems from profound sorrow and a deep love of his people.” Azar described Brenner as one of the legendary thirty-six righteous men and perhaps one of the mystical figures of Hasidic lore. “All his devotion to literature, his entire life, is not lived for himself, but he always sacrifices it for the sake of others, the poor, the oppressed—is this not mystical power, a mystical power that is in his soul? He, Brenner, is a man who is wholly spirit!” He also spoke against the censorship imposed by the Odessa Committee on intellectual matters, but first and foremost he protested Brenner’s insult. He was followed by Rabbi Benjamin, who vehemently denounced the people living “overseas” who in one night had “handed down a harsh verdict on a fine writer and an entire editorial board.” He accused Ahad Ha’am and his circle of suppressing writers who were not part of the old-boy network. They had relegated Berdyczewski to the margins of literary activity and denigrated “the young people who will not accept the timeworn lies of these established writers.” Directing his remarks at the Odessa Committee, Rabbi Benjamin said: “This group is used to dealing with ornamentation, wearing one top hat on top of another, and sitting and spouting their ideas, and this literary plaything bears a grudge toward the extreme simplicity with which Brenner speaks the truth.” Yosef Aharonowitz spoke next and explained that Brenner had criticized Ahad Ha’am’s article “Al shtei hase’ipim” because “as an antireligious Jew, Mr. Brenner pins all of man’s moral ups and downs solely on the facts of life and not on religious factors.” Aharonowitz agreed that the article contained “expressions that should be used with

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caution before children and ignoramuses,” but Hapoel Hatzair was not directed at them. Wilkansky contended that Ahad Ha’am’s words in “Torah shebalev” (The Torah of the heart) had hurt the Haredim far more than Brenner’s article, and yet no one had protested and demanded the cessation of support for his publications. Speaking from the other side of the literary fence at the meeting were Menachem Shenkin, A. A. Kabak, and S. Ben-Zion. Shenkin was the Odessa Committee’s cultural representative, and he sprang to the defense of the great men of Hebrew literature, the Odessa people: Bialik, Klausner, Ravnitzky, and, of course, Ahad Ha’am. He accused Brenner of rudely handling “our fine and pure chords.” As an example of this, he cited a scene in “Between Waters” in which Brenner describes young men and women’s knees touching during a meeting in the assembly hall, a scene that enraged the guardians of modesty in literature in Palestine. In general terms, Shenkin argued, Hapoel ­Hatzair is a workers’ paper and should engage in workers’ and labor affairs and not devote so much space to cultural issues. Yet it seems that the atmosphere of the Jaffa meeting affected him, for he admitted that the committee had erred by suspending its support and that a caution should have sufficed. Ben-Zion and Kabak harshly criticized Brenner. Kabak went as far as to say, on Bialik’s behalf, that Brenner the journalist was entirely negative: “his language is not Hebrew, but jargon,” he claimed, “and in general, people who do not believe in the revival of Hebrew should not write in Hebrew.” On this occasion Kabak, who was to write a novel about the Jewish Jesus, Bamishol hatsar (On the narrow path), joined the defenders of Judaism. After these criticisms of Brenner’s writing, Aharonowitz was unable to contain himself, asked for the floor, and said that Brenner “writes with his heart’s blood, and this mandates an outburst of harsh expressions.” A lack of politeness is better than hypocrisy, he declared, adding in a Nietzschean vein: “We are building a temple of truth.” In the end all present decided to publish a statement to the effect that “even if Mr. Y. H. Brenner’s article hurt many among us with its content and form, the cessation of funding of Hapoel Hatzair as a consequence is an unfair act on the part of the Odessa Committee.” The meeting’s participants also undertook to assist the journal and act toward its continued existence.160 Brenner was not pleased with the

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meeting and withheld his involvement in the response to the Odessa Committee’s action. “With regard to Ahad Ha’am, I imagine that your heart is not in it and a word to the wise is enough,” his friend Rabbi Benjamin wrote to him a few days before the meeting in Jaffa.161 In Brenner’s opinion the Odessa Committee was entitled to disburse its money as it saw fit, and anyone who was not a member had no right to criticize its actions. “I said as much to the Jaffa writers who embarked on a ‘protest’ and also to the publishers of Hapoel Hatzair.”162 Three principal subjects gained expression in the Palestine w ­ riters’ protest: first, the authority appropriated by people who donated money to a cultural cause in Palestine to determine the intellectual direction of the subject of their support was considered not only an infringement on freedom of conscience but also an encroachment on the independence of the cultural nucleus taking shape in Palestine. The gathering and joint decision of a group of such diverse positions and social composition indicates that a local cultural identity was beginning to form, an identity that was threatened by the intervention from Odessa. It is also possible that this was a subject around which it was easy to unite: there is nothing like a threatening external factor to meld individuals into a group. It was an organization that transcended party and class lines. The support it received from the bourgeois Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (on behalf of Ha’or) and the editorial board of the Marxist Ha’akhdut (on behalf of Poalei Zion) created a rare coalition that possibly would never have come about otherwise. The cultural center in Palestine proudly declared its independence from the spiritual guardianship that imposed itself on it from the Diaspora in the vein of “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Second, this was a titanic struggle between two generations of writers: that of the classicists, Ahad Ha’am, Bialik, Ben-Zion, and Klausner, and the modernist “young ones,” whose guide and mentor was ­Berdyczewski and who were led by Brenner. This was also Ahad Ha’am’s view. He accused the journals of not coming to the defense of the nation’s cultural assets “because of their concern lest, heaven forbid, they would be rejected by ‘the young ones’ of Brenner’s ilk and the rest of the vulgar people like him.”163 But Berdyczewski, who was far from the centers of cultural activity and only heard about the “Brenner affair” much later, stood by Brenner. He displayed inter-

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est in the subject, voiced his desire to write and discuss the issues that Brenner had raised, and, finally, he expressed his attitude toward Brenner, writing him: “Regarding what you wrote, I have much to say to you. Therefore I am not saying even a little. The main thing is that we are kindred spirits.”164 Third, it seems that Brenner’s special status in the community of Hebrew literature in Palestine gained full expression in this situation. Although the writers stood by Hapoel Hatzair, first and foremost they sprang to Brenner’s defense. There is no way of knowing what might have happened had the Odessa Committee decided to pass a similar decision about another writer, but there can be no doubt that Aharonowitz’s anger and the enlistment of Azar, Rabbi Benjamin, and Yitzhak Wilkansky were the result of the insult to Brenner. They were people who held Brenner dear as an exemplary figure. Above and beyond his qualities as a writer, he possessed the aura of a paragon. Brenner was allowed to say things that, arguably, others were not. Many acknowledged his spiritual attributes, his unique personality, and the purity of his motives. Yet there were those who were revolted by him, his style, and his outbursts. In the eyes of the members of the Second Aliya, however, his uninhibited candor was an expression of authenticity and sincerity, a commitment to stating the truth, as bitter and trenchant as it might be. This was the antidote to philister [German: Philistine] hypocrisy, as the petit bourgeois lifestyle was called. At the writers’ meeting, the discussion revolved around him, even though he was not present and did not even send a letter of support. Brenner’s old friend Hillel Zeitlin came to his defense from afar. As the years passed, Zeitlin had returned to the faith of his forefathers, but he did not abandon his love for and belief in Brenner. Waxing poetic in the Warsaw paper Der Moment, Zeitlin wrote: “If you wish to find a man for whom the words ‘sanctity,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘love’ are not mere rhetoric but his ‘self,’ his very being, the entire content of his life, his suffering, his searches, his aspirations, you will find it all in him—in Brenner.”165 He described Brenner as “the eternal penitent,” seeking the truth all his life, the truth that eludes him. Zeitlin declared that “Brenner’s ‘heresy’ is closer to my heart than the chilly ‘Judaism’ of some of the Hashiloah people.”166 He denied Brenner’s atheism: “Does a true atheist think that the world is an enigma?”167 Zeitlin hoped that

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Brenner would eventually change his attitude toward the Jewish religion, but in the meantime he was atoning for his transgressions with his torment. The Brenner myth had already begun to take shape. Although Brenner tried to place himself outside the controversy, he was unable to resist responding to his critics in a long article in which he attacked all the great men of Odessa. The provocation was an article by Klausner in the January 1911 issue of Hashiloah, titled “Herut ve’epikorsut” (Freedom and heresy), which was a response to Brenner’s “Ba’itonut ubasifrut: Al hizayon hashmad.” Klausner defended Ahad Ha’am, who had been accused of repudiating his secular beliefs. He claimed that Ahad Ha’am denied and continued to deny the divine source of the Torah. A nationalist Jew, as far as Klausner was concerned, can deny the Torah’s beliefs but must accept its o­ pinions. In other words, a person may not believe in God but must internalize the basic concepts of Judaism. Klausner also settled scores with Hapoel Hatzair, stating that “the absence of an expert editor can be felt in each line of this likeable (in its formal role) organ.”168 He advised the journal to accept its place, concentrate on the issues of workers in Palestine, and leave questions of paramount importance to others—presumably, Hashiloah. With regard to Brenner, although he respected Brenner the writer, he “interferes in matters that have nothing to do with him and presents himself not as a ‘free thinker’ but as ‘free of opinions.’”169 Brenner responded with an article in Hapoel Hatzair under his full name. After a furious declaration of his own unconditional loyalty—and that of “the free Jews”—to their people “because no man abandons himself,” he reiterates that of all the visions of destruction that beset the Jewish people, apostasy is not the most important. He devoted the remainder of the article to a bitter personal attack against Ahad Ha’am, placing him among those “writers who have read Spencer and Mill and the Times and have pretensions of being scholars and have adopted a banal technique of articles”; against Bialik, “who, influenced by the teacher and his pupil, . . . begins to regret his licentiousness”; and against Klausner, “this great light and heavy hammer,” with the “improved and enhanced style,” whose “fundamental essence is to merely cover the emptiness of thought and emotion.” He again declares that “there is no Judaism outside of us and our life” and that the important thing is how Jews live (“the main thing is—Jewish

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v­ illages”), not rationalistic definitions of the nature of Judaism. And regarding his tone, it will not be pleasing to the ears of the defenders of the faith in the future either. “And should my heart place words into my pen—should I not utter them?”170 The “Brenner affair” was a milestone in the relationship between Ahad Ha’am and what would soon come to be called “Labor Palestine” (as the people of the Second Aliya described the cooperative settlements and the agricultural laborers), as opposed to the bourgeois version, which employed workers but did not work itself. ­Although Ahad Ha’am initially felt that the Odessa Committee’s decision was correct and worthy, in the face of the storm it whipped up, he changed his mind, claiming that the clause stating that the committee would reconsider its decision if the editorial board was changed was unnecessary and gave rise to accusations of infringing on freedom of conscience.171 Like Brenner, Ahad Ha’am was unable to keep from replying to his attackers, although he had intended to remain silent at the outset. He did not make do with Klausner’s article, which he welcomed, but wrote one of his own, “Torah mi-Zion” (The Torah from Zion), which opened another round of controversy.172 “Torah mi-Zion” totally ignored the Odessa Committee’s decision and focused on Brenner’s argument that a person can be Jewish, with national awareness, while rejecting historical Judaism—in other words, the Jewish religion. He emphasized again that national awareness is based on the national past from which it draws its strength. It is therefore impossible to relinquish religion as a historical driving force, even when one does not believe in God. Thus, it is also impossible to relinquish the Pentateuch or espouse the Christian legend, as Brenner had it. “Anyone who does not believe in the God of Israel,” in the sense of the historical power that shaped the Jewish nation down the generations, “may be a worthy person, but he is not a nationalist Jew even if he lives in Palestine and speaks the holy tongue.” Thus far, Ahad Ha’am had added nothing new to the ongoing debate on the nature of Jewish national identity. But in this article he contended that had the missionaries learned about “negation of a negation” with regard to “the Son of God,” which was prevalent among the young people of Palestine, it would have done their heart good, and possibly those young people would have eventually reached “the throne of ‘the Son of God.’” He immediately quali-

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fied his remarks, saying that matters need not reach such a pass, and that the young people perhaps did not understand where their words were leading them.173 But this qualification at the end of the article did not mitigate the harsh impression left by his words, which were interpreted as if he were accusing the young people of Palestine, “although with thinly veiled hints,” of “tend[ing] toward conversion to Christianity.”174 At the same time, the struggles intensified between the religiously observant farmers and the non­religious workers in the moshavot. It appears that the farmers viewed Ahad Ha’am’s words as a license to rid themselves of their Jewish workers. When Ahad Ha’am visited Palestine in early 1911, he invited himself to a workers’ meeting in Ein Ganim and asked them to show him on what basis they claimed that he had accused them of tending toward Christianity and to tell him why they were angry with him. The reply came from the workers’ elder, A. D. Gordon. The difference between Palestine and the Diaspora, he contended, is that “in Palestine the Jew has no need to take his national pulse every hour because in that sense he is completely healthy,” and that is why the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board “did not feel at all that the article [by Brenner] was capable of whipping up a storm in the Diaspora.” Brenner, “who is loyal and devoted to our people heart and soul,” is entitled to express unconventional views, for only in a free and open debate will the new Jewish identity be formed. Ahad Ha’am had displayed no confidence in the workers and their journal, Gordon chided him; instead of publishing an article in reply in the same journal, he had chosen to perform an act of bureaucratic coercion through the Odessa Committee. With regard to the allegation in “Torah mi-Zion,” in which he accused the workers in Palestine of inclining toward conversion to Christianity, Gordon quoted from Ahad Ha’am’s article, indicating that it represented an indictment of the entire young population of Palestine. He concluded: “The insult was so strident, so stunning, that we did not even protest.”175 From Gordon’s words Ahad Ha’am understood only what he wanted to understand—that the majority of young people in Palestine did not subscribe to Brenner’s views—ignored the rest, and remained steadfastly in his position of “the offended party,” refusing to recant.176 It was a dialogue of the deaf that created tension between Ahad Ha’am and the workers of Palestine. After his last visit to Palestine

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before the outbreak of World War I, Ahad Ha’am wrote his article “Sakh hakol” (All in all), a continuation of his “Emet me-Eretz Yisrael” (Truth from the land of Israel). He sought to substantiate his belief that Herzlian Zionism was groundless and that although a fine spiritual center in both form and content would develop in Palestine, it would be very far from providing a solution to the hardships of the Jewish people. He therefore accepted the employment of Arab workers in the moshavot, which reinforced his claim that the aspiration to establish a Jewish agricultural working class and subsequently a Jewish majority in Palestine was without foundation because “the rural masses are not ours.” His impression of the workers and their attempts to create new forms of life and labor was unflattering, and he did not view the workers as nuclei of the future. He actually referred to the workers’ settlement attempts on national land solely in a footnote and did not ascribe any importance to them.177 An unbridgeable rift was created between the workers of Palestine and Ahad Ha’am, and in this sense the “Brenner affair” was an indication of things to come.178 It seems that the “Brenner affair” accorded the writer, who had arrived in Palestine only two years earlier, special status in the Second Aliya community. Brenner became the symbol of an alternative Jewish culture that was being formed in Palestine. Although still in its infancy with outlines that were still changing, its characteristics were already marked, particularly in its demand for independence and its claim of bearing a new Jewish quintessence. As the storm raged around him, Brenner lay ill. Since December 1910 his legs had swelled and he had difficulty walking. The doctor was unable to diagnose his condition, either because of the limitations of early twentieth-century medicine—and in the Palestine province even more so—or because it was psychosomatic. He was offered all manner of hydrotherapy; for a week he took hot seawater baths, but his condition did not improve. Then Rabbi Benjamin took him to his home, where his wife, Devorah, took care of him. Rabbi Benjamin’s house was relatively well to do, like those of the Jewish middle-class in Palestine. As a result of the dedicated and pampering attention, Brenner became stronger but was still unable to walk. In the end he ran out of patience and traveled to the Tiberias hot springs, much to the chagrin of his friend, who was concerned about him and saw no reason

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for haste. Hillel Kruglyakov was also anxious: “How are you feeling?” he wrote him in stiff Hebrew. “Is it just your legs or has there been, heaven forbid, a change in your general condition? Dear brother! Do not stint on words now.”179 Brenner remained in Tiberias. Because of the incessant rain, he was unable to take the waters, which were considered a cure for all sorts of maladies, especially those that doctors were unable to diagnose.180 He stayed in Tiberias for more than a month, returning to Jaffa at the end of February, still unwell. “A particular ‘melancholia’ has engulfed him,” Rabbi Benjamin wrote to David Shimonovich, a melancholia that would perhaps find its way into the Tiberian alleyway in Breakdown and Bereavement. Schoffman heard about his illness and was concerned. Brenner replied, as if resigned to his fate: “Why are you so astonished by my illness? Man must fall sick and afterward die as well. What’s this ‘where from and since when?’—as if there were no medical knowledge in the world!” The love between the two friends burgeoned afresh, and Brenner asked Schoffman, who had just become engaged, to send him a photograph of his bride-to-be. “I would like to love her as well.”181 Brenner was now living in Neveh Zedek and working as the secretary (apparently the editor) of a series of translated books from the best of world literature, published by Yefet, a literary enterprise jointly initiated by Rabbi Benjamin, Azar, Joshua Thon, Brenner, and Agnon, that had been founded about a year earlier.182 In May 1911 Haolam announced the appearance of the first collection, which was finely presented and rich in content. “This is the first time that Palestine has published a big book of fine literature,” the Haolam reporter exclaimed.183 When Daniel Persky, Brenner’s admirer in New York, wondered about the rules of meter according to which Shimonovich had translated ­Lermontov’s poems for the series, Brenner replied: “A poetical meter and orthography, and everything in life must be done instinctively, not according to tradition.” And regarding the rules of Hebrew, he wrote: “First we must create a Hebrew language—and after­ward apply rules to it.”184 Brenner translated Gerhard Hauptmann’s Michael Kramer for Yefet185 and at the same time began translating Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It was then that Brenner embarked on the publication of his new novel, Here and There. He apparently used this title for the first time

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in the list of Ahim booklets that he intended to publish in the summer of 1909, which in the end did not appear.186 Some six months later, Brenner wrote to Fichman that he was completing the novel.187 Since suffering at the hands of his critics, who claimed that he had written “Between Waters” only two weeks after arriving in Palestine, before he could fully appreciate the country and its lifestyle, on this occasion he made sure not to hurry with the publication of his new book. He rewrote the manuscript three times to make it more polished and lucid.188 On his return to Jaffa from Tiberias, the manuscript had been edited and was ready, and Brenner began seeking a publisher. At the time, it appeared that Sifrut, Lachover’s publishing house, which had brought out “Between Waters,” had closed down, and Brenner had to find another publisher. He rejected Hashiloah out of hand and wondered what to do.189 Sifrut had renewed its activities, and he urged Lachover to publish the manuscript because “this story must finally be published as it is worthy of being printed”; in addition, his financial straits meant that he needed the author’s fee, come what may.190 Brenner’s complaint about his financial situation is puzzling. He had published in journals both in Palestine and abroad and also earned income from his work, which he continued to receive. When Lachover sent him a 100-ruble advance for Here and There, Brenner reacted as if he had been thrown a lifeline: “Lachover, you will laugh if I tell you that your letter with the money came like an angel of salvation for me.” And he went on to explain: “My health is not good (chest pains and so on), the rest is very bad, and in addition I am presently planning to become a family man— that is, my sister and brother are coming from Russia (and back there at home there is a sick father, a tired mother, and another sister and brother).”191 This is an expression of Brenner’s tendency to exaggerate his physical and mental anguish, for he was physically healthy, and although he succumbed to some of Palestine’s endemic illnesses, such as malaria, there is no other evidence of chest pains. From the material perspective, it is also doubtful that his situation was as bad as he painted it. It seems that his responsibility toward his family in Russia and the imminent arrival in Palestine of his brother and sister was a burden for him, and so he was happy to receive Lachover’s advance. But more than anything, Brenner wanted to see his new book in print in proper form. In this regard he dictated “an explicit agree-

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ment”: Lachover would provide scrupulous proofreading, would not change “even the tiniest detail,” not put the book on the market without Brenner’s approval, would print an errata sheet, and finally, “pay what is due.”192 Lachover complied with all Brenner’s conditions and even promised to do the proofreading himself. Regarding payment, he quickly sent Brenner a promissory note, to be paid in full a few months later.193 He also suggested that he publish all of Brenner’s works and pay him several hundred rubles every year. “This way you will be able to live ‘in peace’ for some years and write new things,” he wrote to Brenner.194 Initially, Brenner was keen to accept Lachover’s offer but changed his mind once the terms of publication became clear. He also saw a book that had been published by Sifrut, and its inferior printing convinced him not to give his works to a publishing house in faraway Warsaw but to try and have the printing done in Palestine under his direct supervision. As usual, he came up with a fresh idea: to publish a series of works by Palestine writers through a branch of Sifrut to be established in Palestine by Lachover. At the time, Lachover was about to visit Palestine and perhaps even settle there permanently.195 Here and There is one of Brenner’s works that accorded him special status in the Yishuv in general and in the labor movement in particular. This view of the novel came not only after Brenner’s death but in real time. Defining the book, Brenner wrote: “In my view my story is a national book. In its form it is a sort of Bahoref ten years later, but the national melody—or, more precisely, the national outcry—resounds within it with greater force.”196 Berl Katznelson presented the novel to his students as “the classic book of the Second Aliya.”197 It was written with the author fully conscious of his critics’ claims regarding the quality of his writing, and in it Brenner admonishes them: he is writing a book in which all their criticisms of the poor style, fragmented and unpolished structure, and threadbare plot can find their place. He employs his favorite stratagem of camouflage, which he had used in other stories, as if the book were “truncated and random sketches” that the writer has taken from “the knapsack of one of the wretched wanderers in the Diaspora.” He seizes the opportunity to enumerate all the criticisms of his work made by the critics of Hebrew literature: these are confused texts, containing “no poetical pathos, not even broad knowledge, not even fluent wording, and not even any architecture,” and neither spiri-

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tual uplifting nor aesthetic pleasure.198 And if that were not enough, their descriptions of life in Palestine do not follow the accepted Zionist genre. They contain nothing of the wonders of the country’s landscape, the heroism of those brought up there, the spectacular ceremonies and festivities. Although this was an inappropriate way of presenting Palestine, it is sufficient in the absence of worthier material because “where there are no fish, even a crab is considered a fish.”199 Brenner sought to give Here and There documentary credibility, as if it were a historical document, and so tried to camouflage the fictional character of the novel by presenting the narrative as a series of sketches, as if they had indeed come from the knapsack of one of the wanderers. Their authenticity enables him to reconstruct a picture of reality, “a simple reality, its wings clipped, a crawling reality, a photo­graphic reality.”200 Not for him was romance that sweetens bitterness, prettifies ugliness, and covers up blemishes, not even flights of fancy that depict what should be worthy. It is not the poetic realism he strove for in the past, but a photograph of the reality, repulsive though it might be and even intensified in its ugliness. Structurally, this novel is the most complex of all of Brenner’s fiction. It breaks the chronological continuum, shifts forward and backward in time, starts from the end, returns to the beginning, and even when he is seemingly telling the story step by step, the reader realizes that he has been fooled, that the continuum is broken again and again. He also employs several forms of writing: narrative, internal monologue, correspondence, and articles. He incorporates autobiographical elements into fictional scenes, does not maintain uniformity of time and place, and even though the narrator is “one of the wretched wanderers” (after several chapters he is identified as “Oved Etzot,” or “the perplexed”), and the narrative is in the first person, there are other chapters in the third person, and only later is the narrator identified as one of the characters. Apart from the apology of the “publisher,” which serves as an introduction, Here and There consists of six “notebooks” and an “addendum” of three chapters.201 The novel tells the story of the failure of two young Jews, one a Zionist Hebrew writer, the other “a Jewish Gentile”202 who is seeking to return to his people, to take root in the soil of Palestine. The first, Oved Etzot, probably leaves the country because he is “one of the wretched wanderers in the D ­ iaspora,” and it

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is from his belongings that the “sketches” of the book are taken, even though it is not explicitly stated that he left the country. The other, Diasporin, returns to Russia. Over both of them towers the heroic figure of Aryeh Lapidot, who with his grandson, Amram, represents the seeds of hope in the new Jewish reality of Palestine. In the view of many readers, the story was a defamation of the Land of Israel. Jerusalem is “this sacred butchery in which sanctity is sold by the ounce, . . . this withered old woman who has never known shame,” and further, “a city . . . that is mainly dependent on idleness and lying dreams and from which can come only flattery, falsehood, and disgrace, Jewish and non-Jewish, for all nations.”203 The idle chatter on the steps of the National Bibliotheque (an ironic description emphasizing the poor impression left by the literary and theoretical material in it) underscores the vanity of the speakers, their preoccupation with unproductive livelihoods, their rootlessness in local life, their weakness and degeneracy, even in this city with its Jewish majority. Oved Etzot is beside himself: “Shall we remain the contaminated of the world forever? Shall we always be frightened of the soil and not stand on it? Have we lost the most important human senses forever?”204 Regarding the moshavot, one (Zikhron Ya’akov) “leaves the impression of a fat and villainous contractor who has been sat at the table of a governor, and with his defiled, thick, leprous hands draws from the bowl,” and the other (Petach Tikva) is “a preserved Lithuanian-Jewish townlet, and all it lacks is a gentile landowner.” At this point Oved Etzot concludes that “we shall never learn the resolute, simple, natural labor of living people. Artificial shoots cannot yield fruit. The end! Life has been strangled.”205 And over all hovers the menacing Arab presence, depriving the Palestine experience of a sense of homeland, for here too the Jews are not free of majority-minority relations, here too they are subject to attacks from a native population that does not want them. Before he came to the country, Palestine in Oved Etzot’s imagination seemed to be “one city inhabited by free Jews, and around it many empty, empty fields waiting for more people to come and till them” (Brenner’s version of the notion of Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”). Instead, he found the menacing presence of Arabs: “There is another kind of Gentile in the world at whose hands we must suffer, . . . from these filthy ones too we

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must suffer!” The Zionist project’s chances of success seem extremely unlikely in relation to the mixture of inner decay (which gives rise to doubts about the ability of the Jewish people to rehabilitate itself and be a people that settles a land) and external threat (in the shape of the daring, belligerent Arab, the doppelgänger of the Eastern European Gentile to whose obduracy the Jews were subject). In a confrontation between two Jews and an Arab, the Jews are beaten, and the hunchbacked son of Aryeh Lapidot is murdered by an Arab robber. Anyone wishing to do so could have interpreted the book as a prophecy of the failure of the Zionist project. But Brenner wrote a book that is entirely point and counterpoint, fragments and scraps. It is a book about a personal failure that is also a national failure, and it is also about personal hope that contains a message of national hope. The personal and the national are fused. Oved Etzot’s life is beset by feelings of age and sickness: he is twenty-nine and plans to write “The Book of Old Age.” He describes himself as a “flawed body. A malignant disease. A flawed life.”206 Age and sickness are the collective qualities of the Jewish people. And they also typify the Jewish individual. The qualities that Brenner attributes to his protagonist in Bahoref reappear, but now they are not only a chapter in a personal biography but also the foundation of a collective one. The individual does not find his salvation in Palestine. Oved Etzot goes in and out of the hospital, forsaken and without a family, “the repressed male nature crying out within” him is not fulfilled in Palestine.207 He fails as both a writer and a man. Diasporin goes back to Russia, his dream of becoming an actor in a Jewish national theater shattered. Like a modern-day Job, Lapidot loses his son, his infant grandson, his livelihood, and his other son leaves the country. Palestine did not provide a solution for the individual’s sufferings, and it is doubtful that it will provide one for the hardships of the collective. But the reality of despair also contains moments of joy that reinforce the will to live and carry hopes for a better future, for national and individual rehabilitation. The plot’s two axes are so interwoven that separating them is difficult. The story opens on a summer evening. Oved Etzot is sitting on a backless bench (symbolizing the lack of security in Jewish life in the Diaspora) in a park in L (Lvov), opposite a theater showing an anti-Semitic play by the Polish playwright Wyspiański, as a beautiful,

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e­ legant, assimilated Jewish student passes him with a group of theater lovers in her wake. The beauty arouses Oved Etzot’s awareness of his impotence. He longs for a woman, but instead of fulfilling his desire, he rationalizes his abstinence with various excuses. He wants to be “a father and brother for whoever needs it,” but not a husband. There is something not as it should be in his relations with women. But the beauty of the young Polish-Jewish woman intoxicates him; he is prepared “to die to kiss her fingertips.” The commonalities between the Poles and Jews who speak the same language and identify with Wyspiański’s play prove to Oved Etzot exactly to what degree he does not belong there: “I resemble a Jewish Essene from ancient times who has wandered into a pagan hippodrome, and before him halfnaked horsewomen are riding back and forth on their noble steeds.”208 Jewish agedness rears its head in the face of the foreign youthfulness; the sensuality and lust of the foreign women contrasts with the weakness of the Essene trapped in a place he does not belong. The conclusion drawn by the Jewish intellectual is that he should go somewhere “where a new stage of our own is being built,” instead of the foreign hippodrome, the anti-Semitic theater.209 Helplessness will be replaced there by vigor, intellectuality by love of life, and age by youthfulness. It takes three years for the circle to be closed: Oved Etzot, “a writer for whom the language of colors is foreign and who has never known an unswerving appetite for life,” did not change in Palestine. It is even doubtful that Aryeh Lapidot, the man who adopted a new way of life and viewed tilling the soil as his joy, was truly happy with his labor.210 Can a Jew change, become strong, be guided by lust and influenced by instinct, or is he condemned to remain an intellectual detached from the foundations of nature and life? Oved Etzot’s attempt to effect a psychological and existential turnabout ends in failure: on his way to the post office to post a letter to Lapidot, asking whether he can adopt his grandson, Amram, who has lost his father (the murdered hunchback), he sees a young woman whose figure reminds him of the student from L. He vainly tries to catch up with her, is striken by weakness, and instead of posting the letter, he is again hospitalized— sickness, age, helplessness—are stronger than his desire to be a father, to shoulder responsibility, to be connected with the place.211 Although he sends the letter to Lapidot in the end, it appears that he did not re-

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ceive a positive response (or perhaps he changed his mind), for Amram remains with his grandfather and Oved Etzot becomes “one of the wretched wanderers in the Diaspora.”212 The story is presented as a memoir that Oved Etzot writes during his second hospitalization, an account of his encounter with ­Diasporin, Lapidot’s nephew, Diasporin’s wanderings from Russia to Krakow, from Krakow to Chicago, and from there to Palestine. The character of ­Diasporin is drawn with affection and sensitivity as a man who began his life alienated from his people but finds his way back. Diasporin tries to strike roots in Palestine as a Yiddish theater actor. The Hebrew zealotry of the journal Hamakhresha (The plow) shocks him profoundly, and thenceforth he is unable to find his place in Palestine. When he first came, he was happy with his encounter with the new world and enthusiastic over everything he saw. Oved Etzot, however, knew that Diasporin’s enthusiasm would wane and his wandering would be renewed; in other words, the Jewish gypsy inclination is stronger than the attraction of the country. Diasporin’s innocence and his perplexity over Hamakhresha’s harsh anti-Yiddish attacks are described with jovial irony. Despite his weaknesses and inability to settle permanently in any one place, he is presented as a victim of zealotry more than as a wandering Jew for whom not finding his place in Palestine is natural. A letter he sends to Oved Etzot from aboard ship on his way back to Russia is infused with a sorrow he did not harbor when he set out on his previous wandering: “And perhaps the heart of this Jewish Gentile is sad, who came to convert to Judaism and wanted to grasp his Jewish roots but found nothing to hold on to. And perhaps what they say is also true, that anyone who leaves the Land of Israel will eventually and unknowingly yearn for it.”213 This statement of Brenner’s reveals a grasp of a mystical connection to the country that transcends ideology and logic. Lapidot sees an intrinsically positive value in his life in Palestine, whereas Oved Etzot does not, although he rejects the life of the Jews in the Diaspora.214 Oved Etzot challenges the Jewish heritage exalted by Ahad Ha’am and his disciples. He despises the high-flown arrogance of “You have chosen us”—the nationalist rhetoric that promised the earth215—from a weak and miserable nation, powerless to take action, with pretensions of being the master of all nations. The gap between the wretched reality and the inflated self-image ceaselessly disseminated

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by the Zionist press, the tendency to exaggerate the value of every bud that sprouts in Palestine without knowing whether it could withstand the country’s hot, dry winds, seems to Oved Etzot—and Brenner—to be an unending source of lies and pretense. Only by contending face to face with reality as it is, with all that calls for rectification in the Jewish people, only by confronting the concrete and psychological truth would there be a chance of reform. Brenner advocates a low, minor tone. Those who are willing to act, not talk, the stubborn ones who continue even when beset by despair, like the unemployed Lapidot, only they will perhaps be nation-building Jews. Agnon names Brenner among the four builders who shaped the image of the Yishuv in Palestine. “He taught [people] to conduct themselves with modesty and humility and not to bring the world down on us with our petty acts,” he wrote. “And if we look at our Second Aliya comrades we can see that most of them learned from him.”216 Despite Oved Etzot’s rejection of the intrinsic value of the Land of Israel, at times he feels that perhaps there is a chance for personal redemption through creativity. The idea of using Lapidot as a model for a lofty creation excites Oved Etzot. During a talk with ­Diasporin on the threshing floor, reminiscent of the secret lovers’ talks of Abramson and Uriel Davidovsky in Around the Point, for a moment they both feel a pure emotion of joy, but Oved Etzot knows that it is only fleeting: “For the moment the danger is vanquished, suppressed, rejected, but it will come, it must come—we are sure and expect it at this good moment.”217 What did Brenner mean? Was he hinting that because of the Arab menace, Palestine is a volcano waiting to erupt, as he mentions elsewhere in the book? Is he perhaps hinting at the danger inherent in Jewish existence? Is he trying to say that the Jewish nature will eventually vanquish the beauty of the nights in Canaan and lead Diasporin and Oved Etzot to again take their wanderer’s staff in hand? And is he perhaps hinting at the existential state of humanity, whose happiness is fleeting, whose life passes by, and for whom the good moments are but borrowed time, a temporary escape from the misery of existence. And is he perhaps referring to his recurring bouts of depression, which cast doubt on his sanity and terror into his heart? Had the book engaged solely with ideology embodied in the dialogue of the characters, each of whom represents one aspect of Jew-

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ish and Zionist reality—the assimilated Jew, the Zionist, the pioneer, the revolutionary—Here and There would be nothing but a mediocre tract, just like Oved Etzot’s articles in the novel. But Brenner wove his narrative in such a way that, along with the national narrative, he describes human agony in the face of death, in the face of the end. There are two deaths in the book that shape the plot, that of “the hunchback,” Aryeh Lapidot’s son, who was mortally wounded by an Arab robber, and that of his infant son, Herzl. “I too, like any living being, am far from death, but my dead are always there before me and at times within me there is—him, who took the child and who took his father down into the earth from the bed facing me, he is there within me,” writes Oved Etzot at the beginning of his “Book of Old Age.” It is death that took these two human beings, without justification, with an inhuman arbitrariness. Death is also lying in wait for Oved Etzot as the opposite pole of the will to live, of the cry for existence. “The hunchback,” Lapidot’s innocent, honest son, whose name we do not know, tried to integrate into life in Palestine and failed, was wounded, and died in the bed facing Oved Etzot’s bed during his first hospitalization (the reason for which is unknown). The story of the son’s life, the terror of the dying man in the face of his approaching death, and then the funeral with all its humiliating details—from the prolonged ritual cleansing of the body to the frightened funeral procession through the Arab town—are mentioned repeatedly, arising as seminal memories. The description of the bereaved parents coming home from little Herzl’s funeral and seeing his empty crib is one of the most shocking that Brenner wrote and is filled with sensitivity and love, as was his inclination with anything connected with children.218 Although, chronologically, the two deaths occurred at the beginning of Oved Etzot’s time in Palestine, before Diasporin’s arrival, they shape his psychological world. Brenner rejects death: death is the end, whereas life holds mystery, fragments of reality that make it worthwhile. When on the beach, he sees a ram’s carcass and thinks: “How unpleasant it is to be a carcass spewed up by the waves. And how pleasant is existence! How pleasant it is to live!”219 During the hunchback’s humiliating funeral, he muses: “It is possible, entirely possible, that it is impossible to live here, but one must remain here, one must die here, sleep . . . there is no other place.”220 Being confronted

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with death strengthens his will to live, to strive for permanency and settle in one place to strike roots. Death plays a leading role in both Around the Point and “Between Waters.” In the novel the protagonist loses his mind in the face of death, and in the story the despairing protagonist commits suicide. In Here and There Brenner cries out in favor of life, no matter how hard and bitter, and rejects the notion of “the great tranquility.” In Oved Etzot’s unpublished manuscript, the will and testament of the narrator includes the unequivocal statement, “death is bad”; whereas, although life is “bad, but always secret,” the world “is in conflict” but is sometimes “wonderful.” And even “from the point of view of the laws of logic, the Jewish people have no future. But still, we must work.” He concludes with a call: “Long live human Jewish labor!”221 This “will” is a lofty declaration in favor of life and against death. Brenner wrote a dedication on the first page of Here and There: “The most friendly and pure among these pages I lay with a tear on the graves of my pure, dear ones, Henich Pasilov and Rivka Chizik.” Henich Pasilov was the boy worker in whose mother’s house Brenner lived in Ein Ganim, who inspired the character of Amram in Here and There. According to Ya’ari-Poleskin, the boy died of yellow fever in a hospital in Jaffa. Brenner visited him on the day before he died and saw him in his agony. His death left a terrible impression on the author, which in the story became the description of the lonely death and funeral of “the hunchback.”222 Rivka Chizik was a young worker from the Galilee.223 Brenner met her when she came to Jaffa to study at the embroidery school there. A Jewish author who wrote in Yiddish, Isser Moselevich, who used the pseudonym “Talush” (Uprooted) and was in Palestine at the time, reports that in 1910 the two Chizik sisters, Chana and Rivka (whom he mistakenly called “Leah”), lived in Jaffa in an old Arab house on the seashore, which is where he first met Brenner. Talush claims that Brenner was infatuated with the young Rivka, which he concludes from the loving looks Brenner gave her. But Brenner never told her of his feelings.224 Because Rivka was the inspiration for the character of Miriam in Breakdown and B ­ ereavement, Talush possibly transposed from the book to real life. Rivka met a tragic end. She returned to her father’s house in the Galilee and worked as a hired hand at Havat Kinneret. One day, she stepped on a

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rusty nail and three days later died of septicemia.225 Her sudden death almost occurred in Brenner’s presence (he was in Tiberias at the time). Death had once again struck a young and beloved soul, and he was shaken to the core. On his return to Jaffa, he asked Rabbi Benjamin to write to David Shimonovich: “He asks me to inform you on his behalf that Rivka Chizik died in Kinneret. Lately, she was healthy and very happy in her work. She worked in the field to her last day. She suddenly drank some dirty water, others say she contracted blood poisoning from a poisonous weed—and died. She was buried in Tiberias.”226 This seemingly dry, factual description of her death reveals nothing of Brenner’s emotions. Here and There was dedicated to two people dear to him who died before their time, with Brenner almost present at their passing, which reinforces researcher Ada Zemach’s contention that the book has at least two dimensions—the national dimension and the universal one.227 The character of Aryeh Lapidot is drawn with love, admiration, and without irony. He does not preach but “advises and wishes well.” He is totally logical—not, however, with the sterile logic of the various intellectuals, but with “the logic of instinct, of life, the essence of life,” which is how Oved Etzot describes his uncle to Diasporin.228 This old man, whose “lean, broken, poor and working” hands Brenner describes as resembling the hands of Michelangelo, is a hero: “The whole battalion fled and he charged the enemy alone carrying the flag. It is!”229 This heroic description of Lapidot carries a profound admiration of his loyalty to himself but also an underlying premise that the war he fought was lost from the start. After Lapidot becomes unemployed and is unable to provide for his family, Diasporin and Oved Etzot observe a change in the old man: he feels guilty for bringing his family to Palestine from the Ukraine and drawing them into travails and disasters. They also see the change in his attitude toward Arabs, who until then he had always defended. The description, however, is not ironic. Oved Etzot describes him as a sort of Job, who, despite all the catastrophes that have befallen him, “did not speak ill and did not denounce God, who did not answer him from the storm, did not answer, did not answer.”230 Lapidot believes in the rebirth of the Jewish people in their own land. The modest beginnings do not deter him; he believes they con-

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tain the seeds of a future. He sees the emergence of a new breed of Jews, “a completely new Jewish people,” and predicts that these few will set a shining example for many. But Oved Etzot rejects the notion that Palestine can become the cornerstone of the Jewish people’s rebirth. At best it can become one of a series of concentrations of Jews, a diaspora like any other, because it will not have a Jewish majority. Each such concentration would possess a certain positive quality. In Palestine there would be “Jews who possess a sense of homeland and are lovers of field work,” but it would not be any loftier than the other ­diasporas.231 In a conversation between Oved Etzot and ­Lapidot, Brenner puts words into Oved Etzot’s mouth expressing his own recognition of the moral superiority of the self-realizing pioneering worker who lives by his beliefs. When Lapidot argues that Oved Etzot failed to mention that “we are not bereft of brave individuals,” Ovid Etzot replies: “Who knows whether I have the right to [lay claim to] proclaim this opinion. It is you who have that right, Aryeh Lapidot!”232 In other words, the optimistic statement about “brave individuals” is reserved for those who have actually realized it in their daily life. “For three days and three nights—with short breaks—the rain poured down.” This is the opening of the concluding chapter of Here and There. The rainwater represents purification of the world, washing away all its defilement, and indeed, “next morning, the whole universe was renewed, pure, exuding a good, encouraging smell”; later, “outside was rain-washed and filled with the expectation of freshly baked bread.” All existence is hanging by a thread, but there is hope. And hope is in the simple, primal things, like the cleansed natural background, the smell of bread baking in the oven, and the love between the grandfather and his grandchild. The grandchild, Amram, who has the qualities of a little devil, is brave and defends his space, yet he pities the bird he has caught and quickly releases it. He is an amalgam of old and new: he is not a booklover, a characteristic of the Jewish intellectual, but is blessed with strong survival instincts. He does not flinch from violence, is quick to defend himself and what is his, and stands ready to fight. He is, however, close to his grandfather. His little head in Lapidot’s lap expresses a profound psychological connection to the age-old Jewish spirit from which he learned to take pity on the captured bird. Grandfather and grandson gather dry thorn bushes to-

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gether to heat the oven for baking bread: “The remains of the thorns were stuck to their threadbare clothes and their heads. Then the woman baker called them to help her, and they both stood up. And the same great secret was in both their thorns and their standing. They were standing guard. The old man and the child were standing guard on life, adorned with thorns. The sun was shining as it had before the rain. All existence was that of thorns. The whole account was not yet settled.”233 This wonderful description, which is considered among the most beautiful in Hebrew literature, has been quoted innumerable times. The crown of thorns resembles that worn by Jesus. There is something in the soft, conciliatory atmosphere that Brenner accords to this description that suggests a moment of divine grace, a kind of epiphany. Brenner, whose descriptions of nature are rare, uses nature in this passage as a conciliatory element taking part in the return to life, encouraging hope. This paragraph, which concludes the book, lends the entire volume a positive, optimistic note, in the spirit of the Brenneresque “in spite of it all.” There are doubts, there is despair, everything is hanging by a thread, but “the whole account was not yet settled.” From the standpoint of the novel’s structure, its ending stands alone, in its own right. Oved Etzot, who is the narrator in the preceding chapters, is absent from the ending.234 It is not clear whether the ending comes before “the first notebook” or takes place after it. Did Oved Etzot adopt Amram? If so, it means that he put down roots in Palestine. Or perhaps Amram remained with his grandfather, and Oved Etzot continued his wandering throughout the Jewish world. Was this paragraph, too, among the writings taken from the belongings of “one of the wretched wanderers in the Diaspora”? Or is the author playing a joke, emerging from his hiding place at the last minute and addressing his readers directly, without being separated from them by the fictive publisher, without the camouflage of “the authentic documents”? The author leaves these riddles to the reader to solve. Nevertheless, the possibility that it is not Oved Etzot but Brenner who speaks in this concluding chapter reinforces the book’s skeptical, conditional optimism. One might well ask which of the book’s characters represents Brenner’s positions. The most obvious answer is Oved Etzot. This character possesses many autobiographical traits: lack of sexual fulfill-

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ment, immanent existential despair, love of children, fantasy of being a father, and fear of Arabs. There are also no notable contrasts between Oved Etzot’s and Brenner’s views; they share the same skepticism about whether political or spiritual Zionism can be fulfilled; the view of Palestine in its present state as just another Jewish center, not the Jewish center; the harsh criticism of Zionist propaganda that presents a distorted picture of the reality; and the opposition to zealotry with regard to the use of Yiddish in the Yishuv. But the character of Diasporin can also be viewed as a sort of alter ego, suggesting what Brenner might have been had he not grown up in a Jewish milieu. ­Diasporin is a biographical continuation of the more positive characters in Around the Point, the ones who returned to their people following the 1905 pogroms. But it is difficult to see clear lines of connection between him and Brenner. Of greater interest is the hypothesis that Brennerian elements are to be found in the character and positions of Aryeh Lapidot.235 Brenner idealizes Lapidot, from the description of his facial features as one of the old, unforgettable Jewish faces to his ­Michelangelo-like hands. He presents him as a man without blemish.236 Lapidot is an example of a man who remains steadfast in his beliefs, even when assailed by hardship and torment. He was modeled on a real-life figure: A. D. Gordon. Brenner, of course, did not draw Lapidot’s character as a photographic copy of Gordon but took what he needed from Gordon and his history and added a life story, a plot, and a family structure, which had absolutely no relation to Gordon and his family. It is therefore possible that he also endowed him with his own positions. Brenner’s ploy of creating a kind of dialogue between two speakers representing opposing positions to heighten the contrasts and the dramatic effect is evident in the argument between Lapidot and Oved Etzot. As noted earlier, however, Oved Etzot’s positions are in principle those of Brenner.237 Brenner’s declaration that Here and There is “a national book” expressing “the national outcry” raises the question: is “national” in this context necessarily Zionist? As we know, Brenner did not define himself as a Zionist and even emphasized his reservations about Zionism. His skepticism regarding the future of the Zionist project forms a constant motif in his thinking: not for him cheap optimism based solely on aspirations. He looks reality in the face and sees all its flaws. Therefore,

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Oved Etzot’s denial of the possibility that Zionism can be fulfilled, the emphasis on the paucity of Zionist perspectives, and his rage at the gap between the fictional picture presented by Zionist propaganda and the painful reality reflect, to a great extent, Brenner’s own views. But along with his thoughts, there is also Brenner’s intuition, which ­hovers over the entire narrative and runs counter to the logic presented in Oved Etzot’s articles. It is the longing for life that whispers the Brennerian “in spite of it all,” that demands that one must continue working. Brenner’s intuition says that even though the likelihood of success in Palestine is slim, from the human and Jewish standpoints the effort deserves appreciation and even admiration. The modest heroism of the Jewish workers represented by Lapidot makes the Zionist enterprise a worthy endeavor. To the question of whether the Zionist enterprise stands a chance as a revolution in the psychology of the Jews, Brenner’s reply in Here and There is “maybe.” As mentioned earlier, Berl Katznelson viewed Here and There as the ultimate book of the Second Aliya. He was expressing the accepted line of the young people of the Second Aliya, particularly those with a connection to Hebrew literature. The bitter criticism of the Jewish people contained a consoling element: “Did Brenner know that this book would be a source of faith and strengthening and hope for us? . . . We felt that if it were still permissible to treat us mercilessly, that is a sign that we are still alive,” wrote Rachel Katznelson-Shazar at the end of World War I.238 The difficulty in coping with the demands of agricultural labor, lack of work, shortages, the heat, malaria, and the other diseases rife in Palestine was part of the life experience of the Second Aliya workers. The encounter with the country’s Arabs and the discovery of another claimant to its ownership were also part of their formative experiences. When Eliezer Slutzkin, who immigrated to Palestine in 1912 and spent most of his life in Kibbutz Ein Harod, was asked in the twilight of his life whether he had not despaired of Zionism as a result of the encounter with the country’s reality, he replied no, because he had read Here and There beforehand, he knew it all. Brenner’s contemporary readers understood the text differently from our contemporaries. With all the suffering, there was romance: young people who came—out of choice or happenstance—to an exotic, very beautiful country at the end of the world, mantled by the

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historical past with its own special charm. In Palestine they underwent a process of self-discovery, experiencing complete freedom from parental authority, tradition, and the past, withstanding the tests of the new reality, and also absorbing the primal experiences of their encounter with the country. Berl Katznelson reconstructed the magic of the early days at Ein Ganim: “Shall I sum up what was given to me? My first days of work and breathing the country’s air. A rush mat spread on the floor after work. Ein Ganim, Kinneret, the desert, Mount Moriah, meetings, talking with friends over a glass of wine, fraught with future events. A time of creativity and a sense of what is to come. Seeing the people uplifted.” It was not by chance that he spoke of “the chain of wonders” and “the everlasting mystery called Eretz Yisrael.”239 Here and There has two layers: the overt text that expresses doubts, hesitation, and existential anxiety, and the covert text that hints at the existence of another, unseen reality. The covert text projects the feeling that there is something mysterious and secret in Palestine that goes beyond the mundane, expressing the underlying nature of the Land of Israel experience. It seems that this text, which the contemporary reader has difficulty in discerning, was an open book to the Second Aliya reader, from which he drew mental fortitude. The fifth notebook in Here and There is devoted to a description of the editorial board of a Hebrew journal in Palestine called ­Hamakhresha. Oved Etzot writes articles for the journal that the editor customarily rejects or cuts. One such article, “She’ela ktana” (A small question), is a parody of Yitzhak Epstein’s well-known article “She’ela ne’elama” (The hidden question), which discusses the issue of the Zionist attitude toward Arabs (“The country is small and inhabited by owners who neither want nor need to leave or sell it”240). He also parodies Ahad Ha’am’s positions on the workers of the Second Aliya (“There are no Jewish workers. This has been proved by the experience of thirty years”241). In his articles, Oved Etzot presents a position of despair over Zionism in both its Herzlian version and the Ahad Ha’am approach because of the hovering Arab threat to the Jewish settlers’ existence. In his view, the phrasing of “the people without a land will return to a land without a people” is fallacious. But the editor, Tomarkin, is not prepared to publish such radical positions in ­Hamakhresha; there is a limit to the journal’s oppositional

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views! ­Tomarkin and his wife and the rest of the editorial staff are presented as people driven by material motives, who adapt their positions to the views of potential donors. They also have pretensions of being fervent Zionists; the wife’s name is Geula (a typical Zionist female name meaning “redemption”), but she is about to leave for Russia. Hamakhresha is campaigning against the Yiddish theater in Palestine, which ultimately leads ­Diasporin to leave the country. The contrast between Hebraist zealotry and the journal’s contemptability represents the gap between the high-flown statements and the petty acts that, in Brenner’s view, characterized the reality of Palestine. What Brenner did not take into account was how the description of Hamakhresha would be interpreted in the Hapoel Hatzair circles. Aharonowitz poured out his heart in a letter to David Shimonovich: “We and Brenner are at loggerheads, serious loggerheads. In [Here and There] he has presented our editorial board . . . as an eternal disgrace for nothing.” Brenner, Aharonowitz claimed, presented the board as “a source of scum and filth,” described its members as people who “only know how to constantly fight with each other over money,” and further, “they also know that their journal appears in Palestine, that the Sephardim also read it, and therefore it must always say only positive things about Palestine and that no space should be given to the truth.” He concludes: “From the day I read this story I am unable to meet with Brenner and look him in the eye. It seems that he has done us an injustice such as we could not have expected even from a sworn enemy.”242 Aharonowitz and his colleagues had only recently come to Brenner’s defense in the “Brenner affair” controversy. Brenner had never had partners as loyal as his friends on the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board, who accepted him unconditionally, did not demand a declaration of loyalty from him, and let him publish whatever he wanted. Although Brenner intended no harm to his friends, he did not take into account how small a pond the republic of Hebrew literature was in Palestine. Everybody knew everybody else, and they all had fun decoding the references and identifying the characters in Brenner’s book. This entertaining pastime made Hamakhresha the most talked-about topic among the intelligentsia of Palestine. Yosef Aharonowitz, who was about to marry the author Devorah Baron,243 was hurt by the description of the journal’s editor and his wife and the entire worthless edito-

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rial board. Brenner tried to appease him, claiming in a long letter that his intention was not to deride the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board: “I had the right, even to hope, that you would be above all this. . . . Do not concern yourselves with what people say.” He tried to explain himself, to preserve the friendship of the people close to his heart, especially Aharonowitz. “I have noted that perhaps I really have unintentionally caused you pain. And I should like to lessen it insofar as I can. You know how far I am from any intention of causing you harm.” Yet he refused to express remorse or apologize. Whenever he felt under attack, he adopted a pose of not caring about what people might say about him: “I do not say this to apologize to you and restore your friendly esteem of me”; if anyone felt that he needed friendship, “I, thank God, can also live without feelings of friendship toward me from any direction.” He reproaches the editorial board like an offended child: “On the contrary, this way is far better, and be well!”244 The letter was not published in Hapoel Hatzair, but a month later, on 10 August 1911, Brenner’s article “Hazhaner ha-Eretz-Yisraeli veavizareihu” (The Palestine genre and its adjuncts) appeared. The article opens with the issue of writing local literature in general and then discusses the specific case of Here and There. Brenner connects two types of criticism of his book: the first, which also touched on “Between Waters,” was the claim that Brenner did not properly illuminate Palestine reality. His response is that this reality is still too raw to enable a real epic to be founded on it. The Yishuv, “inasmuch as it is a continuation of the Diaspora, is uninteresting, and in the new elements it contains, there is still no permanency or essence.”245 The descriptions, therefore, are a report of what a person who tours the country can see, a sort of “memoir” as Brenner puts it. Public opinion, however, relentlessly demands stories of Zion from the Zionistic point of view, “in the narrow sense of the word.” Therefore, Brenner explains, he only writes his own impressions, which are completely subjective: “The impressions I get and how my hours and days pass in Palestine.”246 After expressing his criticism of “the Palestine genre,” which exalts the so-called wonders of the country, he moves on to the second type of criticism of his book, that of the Hapoel Hatzair people. The turbid pond of Palestine is filled with gossip, and for every literary scene, its model in reality is immediately sought. Brenner con-

In Palestine, 1909–1911

tends that he described not an actual editorial board, but one he invented to reconstruct the atmosphere of spiritual and material poverty, the vanity and the begging-bowl mentality typical of the country’s editorial boards, with the exception of Hapoel Hatzair. And now, the editors of that particular journal, of which he is a part, have interpreted his story as if it is about them! This was an apology designed to distance Here and There from the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board and restore his friendship with its members. But all his efforts to appease Aharonowitz were unsuccessful. Agnon, who at the time was considered to be the jewel in the journal’s crown, vainly tried to convince Aharonowitz that Brenner had not written about him, but Aharonowitz remained angry.247 Brenner felt that he had been pushed out of Hapoel Hatzair. His distancing from the group of people dear to his heart was hard for him: “He would sit outside his room with his hands inside his sleeves, as if he were chilled, and look straight ahead like someone whose world has fallen apart.”248 At first he occupied himself with translating Crime and Punishment, hoping that this work would provide for him now that he had lost his main source of income. But he was unable to find a publisher for this great tome. As was his habit in times of crisis, he began mulling over the possibility of leaving the country. He approached his old friend Avrom ­Reisen in New York and inquired about the possibility of moving there. In Reisen’s letter to Brenner, apparently written in 1909, Reisen had asked him whether he should come to the country. “I am not a Zionist, but I love Eretz Yisrael very much,” he wrote.249 Brenner apparently put a damper on the idea, as he usually did. Now he explained to Reisen that, indeed, “I am fed up,” but “where wouldn’t I be fed up?” His problem was making a living: “I simply have nothing here to subsist on,” especially when he was responsible for his recently arrived brother and sister. He wanted to go to the United States on his own and asked Reisen for a letter in the form of an invitation to work on the editorial board of a New York Yiddish-language paper, which would meet the requirements of the U.S. immigration authorities but without obliging Reisen to employ him.250 Reisen replied with an enthusiastic letter written on a form of the anti-Zionist Yiddish paper Das Neie Land. “I cannot express my joy on reading your letter,” he wrote.

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He urged him to come as quickly as possible and to inform him in advance about his arrival and on which ship, so he could arrange a proper welcome. Regarding the immigration authorities, all Brenner had to do was have his eyes tested, and if they were all right, then everything would be fine. With regard to work, he should not worry, for there are a million and a half Jews in New York who would be happy to see him there.251 Although Brenner wanted his expected arrival in New York kept ­secret, rumors of it spread throughout the Jewish world. B ­ eilin wrote him from London that he could arrange a free second-class passage from London to New York (a marked improvement on his fourth-class passage from Trieste to Haifa).252 But in the end Brenner decided to go to Jerusalem, not New York. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the editor of the Poalei Zion journal Ha’akhdut, which was just completing its second year, invited him to join its editorial board.253 Brenner was quick to seize the opportunity. In a still unpublished letter to the poet Jacob Cahan in Paris, he explained: “My journey to America has been postponed because in the meantime I have found work and have food to eat.” He added a sentence that reveals his hidden feelings: “My leaving Palestine had to come only because of the lack of livelihood. This has now been postponed for the time being. What the future will bring, I shall see.”254 In another letter he explained to Ya’ari-Poleskin: “So long as there is no need for me to leave where I am living at the moment, I shall not leave.”255 This was a positive declaration on his life in Palestine, far more positive than any of his previous declarations. Suddenly, leaving Palestine was a negative constraint for him: it is good here if there is food to eat. With the word “only” in the letter to Cahan, he sought to stress that he was not defaming the country.

S ev e n   The Jerusalem Years, 1911–1914

In September 1911 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi opened the door of the journal Ha’akhdut to Brenner, thus giving him the chance to stay in Palestine. Over the next three years, Brenner engaged in the entire gamut of work at Ha’akhdut: editing, writing, translating, and even ­proofreading.1 That said, after several months he resumed his work at Hapoel H ­ atzair. He did not, however, return to Jaffa to live but remained in Jerusalem until after Turkey declared war on the Entente countries in October 1914. These three years were central in the writer’s life. He became part of the social life of the Jerusalem intelligentsia, met his future wife, married her, and they had a son. It was during this period that he wrote his great novel, Breakdown and Bereavement and his important article “Ha’arakhat atzmenu bishloshet hakrakhim” (Our self-­evaluation in three volumes). Brenner’s decision to take on the editing of Ha’akhdut was not an easy one. From an ideological standpoint, Hapoel Hatzair was a “soft” journal, and although it was published by the party of the same name, both journal and party viewed ideology as a loose framework that brought together a variety of radical, non-Marxist Zionists. This was not the case with Ha’akhdut. Poalei Zion was a dogmatist party with a Marxist worldview, loyal to Ber Borochov’s Zionistic interpretation of Marxism. Brenner had not been a Marxist since his youth in Homel. He kept his distance from dogmas and based his aspirations for social justice and equality on moral reasoning, not necessarily economic explanations. Brenner was far closer to Hapoel Hatzair, especially to Aharonowitz, than to the editors of Ha’akhdut. Hapoel Hatzair’s intellectual orbit included Rabbi Benjamin, Azar, Jacob Rabinowitz, Agnon, Wilkansky, and other writers with whom he found a common

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language. Not so with Ha’akhdut, which was a dry journal filled with chronicles of workers’ troubles. Therefore, although Ben-Zvi had tried since Brenner’s first stay in Jerusalem to attract him to Ha’akhdut (now entering its third year of publication), it was Brenner’s current financial straits and mental distress following his entanglement with Hapoel Hatzair that led him to work at Ha’akhdut. In contrast with Hapoel Hatzair, which set the promotion of Hebrew literature as one of its objectives, Ha’akhdut was a party organ with few literary pretensions. Both sides had concerns about the match. The Poalei Zion people feared that Brenner might impart to their journal characteristics unacceptable to them—or at the very least tilt it too far in a literary direction. Brenner feared political censorship. Therefore, in a memorandum drawn up between him and the editorial board before he took up the post, it was explicitly stated that Benner would have an “absolute” prerogative on editing the journal’s literary and nonpolitical sections. He would have no such prerogative in party matters, and the editing of those articles would be done by two other members of the board.2 For most of the time, the post of political editor was filled by Ya’akov Zerubavel, and from the spring of 1912, by ­Alexander ­Heshin (Zvi Averbuch), who had recently arrived in Palestine. In addition to them, and in an advisory capacity, was Ben-Zvi’s brother, Aharon Reuveni. The editorial board resembled a deserted battlefield: Ben-Zvi, the party’s accepted leader, and David Ben-Gurion, its rising star, went to Constantinople to study Turkish law, following Poalei Zion’s political perception that the Yishuv should strive toward integration into the Ottoman sphere of influence. Zerubavel traveled a lot either on party propaganda business, raising money for the party, or to participate in attention-getting events such as Poalei Zion World and Zionist Congresses, and recuperate from the Palestinian provincial atmosphere. Although he was a talented journalist, it was difficult to entrust the running of the journal to him. Relying on Heshin was even less of a prospect. A talented and charming young man, he was not regarded as a reliable worker and certainly not as a responsible man. Therefore, the real work of producing the journal fell to Brenner and Reuveni. Reuveni, however, had not yet gained fluency in Hebrew. He knew Russian and Yiddish, but his Hebrew, which he tried to use in his letters to his brother in Constantinople, was broken. Brenner would

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translate Reuveni’s articles into Hebrew and, whenever necessary, also those of Zerubavel, for whom writing in Yiddish was evidently easier.3 Brenner’s joining Ha’akhdut was very important for the journal. In the first half of 1912, he published some twenty articles in the journal, dealing mainly, but not exclusively, with literary matters. Ben-Gurion in Turkey, detached from both Palestine and public life, received copies of Ha’akhdut and was moved by Brenner’s analysis of Bialik’s poem “Tsanakh lo zalzal” (A twig fell). He quotes Brenner’s praise, “Ho, sacred prayer, pure supplication! Ho, a pearl, a Bialik pearl,” then writes that “along with an inner trembling, the living Brenner was there before me as he sat writing those words, in all his form and features, and it seemed he was writing them with both his hands.”4 This was one of Ben-Gurion’s few references to Brenner, but it demonstrates the electrifying effect of his writing. But Brenner’s honeymoon at Ha’akhdut was short-lived. From Passover Eve of 1912, he was no longer writing for the journal. Brenner announced that he was changing his terms of employment at the journal. He would not have a monthly salary but would be paid for editing and proofreading each issue and, more particularly, for his translations. He stopped writing for the journal and did not actively participate in editorial board meetings. When his colleagues asked him why he was not writing, he replied that he was unable to write at all, and proof of this was that he was not writing for other journals either. Reuveni speculated that he had perhaps decided not to write for Ha’akhdut anymore because “he does not consider Ha’akhdut sufficiently literary and us writers as sufficiently talented, and does not wish to lower his dignity by participating in a journal with us.”5 This does not fit with Brenner’s personality; nevertheless, for several months (from March to mid-June 1912) Brenner did not in fact publish anything in Ha’akhdut. With the resumption of his work, Reuveni changed his mind about the reason behind the “dry” period: “He cannot stand the fact that Zerubavel critiques and ‘censors’ his articles.”6 Brenner continued his work as editor, translator, and proofreader throughout this period, and without him the journal would not have appeared. Contact between him and Reuveni was an everyday occurrence. Not only did Brenner translate Reuveni’s articles into Hebrew, he also encouraged him to write literary pieces. Reuveni wrote his first stories in Yiddish,

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and Brenner translated them into Hebrew and published them in Ha’akhdut. R ­ euveni proudly wrote to Ben-Zvi that Brenner had commented on one of his stories “that even he would not be ashamed of such a story—he liked it that much.”7 If Reuveni was still unable to fully explain Brenner’s motives, it was because there was no intimacy in their relationship; Brenner remained remote from his colleagues while discharging his duties loyally and devotedly. In summer 1912 Brenner made it clear to Reuveni that he did not intend to remain on the editorial board of Ha’akhdut after the end of the year, explaining that he had had enough of the constant work at the journal. Reuveni notes: “I think that this reason is genuine, for this is his character.”8 It is entirely possible that Reuveni was right, that this was Brenner’s character, that he found it hard to bear long-term editorial responsibility but was prepared to do the “dirty work” for the journal’s publication, following the pattern of his leaving the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board.

Brenner and colleagues of the Ha’achdut editorial board: Seated: Brenner, David Ben Gurion, Yitzhak Ben Zvi. Standing: Ya’akov Zerubavel, Aharon Reuveni. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

The Jerusalem Years, 1911–1914

Brenner’s distancing from Poalei Zion circles is illustrated by the following story. A young revolutionary called Yosef Kaminitzky arrived in Palestine. He was active in socialist-revolutionary circles in Russia, was arrested and sent to “the cold places,” escaped, and reached Paris, where he became a “fighting anarchist.” He came to Palestine with the aim of committing a robbery, a Marxist “expropriation”—or “ex,” in the parlance of the time—apparently to finance revolutionary activity. In the meantime he worked as a janitor in the Beit Ha’am community center in Jerusalem. As he grew increasingly impatient with the lack of revolutionary activity, he wrote to one of the Yishuv’s dignitaries, Naphtali Weitz, demanding two thousand francs—or he would kill him. When this became known to Poalei Zion activists, they ambushed him and handed him over to the Russian consul. They did so out of the conviction that the man was endangering public order in the Y ­ ishuv and could bring down disaster on it. The assumption was that the consul would have him deported to Alexandria, and that would put an end to the affair. But then matters became complicated. The consul had him put on board a ship bound for Russia. Kaminitzky opted for suicide in Jaffa Port rather than to go back to “the cold places.” Now there were those in the Yishuv who accused Poalei Zion of handing a Jew over to the authorities and thus causing his death. Zerubavel, who had just returned from one of his trips, attended the funeral in Jaffa, and once the criticism of his comrades flared up, he refused to back them, much to the chagrin of Reuveni, who detailed the entire affair in letters to his brother.9 Brenner did not react to the event either positively or negatively, either in his journalistic or his literary writing, as if the entire affair had nothing to do with him. The alienation between Brenner and his editorial board colleagues is also manifested in another event. Workers and guards employed at M ­ erhavia were involved in a fight with Arabs who refused to recognize Jewish ownership of the land there. The Jews were charged with assault and spent many months in a Turkish jail awaiting trial. In the end they were released. Ha’akhdut published a collective congratulatory announcement, signed by dozens of Poalei Zion members and supporters: “To our comrades from Merhavia, who were privileged to work and suffer for our cause.”10 Among the signatories were Brenner’s editorial board colleagues, but not Brenner. A few weeks earlier, however, he

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published with Zerubavel a greeting to the author L. A. Orloff and his family on the occasion of the birth of their firstborn son.11 He also published a special greeting to the Silman family on the birth of their second son.12 Brenner appears to have preferred personal greetings to party congratulations. Reuveni described Brenner’s different sides in his trilogy, Ad Yerushalayim (To Jerusalem), in the figure of the author Gedalia Berenchuk, who was remote and introverted yet wrote stories “steeped in gentleness and sorrow.”13 In April 1912 Brenner renewed contact with Aharonowitz, who wanted to turn Hapoel Hatzair into a weekly. He needed Brenner the writer and was therefore prepared to swallow his pride and accept Brenner’s apology in retrospect. According to Agnon, it was Rabbi Benjamin who managed to reconcile the two friends.14 The Hapoel Hatzair editorial board suggested that Brenner return to Jaffa and join it on terms that would both better his financial situation and leave him time to write. When he refused to move back to Jaffa, Aharonowitz offered him a regular column every month, for which he would be paid a monthly salary. He would also receive additional payment for anything else he wrote. Furthermore, the first volume of his works, which had been published in Jaffa by Kruglyakov, would be given as a gift to Hapoel Hatzair subscribers, which would bring Brenner a further three hundred francs. The terms were designed to grant Brenner the financial security and peace of mind he needed for writing. These provisions all attest to the importance that Aharonowitz attached to Brenner’s name on the journal’s masthead, if not as member of the editorial board, then at least as one of its “permanent assistants.” In the Hapoel Hatzair prospectus published in the months leading up to 1913, it was announced that the journal was to become a weekly, with five permanent assistants including Brenner, and that the first volume of Brenner’s works would be given to those who hastened to take out a subscription for the journal.15 From this point on, Brenner saw himself as committed to Hapoel Hatzair, even if not exclusively; Ha’akhdut continued to be an additional place of work for him. The phenomenon of a writer simultaneously employed by two rival journals, representing two different worldviews, was unique to Brenner. The article marking Brenner’s return to writing for Hapoel ­Hatzair was his review of the Yizkor (Commemoration) anthology, “Gam eleh

The Jerusalem Years, 1911–1914

ankhot sofer” (These too are a writer’s sighs), which appeared in the 21 June 1912 issue. The anthology, initiated by Hapoel Hatzair circles that included Brenner, was edited by his friend Azar with the active participation of Rabbi Benjamin. It sought to commemorate the guards and workers killed by Arabs and contained memories of the fallen and also some literary and philosophical pieces in their honor.16 For reasons that are unclear, Brenner withdrew from editing the anthology,17 but he did not oppose it.18 The one who bitterly opposed the spirit of the anthology, especially its introduction, which voiced Rabbi Benjamin’s pan-Semitic sentiments, was Ya’akov Zerubavel. He published a long article in Ha’akhdut in which he criticized the “tragedy of [Jewish] passivity,” whose spirit permeated the anthology, the failure to give appropriate prominence to the young peoples’ new way of life and how they were killed; in his view, “a new Jewish life of work and creativity is taking shape.”19 This article—written in the spirit of Hashomer and Poalei Zion activism and praising the country’s workers and guards— was probably not to Brenner’s taste, but he did not respond to it, perhaps because he did not wish to clash with Zerubavel, the senior member of the Ha’akhdut editorial board. What he wrote in “Gam eleh ankhot sofer” was aimed at the Zionist press in the Diaspora, which had made much ado about Yizkor, pouring out its heart and lauding the figures of the fallen guards, going far beyond what Brenner considered reasonable.20 In his article he attacked the haste in sanctifying events that only after timely clarification might be worthy of sanctification. He did not criticize the book’s tenor, which to him seemed moderate and worthy, but expressed concern about its tendency toward self-glorification, which encouraged those who went overboard in their descriptions of the charms of Palestine in the Jewish press abroad.21 Two articles in response were published in Hapoel Hatzair: one by the anthology’s editor, Azar, who explained that the appellation “saintly men” was neither exaggerated nor hasty, because Jews termed anyone who died an unnatural death “a saintly person”; the other by Hapoel Hatzair party member A. M. Koller, who praised the book for filling a spiritual need of the young workers. He dismissed Brenner’s fear that as a consequence of the praise lavished on them, the country’s young people would consider themselves the nation’s finest. Both derided Brenner’s sighs and whining.22 Although neither supported

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Zerubavel’s advocacy of the use of force, they expressed the aspiration of the new Jew in Palestine to shed the shame of the image of walad al mawt (children of death), as the Jews were called by their Arab neighbors. Brenner’s attitude toward this subject was not much different from that of the Hapoel Hatzair people, and he certainly did not subscribe to Rabbi Benjamin’s pan-Semitic dreams. Brenner’s return to the Hapoel Hatzair fold was therefore attended by a friendly controversy that perhaps reflects his being “one of the gang,” no longer the foreign flower he was in the Ha’akhdut field. In the first six months of 1912, Brenner labored on publishing the works of writers he held dear. The first was L. A. Orloff’s Haggadat hamavet (A tale of death). Brenner was convinced that Orloff possessed literary talent and warmly recommended the book to Daniel Persky and Lachover.23 The second was Chekhov’s short story “Habitza” (Mire), translated into Hebrew by Uri Nissan Gnessin, and the third was Agnon’s novella Vehaya he’akov lemishor (And the crooked shall be made straight). Brenner’s relationship with Agnon had not been fully resolved. It was a relationship in which love and hate, envy and generosity, admiration and contempt were intermingled. And if that were not enough, their relationship stood in the shadow of their affections for the same woman. Brenner left no testimony of his relationship with Agnon. Except for his reviews of Agnon’s works, some of which were laudatory in the extreme (of “Agunot,” for example), and others critical (of “­Leylot” [Nights]), Brenner expressed his great admiration of Agnon the writer by publishing And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight in the series he put out. Brenner’s letters to Agnon went up in smoke when Agnon’s house in Bad Homburg burned down in 1924; thus, the accepted description of their relationship in both research and popular literature is based on what Agnon wrote about it. Agnon did not eulogize Brenner. He depicted Brenner’s figure for the first time in his novel Tmol Shilshom (Only yesterday), which was published in 1946, some twenty-five years after Brenner’s death. It was not until forty years after Brenner’s murder that Agnon published his famous long essay on Brenner’s life and death, “Yosef Haim Brenner behayav uvemoto,” which appeared in the journal Molad some fifty years after their ways had parted.24 Agnon’s protracted silence

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about Brenner is most pronounced when contrasted with the beautiful essay he published on Berl Katznelson a very short time after the leader’s death.25 In it we find a sort of preliminary sketch of Brenner by Agnon, and it is possibly the most authentic because it was written speaking innocently without his intending to really describe Brenner. There is a recurring pattern in Agnon’s descriptions of Katznelson and Brenner, in which his acquaintance with the two men is mediated by another writer whom he recognizes as a great man. In both cases he describes a negative, or at least disappointing, first impression, and only later discovers the new acquaintances’ greatness. Regarding Brenner, Agnon describes how, when on his way to Palestine, he went to Lvov, and “our great writer Schoffman” brought him to Brenner to please him. With regard to Katznelson, Agnon went to visit Brenner, who was about to leave his house to visit Katznelson, an unknown young man who lay ill, and “I was pulled after him in the way we were pulled after our great colleague.” In both cases Agnon expresses his amazement at what he saw. In Lvov he encountered a lumbering, shabbily dressed man, whose untidy and coarse appearance did not befit that of the writer he had imagined. And as for Katznelson, he saw a young man “of my age,” whom Brenner fussed over and behaved toward respectfully and affectionately, and he did not understand why or for what. In both cases their outward appearance did not fit their inner personality, and his discovery of the two men’s unique qualities was something of a revelation. The encounter between Brenner and Agnon in Lvov is somewhat enigmatic. Czaczkes had not yet become Agnon and was still a young writer who had hardly published a thing. He was a handsome, curly-headed, pink-cheeked young man dressed in the finest Galician ­middle-class attire. It is doubtful, however, whether these qualities were sufficient for Schoffman to introduce him to Brenner, and for Brenner to pay him more attention than he would to any other Galician writer. Agnon recounts that Brenner gave him some letters for Avrom Reisen, who was in Krakow at the time, and for Uri Nissan Gnessin, who was living in Petach Tikva. Although there is no evidence to back Agnon’s claim that Brenner called him “my friend and comrade” in his letters, there is no doubt that Brenner gave him these letters of recommendation to Reisen and Schoffman, for in his letter to

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Schoffman from that time, Reisen mentions Czaczkes and agrees that there was “eppess a shtickl nitzotz” [some spark] in him.26 Regarding the letter to Gnessin, it is doubtful that it reached its destination. Agnon came to Palestine in June 1908. Coming from Galicia, he found support from his compatriots in the country. Rabbi Benjamin let him use his apartment when he traveled to Galilee. The impression he left on another Galician, Yosef Fried, was of an irritable and neglected young man: “In his demeanor it is evident that he is a boy who has been prematurely driven from his father’s house and his m ­ other’s 27 apron strings.” But a few months later, this “boy” published his story “Agunot” (Forsaken wives) in the journal Haomer, which gained him both reputation and status.28 When Brenner came to Palestine, Agnon’s name had already preceded him. But there was a vast difference between Brenner’s standing and that of Agnon. Brenner was a central figure in the republic of Hebrew letters, whereas Agnon was a young writer with only one superb story to his credit, a fresh rising star. Agnon recounts that when Brenner arrived in Jaffa, he “left all the people who came to see him and went with me.” This description is not substantiated by any other source and is somewhat puzzling in light of Brenner’s having stayed in Jaffa for only a few days before moving to Jerusalem and Hapoel Hatzair. Even more mystifying is Agnon’s contention that in those years “I was closer to him than anybody else.”29 In view of the emotional affinity Brenner had with Rabbi Benjamin, Yosef Aharonowitz, Berl Katznelson, and David ­Shimonovich, Agnon’s claim is unreasonably pretentious and has no other corroboration than Agnon’s own words: “I wonder whether, with the exception of Bialik, there was another Jewish writer who was followed by a flock of admirers as Brenner was,” Agnon wrote, thus describing the situation as it really was. Brenner’s personality attracted well known and lesser known writers and poets, teachers and intellectuals. Because he was the hub of the cultural center that was forming in Palestine, a connection with him was important and extremely significant for Agnon, but as for Brenner, it is doubtful that it was deeper than his relationships with other young writers. In 1911, when Brenner severed his ties with Hapoel Hatzair and moved to Jerusalem, the journal published Agnon’s story, “Tishrei,” which was given a warm reception. The letters of the Streit brothers,

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one of whom, Shalom, was in Petach Tikva, and the other, Yeshayahu, in Jerusalem, shed some light on the literary and personal relationships among the Palestine intelligentsia. In their weekly exchange of letters, the brothers described their activities, meetings, and impressions with diary-like exactitude. Shalom Streit writes to Yeshayahu as follows: “I read the latest edition of Hapoel Hatzair. Czaczkes captivated me.” And later, he asks: “What is peoples’ opinion of Agnon’s ‘­Tishrei’?”30 According to Streit, the story was the talk of the town. At the time, Agnon was already working on And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. In his memoirs he describes writing the book as almost spontaneous, written nonstop in four days, the result of a one-time inspiration. It turns out, however, that the writing was actually less dramatic. In a letter to Brenner, Agnon says that the writing was progressing well, and he hoped to finish by the end of the month. Agnon was meticulous about using Hebrew dates, so he almost certainly meant the end of Heshvan 5672, or November 1911.31 In his memoirs Agnon gives a dramatic description of sending the manuscript to Brenner. Because he felt a need to hear the opinion of a literary authority right away, and because another of his patrons, Ben-Zion, was not at home, he went to the post office, paid the postage, and sent the manuscript to Brenner in Jerusalem. However, the letter to the writer gives the impression that the manuscript was to be sent to Brenner for his expert opinion at the outset. What is beyond doubt is that Brenner was moved to admiration by the novella: “We were at Brenner’s today,” Dov Kimchi wrote to Shalom Streit. “We talked about various matters, and he read parts of Agnon’s And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight to us—it is evidently something ‘big’—I hope we will be able to read it soon—Amen.”32 The same episode appears in more intensified form in Agnon’s memoirs: “A few days later, the late Dov Kimchi told me that Brenner convened a group of intellectuals and writers, among them Y. Maharshak, the principal of the Mizrachi school, and read them my book in tears.”33 In Agnon’s account of Dov Kimchi’s version, Brenner convened a special gathering of luminaries to read the novella to them. In Kimchi’s contemporaneous version, the gathering was one of several spontaneous meetings commonly held in the homes of members of the Jerusalem intelligentsia. It was not devoted exclusively to Agnon’s book, from which Brenner read only excerpts,

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not the whole novella. Finally, the “tears” are absent from Kimchi’s description. This is a shining example of Agnon’s embellishing and glorifying facts about his relationship with Brenner.34 The acme of Agnon’s memoir of Brenner is the story of Agnon’s visit to Brenner’s room in Jerusalem, which is followed by the anecdote of how Brenner financed the publication of And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. Agnon does not describe Brenner’s room in detail.35 Others describe the room as monkish, with a hard sleeping settle; a desk was the only personal furnishing, which, according to some testimonies, was a high lectern like those used in yeshivas, whereas in other accounts it is an ordinary table with a chair. In any event, it was a room with no ornaments or luxuries, an expression of Brenner’s need to make do with little, no more than necessary to subsist, and also a manifestation of his total disdain for quotidian aesthetics. “He considered ornaments that have no use, such as pictures and flowers, as worthless.”36 By contrast, the room of Hemdat, Agnon’s alter ego in Only Yesterday, in Neveh Zedek is all ornamentation: its windows overlook the landscape, their curtains fluttering in the sea breeze, and flowerpots adorn the steps leading to it. The room is clean and tidy, and in it are utensils and provisions for properly entertaining visitors.37 The distance between the lifestyle of the reclusive writer who abstains from the worldly pleasures and that of the young, middle-class writer used to fine tableware was the distance between the old European world to which Agnon built a little shrine in his room and the revolutionary Palestine reality of which Brenner was both a symbol and an exemplar. It was not by chance that in Only Yesterday, Agnon put the following remark into Brenner’s mouth: “You have turned your room into a sort of fetish and how can I enter it?”38 On his visit to Brenner’s room in Jerusalem, Agnon was welcomed affectionately and admiringly, yet with a pinch of disdain for his petit bourgeois inclinations. Brenner prepared a meal for his guest and also cocoa. Before pouring it, he said he would have to wash the cup because “Du bistich a patritzier” (you are of the nobility).39 Similarly, in the novel Agnon has A. D. Gordon call Hemdat “poritzel” [Yiddish: diminutive of poritz, noble landowner].40 In other words, compared to the people of the Second Aliya, the young Agnon was elegant, looked like a fine young man, and in his fastidiousness looked down on his impoverished friends.

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But the zenith of the meeting between Agnon and Brenner came later: Agnon accompanied Brenner on a walk through Jerusalem and saw him return a pair of suspenders he had bought and revert to keeping his pants up with a tattered old belt because he needed a few more bishliks to publish And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight.41 On the face of it, this story was intended to praise Brenner: “Is there another man who would stint himself for another’s book?”42 But at a second look, Agnon possibly brought the description of his relationship with Brenner to this high point to emphasize Brenner’s enthusiasm for the novella. It is the story of Agnon’s discovery by the admired veteran writer, running from the description of Brenner’s praise of “Agunot,” through their personal friendship, and up to the publication of And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. Agnon makes an effort to prove that Brenner had crowned him as the most important young author, setting him apart from all the rest. This need of Agnon’s is puzzling: at the time of the Second Aliya, Brenner’s sympathetic attitude toward him certainly aroused his gratitude, admiration, and even self-effacement before the more senior writer, but forty years later, what point did Agnon find in Brenner’s crowning him? Why did he have this need to make Brenner’s attitude toward him more special than toward other promising young writers, such as Orloff, Aharoni, and the like, who were also fostered by Brenner? After all, thenceforth Agnon gained all the honors that the republic of Hebrew literature was able to grant to its outstanding writers. The second axis of Agnon’s description of Brenner is the description in his memoirs of Brenner’s relations with women. According to Agnon, Brenner did not believe in husband-wife equality in the family. When one of the young women in his company quoted a Scandinavian poet who had the female protagonist in his play tell her husband on their wedding night that all the man’s rights in matters of sex are the woman’s too, Brenner lost his temper and said that this ran completely counter to nature.43 Agnon further demonstrates Brenner’s conservative and reserved attitude toward women in an anecdote about a female admirer who wanted to meet him but whom Brenner ignored. When another young woman did “something strange,” Agnon recalls, Brenner remarked that if she had to prepare her house for Passover, then she would not have the time to think about nonsense. And when a

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young woman wrote Brenner what he considered “puppy love letters,” he severely reprimanded her.44 Later, Agnon describes how he and Brenner would walk around Jerusalem and its environs at night. They would be accompanied by “workers from the printing press or students from the teachers’ seminar and sometimes even yeshiva students.”45 On one of these nocturnal strolls, they were joined by “an educated young woman who had recently returned from overseas.” As they walked as far as Motza, “she talked a lot” with Brenner. When they returned from the walk, the group dispersed, and Agnon and the young man who had brought the girl remained alone with Brenner. The young man remarked to Brenner that it seemed to him that he must like the girl, because he had not stopped talking to her. Brenner reacted angrily, hurling his hat to the ground and stamping on it. Agnon indicated that the young man should go, and he accompanied Brenner to his room. Later that night, Brenner appeared in Agnon’s room and dragged him out to continue their stroll. Brenner did not mention either of the young people but talked about the wonders of London, where men and women were able to meet without becoming the subject of gossip.46 Agnon’s description of the walk to Motza is the highlight of all the stories that express Brenner’s aversion to women and his reservations about modern attitudes toward relations between the sexes. Brenner’s discomfort with women ostensibly derives from his being pure, not involved in sexual relations: “as long as his body is preserved from the transgression, his body is clean.”47 But Agnon in fact leads the reader to feel that there is a flaw in Brenner’s relations with women. In several of its details, the description of the young woman Brenner talked with on the walk to Motza resembles the figure of Chaya Broide, who was to become his wife and the mother of his son. The girl is described as a rabbi’s daughter from Russia who immigrated to Palestine and came from a revolutionary background, which is not the case with Chaya Broide. Some of the details in his account are clearly the fruit of his imagination, for example, the composition of the group that went for walks in Jerusalem. The group did not in fact consist of yeshiva students and not even printing press workers, but only of teachers and students from the teachers’ seminar, writers, and lovers of literature.48 He writes, however, that the girl did not know what to do with herself in Palestine and decided to become a teacher, that she

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learned Hebrew and German, and went to study overseas. All of these details are true of Chaya. The duration of her stay abroad—“so many years,” according to Agnon—is incompatible, however, with that of Chaya, who was in Germany for only a year. Despite this, it seems that Agnon was imagining Chaya Broide when he wrote what he did. But who was the young man who brought Chaya to the group and from whom Brenner seemingly took her away? It appears that this young man was a figment of Agnon’s imagination and that Agnon himself is hiding behind it. Chaya and Agnon met not long after Agnon’s arrival in Jaffa. Born in Lithuania, Chaya immigrated to Palestine in 1906 with her mother and brother. Her father had come a year earlier and was a dayan, a judge, in Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook’s rabbinical court in Jaffa. The family did not have a Zionist background, and, as far as we know, they immigrated to Palestine as a result of the horrors of the first Russian revolution. But Chaya and her brother were drawn to the workers’ circles in Palestine, and they quickly joined the band of Second Aliya workers. Chaya’s parents were very hurt by their children’s abandoning the religious way of life and adopting a secular lifestyle. Chaya was a pretty, energetic eighteen-year-old. She looked for satisfying work—tilling the soil was no solution for an ambitious young woman. She learned Hebrew, in which she was not fluent before her immigration, with K. Y. Silman, a writer and teacher who lodged with her parents. Menachem Gnessin, who also lodged with them, brought her into the “Hebrew theatre lovers” circle. She tried her hand as an actress in Jaffa and appeared in several productions. Her attempt to work as a kindergarten teacher, with no previous experience, taught her that this was a profession close to her heart. Several young women had already gone from Palestine to study at the kindergarten teachers’ seminar in Germany, and she decided to study in Berlin as well. Arthur Ruppin, who headed the Palestine Office, persuaded the Ezra Association to support her during her studies and pay her tuition. In return, she would establish a modern kindergarten in Jerusalem. She left for Germany in fall 1909.49 Chaya met Agnon before leaving for Germany. She was friendly with Rabbi Benjamin and corresponded with him when she was living in Jerusalem in 1909. Agnon added a note of his own to one of Rabbi

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Benjamin’s letters to her: “A feinem gruss fon nit kein feinem mensch [gentlemanly regards from an ungentlemanly man].” In a long reply she wrote that she was not interested in ungentlemanly men. Agnon showed this letter to Aharonowitz, who said: This girl knows how to write. On her return to Jaffa from Jerusalem, Agnon approached her in the street and asked whether she was Chaya Broide. Yes, she replied, and asked who had told him. My heart told me, he answered. His manner of conversation was uncommon among the coarse workers of the Second Aliya. Although Chaya later would claim that she rejected Agnon’s romantic advances, it seems that this was not the case at the time.50 Thenceforth, the two kept in touch. On the eve of her departure for Germany, Agnon introduced her to a Galician compatriot, Yosef Fried, who was sailing for Austria on the same ship. Fried described Chaya in a letter to a friend in Vienna, apparently drawing on his conversation with Agnon: “Miss Broide is the daughter of a dayan from here—a Lithuanian girl who has become Eretz-Yisraeli in the full sense of the term: she has worked in the fields, acted on the stage, and so forth; pleasant company.”51 During her stay in Berlin, Chaya visited museums, attended concerts and the theater, as befit a young woman aspiring to an education, and experienced as many of the city’s cultural offerings as possible. In Berlin she made friends with another young woman from Palestine, Dina Feffermeister, who would become David Shimonovich’s wife and who was also studying at the seminar. Together they did their utmost to exploit all the possibilities the city offered. Chaya helped Dina meet Shimonovich and was the young lovers’ matchmaker. She was vivacious, full of joie de vivre, with a degree of coquettishness. In one of her letters to Shimonovich, she tried to persuade him to come to a students’ party in the Tiergarten: “It will be great fun. And Miss Feffer­meister has bought an interesting blouse.”52 In a letter from Palestine, Rabbi Benjamin asked Shimonovich to give his regards to Chaya and persuade her not go to Switzerland but to return to Palestine, despite her fears of the harsh reality there.53 Chaya returned to Palestine in summer 1911 and settled in Jerusalem. She worked industriously, walked around the city, but she was lonely. In Jerusalem she joined a group of intellectuals, teachers, and writers. As early as fall 1911, Dov Kimchi mentions her as one of the two ladies, both kinder-

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garten teachers, whose company he enjoys.54 A few weeks later, Agnon decided to move to Jerusalem: he had completed And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, his work as a clerk in three Zionist institutions had ended, and so he made up his mind to try his luck in Jerusalem. Contact between Agnon and Chaya was probably renewed on her return, because he asked her help in getting settled in Jerusalem.55 At the same time, in a letter to his brother, Yeshayahu, extolling the charms of “Tishrei,” Shalom Streit adds that “Chaya Broide is apparently in love with Agnon,” which indicates that even when Agnon was in Jaffa and Chaya in Jerusalem, they stayed in touch.56 The correspondence between the Streit brothers portrays a group of friends who spent a lot of time together. The group included Chaya Broide, Czaczkes (Agnon), K. Y. Silman, Eliezer Lipa Sukenik (a teachers’ seminar student), and Brenner. They were sometimes joined by A. M. Lifschitz, Shlomo Schiller, the young writer Dov Kimchi, and other teachers and seminar students. In addition to Chaya Broide, the young women in the group were the kindergarten teachers ­Shlomit Flaum (in Palestine from 1911) and Hassia Feinsod (later Sukenik, in Palestine from 1912). The area frequented by the Jerusalem intelligentsia was relatively small. With limited walking routes in Jewish Jerusalem outside the Old City’s walls, members of the group were likely to meet on a daily basis. In one of his letters, Yeshayahu Streit describes how he met Chaya and others on his way from the post office near Jaffa Gate. A group formed that was joined by Agnon, “somewhat tipsy,” and on their way to visit Silman, who had invited them all to eat kugel, they all walked together to Brenner’s house. When they knocked on the door, he came out and asked who was there. “Chaya laughed, Sukenik sang, and Cz (Czaczkes) remained silent. I answered: ­Czaczkes, and he said he had someone with him and asked us to come back tomorrow.” Agnon behaved discourteously toward Streit, saddening Chaya because “he does not know how to behave among people.” But Streit said he knew Agnon well and was not insulted by either his behavior or his words. At the end of the letter, Agnon added his regards to Shalom Streit and wrote below the signature, “Miss C. Broide most certainly sends you her regards too.” Chaya wrote “true,” signed herself “Chaya,” and added a further ambiguous remark: “The truth is mine.”57 Chaya saw Streit as a true friend and gave him her complete

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trust. She confided in him that Agnon had given Brenner a large new manuscript and that he had not liked the story. His response greatly upset Agnon, who thought that it was his best work yet (although it seems that he shelved the manuscript). Matters came to such a pass that the group feared he would do something drastic, and Brenner, ­Silman, and Sukenik went looking for him in the dead of night.58 The relationship between Chaya and Agnon had its ups and downs. Some of their friends thought she was Agnon’s beloved, but his behavior was unpredictable, inconsiderate, and even downright rude. The group used to have lunch at a regular eating place. When Agnon and Chaya had a quarrel, he avoided going there, even though he had paid for his meals in advance. And when Chaya was ill and asked him to fetch her medicine from the chemist, he refused, forcing her to get up from her sickbed and go herself. In the end Agnon decided to accompany her. They dropped in to see Brenner on the way, and she poured out all her bitterness to the older man, who was also thought of as a moral authority. Brenner sided with her. “Afterward Cz spoke about B [Brenner] most enviously, like two women jealous of one another.” 59 Was Agnon’s envy caused by Brenner’s high status as a writer? Or was it male jealousy over a woman? The instability of Agnon’s character aroused Brenner’s reservations about him: he neither wanted to be Agnon’s spiritual guardian nor give him the psychological support he evidently needed. When Agnon asked him out for a walk, probably to pour out his heart, Brenner declined. It seems that Brenner was put off by the qualities Agnon displayed in times of distress: his inconsiderateness toward those who liked him and his readiness to hurt others. It is also possible that his own precarious mental state made Brenner incapable of helping someone in similar circumstances. In the middle of April 1912, Agnon returned to Jaffa. The parting from Chaya at the railway station, which Yeshayahu Streit witnessed, was dramatic. Agnon was on the verge of tears and behaved as if he were in a mental turmoil.60 He appears to have had a nervous breakdown. Rabbi Benjamin, in whose Jaffa home Agnon found refuge, wrote to Brenner a few days later that Agnon “has regained his tranquility and the change is vast. He is still with us and behaving properly.”61 Brenner told Chaya and Streit about the improvement in Agnon’s condition.62 Another week passed, and Rabbi Benjamin

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reported that there had been a further improvement. Agnon wrote “Leylot,” worked industriously, and even earned a little from giving private lessons. “He sits in our house. Eats at our table. Except for the sadness, he is well.”63 Agnon also wrote to Brenner, telling him that he was staying with Redler (Rabbi Benjamin) and was not leaving the house. He even sought to conciliate him and apologize for his behavior. “Brenner, do you still have the slightest grievance against me? With pain and bitterness I remember the days when I caused you sorrow, and all I wish is for them to be erased from your memory.” Now he was taking care not to insult people, which had set Brenner against him in Jerusalem. “I take great care in my behavior with the few people with whom I converse, and the people are so good to me, as if I were dying.” With all due humility he signs the letter: “[From] he who greets you and wishes to cut off the hair of his head and lay it on the hard couch beneath your suffering and tortured body.”64 Parting from Agnon was not easy for Chaya. “At present she has not been cured of the sickness of love for Cz—but she is getting there. She is beginning to understand his condition and the way he behaves,” wrote Yeshayahu Streit. Following Brenner’s report on Agnon’s condition, Streit asked her whether she was missing him. She replied, “I did at first, but now no longer.”65 After more than twenty-five years, Chaya described their relationship as follows: “On a personal level, Agnon was not a very nice man. . . . I did not understand his behavior or his writing. He would woo me and many other girls, all of them in fact. He did not have just one girlfriend. He would play at courting, even with those who did not realize that it was a game when they lay on the sands.”66 This antagonistic summary of her relationship with Agnon was intended to conceal their true relationship, one that was broken off and never renewed. They both went their separate ways, and neither of them was interested in discussing their youthful transgressions. But that Chaya was not just another girl to whom he paid court is revealed in the dedication he wrote in the first copy of And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. The book appeared in July 1912, some two months after the abatement of the mental turmoil that caused Agnon to leave Jerusalem and return to Jaffa. “The first copy of my first book to Miss C. Broide in Jerusalem. The Author,” Agnon wrote for Chaya. It was both an apology and an expression of his esteem.67

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Since completing Here and There, Brenner had been incapable of writing literature; he called it “a total inability to give birth in the literary sense.”68 Chaya told Yeshayahu Streit that Brenner was very hurt “that his Palestine stories were unsuccessful, and since then he has written almost nothing new except for his work at Ha’akhdut.”69 He wrote articles, gave lectures, including one on Tschernichovsky.70 But he wrote no literary work. This raises the question of when Agnon, as he claims, was with Brenner while he was writing. Brenner wrote the greater part of Here and There in Ein Ganim, where Agnon had never been, and the final editing was apparently done when Brenner was in Tiberias—again, far from Agnon. During the 1912 Jerusalem period, Brenner did not write a thing. Agnon recounts that he chanced by Brenner’s room, where he found him writing while standing, his head sunk into his shoulders as if carrying a heavy burden, and his face like that of an armed robber. It seems that this story is a dramatic adaptation of a conversation between them in which, according to Agnon, Brenner said: “If, as we worked, we were to look in the mirror, we would see the face of a murderer.” In a similar kind of adaptation, Agnon reports Brenner’s saying that, on completing a work, he is void of content and connects with “common people.” This description, which is not verified in any other source, is designed to substantiate Agnon’s contention that Brenner was not an imaginative writer; rather, everything he wrote was drawn from reality, and once he had exhausted what he had learned from that reality, there was nothing left in his world, in contrast to “an imaginative writer, and even more so a writer with vision, who as he is writing one book is already imagining thirteen others waiting to be written by him.”71 This imaginative and visionary writer is obviously Agnon himself. Of course, Brenner’s attitude toward reality and imagination is far more complex; indeed, he stated that for him “there is no art beyond tangible reality and the concrete content that reality provides” but that he selects “from the reality what is essential for the poet’s soul,” and thus he “reaches the symbolism of objects, the discovery of their inner meaning.”72 Agnon noted that although he had read Brenner’s works during his lifetime, he never read them again, with the exception of Breakdown and Bereavement, which he read while abroad. He emphasized that he had read none of Brenner’s articles or his letters, which had mean-

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while appeared in print.73 With these remarks he sought to diminish Brenner’s worth as a writer; when added to his assertion that Brenner was not imaginative, it is clear that the older Agnon had reservations about Brenner the writer. Perhaps unconsciously, the entire essay was designed to say: Brenner was indeed a shining example, the sage of his generation, a moral guide and mentor who sanctified the Holy Name in his life and death, but as a writer there is a greater one than he. Agnon’s need to cast Brenner in the role of John the Baptist in relation to Jesus reveals the bitterness and hostility he harbored throughout those years. Brenner was what Agnon never was: a man who was what he seemed, who did not seek to flatter or harm anyone. When he was depressed, he would withdraw into himself. Agnon, however, was narcissistic, and when in crisis, he lashed out at everything and everyone around him. Brenner’s rejection of him was never forgiven, but as the years went by it was forgotten because Agnon made sure that his version of their relationship was perpetuated. Even if Brenner had relinquished the suspenders he bought so that And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight could be published, most of the money for this project came from the pockets of Rabbi Benjamin and Shalom Streit, while distribution was in the hands of Brenner’s close friend Kruglyakov in Jaffa.74 Kruglyakov was Brenner’s contact with his family in Russia and with his brother Binyamin and sister Lyuba, who had recently arrived in Palestine. They were not with Brenner in Jerusalem but stayed in Jaffa, where Binyamin studied at the gymnasium. Although Brenner supported them, he jealously guarded his privacy and preferred that they did not live with him. He would receive regards from them and news of their welfare from Kruglyakov, Rabbi Benjamin, Agnon—from all his friends in Jaffa75; Brenner did, however, regularly visit Kruglyakov’s mother, an ailing old lady who lived in Jerusalem.76 Over the following two years, Rabbi Benjamin and the Streit brothers collaborated with Brenner on literary projects. In the spring of 1912, Rabbi Benjamin began urging Brenner to revive Hameorer. The poet Jacob Fichman and editor Fishel Lachover, who were in Warsaw at the time, and also the publisher S. Y. Stiebel, who was a central figure in publishing Hebrew literature, all offered their financial aid and assistance in editing and publishing the journal. Brenner was skeptical

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about publishing a journal on a regular basis. The name “Hameorer” promptly roused enthusiastic responses. But Brenner had reservations, perhaps because he saw a misplaced pretension in the return of the name.77 The outcome of all the great plans was several relatively modest collections. The first, Beynatayim [In the meantime], which appeared in 1913, did not bear Brenner’s name. For reasons that are unclear, Brenner preferred that Rabbi Benjamin’s name appear as its editor. “I enjoyed In the Meantime very much,” Rabbi Benjamin wrote to Brenner. “Well done. I will not deny that it pleased me to see my name on such a nice collection. Even though I did not merit it.”78 The collection included Agnon’s latest story, “Leylot,” which Brenner did not like.79 Yet Rabbi Benjamin thought the story was worthy of publication, and Brenner did not object.80 The collection’s name was intended to represent the editor’s desire that this modest collection would be a temporary publication until such time as a permanent literary organ was founded.81 In the summer of 1913, the Streit brothers and Rabbi Benjamin founded Hasharon, the “popular center for the dissemination of Hebrew literature in Palestine and the Diaspora,” which was to “disseminate Hebrew books to people from all walks of life” by reducing the cost of books through a more efficient distribution system. Brenner did not believe in the center’s grandiose plans.82 But once Hasharon was established, he could not turn his back on it. As in earlier ventures, this time too he was enthusiastic and rapidly became Hasharon’s central figure. Hasharon became the distributor of important literary writing, such as the comprehensive anthology Netivot (Directions), published by Ahisefer and edited by Lachover, with pieces by the best of writers and critics; and the He’atid (The Future) anthologies, which were devoted to literature and Jewish studies, and which appeared in Berlin edited by S. Y. Ish-Horowitz. Hasharon also funded and initiated the revival of Revivim, which Brenner had published in Lvov. Unlike the revival of Hameorer, that of Revivim, which published literary collections that appeared from time to time, did not bother Brenner. The appearance of In the Meantime was followed by another issue of Revivim. This collection contained a very positive review of Agnon’s works by Shalom Streit. Of And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, Streit wrote that “its appearance is, and will be, an enigma

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in our l­iterature,” and that it is “literature, if not more than that,” in the spirit of Judah Lieb Peretz’s story “Oyb nisht nokh hekher” (If not higher) about the Mitnaged and the Hasidic rabbi who touches heavenly spheres. Like Brenner, he too thought that Agnon’s greatness would lie in the likes of “Agunot” and And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, not “Tishrei” and “Leylot”—in other words, in the folkishJewish style, not the modernist one.83 The friendship and literary collaboration between Rabbi Benjamin and Brenner had never been warmer than during these years. But this did not prevent Brenner from mounting a bitter attack against his friend in an article titled “Mitokh pinkasi” (From my notebook), published in Revivim 3/4. It was not their first dispute. Brenner the socialist did not take kindly to Rabbi Benjamin’s sympathetic attitude toward German Chancellor Bismarck in an article published in Hameorer. Rabbi Benjamin also cautiously criticized the article on “the Palestine genre” that Brenner had published in August 1911. But these disputes paled in comparison with Brenner’s caustic, sarcastic response to Rabbi Benjamin’s article from In the Meantime on the Arab question, titled “Bereshit” (Genesis). The author’s pan-Semitic views were first propounded in his “Masa arav” (An Arab prophecy), which Brenner published in Hameorer. Rabbi Benjamin wrote it before he came to Palestine, when he was still living in a village in Bukovina, in a state of spiritual ecstasy, as if he had witnessed a revelation, “I was almost intoxicated by the vision.”84 It was written in a Biblical, prophetical style, as if with divine inspiration. Rabbi Benjamin believed in the shared fate and racial proximity of Jews and Arabs. “God calls upon us and the Arabs to unite and work toward the blossoming of our desolate land,” he wrote in the introduction to the Yizkor anthology.85 As long as what he wrote remained in the realm of a vision, Brenner did not respond, but “Bereshit” offered practical, immediate proposals. Rabbi Benjamin demanded that the Zionist system of settlement in Palestine should be changed from a national to a pan-Semitic one— in other words, from the sole concern of expanding Jewish settlement to a parallel concern of developing settlements for the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. He contended that overcoming petty egoism would yield wonderful fruit: the country had room for five million people. The number of non-Jews was some half a million souls. If we cooperate

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with them, he argued, both forces would become unified in a common objective. He cautioned that the ostrichlike policy toward the Arabs of Palestine would bankrupt the Zionist enterprise. As an example of a successful project, he cited the founding of Tel Aviv and proposed the establishment of “fine neighborhoods for Arab city dwellers.”86 Brenner held a completely different view of “the Arab problem.” The vision of the seething volcano on which the Zionist enterprise was founded gave him no rest. From the moment he disembarked from the ship in Haifa and encountered hostile Arab youths in the city’s alleyways, his life in Palestine had been attended by anxiety about the safety of the Jewish life there His view of the Yishuv as “another ­Diaspora” stemmed from his opinion that the Jews could live in Palestine no more securely than they had in any other country. Palestine was not the “safe haven” promised by Herzl. Brenner viewed the Arabs in Palestine as yet one more of the afflictions to be suffered for the sake of the country. In his opinion, Rabbi Benjamin’s attitude was one of childhood dreams flawed by immorality: “Yes, immorality, because they are but dust motes in the air, because they derive from a misunderstanding of the bitterness of the reality.” Brenner argued that there is no room for talking about love between us and our neighbors when the simple reality is that we are seeking to settle in a country whose Arab inhabitants regard themselves as “lords of the land.” The Jews are coming to settle in Palestine “because the situation forces us to do so.” The national clash of interests is intrinsic to this reality and therefore “hatred between us already exists and must exist—and it will continue.” But Jews have always been the weak in the midst of the strong: “We are used to it, we are surrounded by hatred and filled with hatred—yes, filled with hatred, that is how it should be! The soft lovers be damned!—that’s how we have lived ever since we became a people.” Brenner concludes his bitter attack with the words, “Rabbi Benjamin’s strange remarks on the Arab question since he wrote ‘Masa arav’—considering the situation as it is—are infuriating, most ­infuriating.”87 Although Brenner was not given to belligerency, he was unable to close his eyes and avoid looking straight at reality, bleak and harsh though it might be. Not for him hopes based on pipe dreams. Brenner’s public castigation of Rabbi Benjamin did not sour their relationship. The worlds of philosophy and everyday reality were kept

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separate. Their friendship was not grounded in a common worldview but in spiritual closeness, mutual trust, and love of literature. After Agnon moved back to Jaffa, the Jerusalem group continued to meet. These meetings revolved around Streit, Brenner, and Jerusalem’s three leading kindergarten teachers: Chaya Broide, Hassia Feinsod, and Shlomit Flaum. They ran the Ezra Association’s kindergarten network and also taught in a sort of kindergarten teachers’ seminar that had recently opened. The teachers, who had studied abroad, were professionals considered to be the cream of the female intelligentsia of the time. There were very few women who attained such status. It was not by chance that they were called “Madam,” a title not given to the women workers of the Second Aliya. The group went on random rambles in Jerusalem and its environs, such as the walk to Temple Mount. As he emerged from the post office, Yeshayhu Streit met Brenner, Chaya, Hassia, and some others who were on their way to Temple Mount, and he joined them. Brenner was unmoved by the site of the temple. When asked about this by Streit, he replied that, as a nonreligious man, the place did not arouse any deep emotions in him. Because he possessed no understanding of art, he said, he saw it as “a beautiful object from ancient times” and no more than that. When they came to Solomon’s Stables, he joked that the king had housed his wives there.88 As we have seen, Agnon described the group’s walk to Motza, but it is doubtful that it actually took place. It seems that Agnon built his description on what he heard about such walks, whose details can be found in contemporary sources. The walk that remained etched on the participants’ memory began toward the evening of a spring day, after the three young women concluded a teachers’ meeting and Streit met them with their coats, which they had left in Chaya’s room. They were joined by two young men, Wolman and Kimchi, who were students at the teachers’ seminar. “It was all unpretentious and quiet and pleasant, with no advance planning.” They met Brenner on the way and asked him to join them, and he agreed. “Then the merriment rose to new heights, not a simple gaiety, but convivial joy.” On the way the group stopped at a grocery shop to buy food: bread, cheese, cucumbers, apricots, and chocolate. They then continued on their way, taking turns carrying the provisions. “And Brenner competed with us, snatching the basket from us all the time.” They reached Streit’s factory in Motza

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at eight in the evening and sat down to eat. After resting a while, they went outside and sat on the edge of the pool there. The reflected stars twinkled on the water and the group passed the time “in interesting conversation, singing, and dancing.” And Streit emphasizes: “you should know that it all came straight from the heart with no interruption and no artificiality.” When the moon rose at midnight, they went to see the cypress Herzl had planted in Motza. Quiet descended on the group. The mountains all around, the shining moon, Herzl’s cypress, which evoked the memory of the great leader, all cast their magic on the group. The peaceful night, “in the company of pretty young women,” created a special mood that Streit found hard to put into words, for it seemed to him that words would profane the sanctity of the moment. They were all drunk, he says, and it is unclear whether he meant literally drunk or simply intoxicated by the experience. Brenner was in fine spirits throughout the night. They sat on the balustrade around Herzl’s cypress, with Brenner playing the role of father (Streit’s term), with Chaya and Shlomit as his daughters. They lay their heads in his lap and rested that way. Hassia lay her head in Streit’s lap and fell asleep. One of the young men quoted something or other, and Brenner seized on it and gave a sermon on homiletics. He spoke animatedly for half an hour, interspersing his sermon with citations from the Talmud and Otto Weininger aphorisms, skillfully ironing out the differences between them. When he finished, they all burst into a boisterous dance with genuine enthusiasm. After the dance, Brenner pretended to be drunk, staggered over to Hassia, put a slip of paper into her hand and said, clownishly, “Behold, thou art consecrated to me by this ring,” and so on. He added jokingly that he could have gotten her dismissed from her post had he kissed her “in front of all these people.” The group erupted in laughter.89 As dawn broke, they went to the house of the farmer Broza in Motza, with whom Streit had business dealings. They woke the startled farmer, bought some food from him, and had breakfast. During the meal they tried their hand at rhyming; according to Streit, “Brenner’s rhymes were outstanding of course.” Afterward, Broza hitched up his wagon to take the group back to Jerusalem. Streit stayed on to work in his factory. Brenner, momentarily happy, kissed Streit goodbye, and Streit summarized the night thus: “One experiences a night like that only once in a lifetime.”90

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Streit’s description testifies to Brenner’s integration into the Jerusalem group. Although he tended toward reclusiveness and introversion, he felt at ease with this group. He was shy and stayed out of the limelight, but he is described as the life and soul of the group, bestowing an atmosphere of joy and clowning on their leisure activities. He would also spend time in the company of nice, educated young women. According to this testimony, Brenner had no special favorite among these women. Although he had seemingly “consecrated” Hassia Feinsod, it appears that it was no more than fun. But less than six months elapsed and Brenner was writing a passionate love letter to Hassia: “Hassia! I want you to feel certain of my true feelings toward you, come what may and however it may. I, despite all my various physical weaknesses and the awkwardness and reflexes and the strange and obvious heaviness of my temperament (I spoke to you about this yesterday too), I am devoted to you with all my heart and I love you—I am not ashamed to write that sentence—the love of a brother for his sister and the love of a man for his wife.” It would seem that Benner never made a similar declaration in all his life. This was not a case of emotions failing to mature into action, as with Chaya Wolfson in his youth or with his shy advances to Sarah-Shifra Marmor or even his platonic courtship of Tinka Lampert in Lvov. These were adult feelings toward a young woman who, in contrast with the others, was both unattached and of marriageable age. All the rumors of Brenner’s romantic relationships in Palestine up to that time were just that—rumors. This time he bared his soul to a woman and found that she was not indifferent toward him. “I know that your kind heart relates kindly toward me too,” he added. The circumstances in which their relationship was formed are seemingly clear. Hassia came to Palestine in 1912 and right away found her place as a kindergarten teacher in Jerusalem, where she joined the group with which Brenner spent much of his leisure time. But we shall never know how the two became a couple within the group. In his letter Brenner hints at tensions: he will avoid frequent visits to her home and even announces that he has “no intentions.” Did he mean intentions of marriage? Sexual relations? Exclusivity in her relationship with him? His words are vague and there are no further sources that might clarify them. But what is clear is the depth of Brenner’s emotions and that he does not fear exposing himself to rejection and disappointment. “All

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day today I have had this need to tell you that for some reason you are precious to me, and I cannot suppress it,” Brenner wrote, after a night in which he revealed to her not only his heart but also his weaknesses, his temperamental difficulties, his mental dysfunction. “And you,” he added, “be well and think of me whenever you remember me, with true sentiments and with mercy, and always believe in my good intentions.”91 The love between Hassia and Brenner blossomed for at least a month; there is another letter from Brenner to her, dated November 1912, that is replete with the happiness of a requited love. He tells her that he is “enjoying some very good times” and that he has no intention of moving from Jerusalem to Jaffa because, he writes, “I feel that if I settle anywhere else I shall miss the happy times I had in Jerusalem very much.” And he adds: “Are you feeling better, my dear? Do you have peace of mind?” He concludes the letter with a declaration of his love: “With all the heartfelt feelings of the man who loves you, Y. H.”92 These were the only letters from Brenner that Hassia kept. Were there others? Did their relationship sour, and did he not keep her letters to him? The following summer, in 1913, Hassia went to Poland to visit her family and inspect the kindergartens there. The man with whom she corresponded then was Eliezer Lipa Sukenik, who came from her hometown, Bialystok, and was perhaps a friend from her youth who, like her, had come to Palestine in 1912. Sukenik helped Brenner with the German-Hebrew translation of Arthur Ruppin’s book Hayehudim bazman hazeh (Contemporary Jewry), and he too was a member of the Jerusalem group. Did Hassia harbor romantic feelings toward Sukenik at the time? Perhaps, but it is doubtful; she did not marry him until 1914, when Brenner was already married to someone else. How, then, could such sincere and warm feelings vanish as if they had never existed? This relationship is shrouded in mystery. Hassia Feinsod and Chaya Broide were friends and worked closely together, yet there is no evidence of tension between them, neither at the time nor afterward. The Feinsod-Brenner relationship went undetected by David Shimonovich and his girlfriend, Dina Feffermeister. It was also unknown to Rabbi Benjamin, Silman, and the Streit brothers. Except for Brenner’s two letters, there is no written evidence, and had the letters not been preserved, we could never have imagined that Brenner was capable of loving a woman with such open and joyful intensity.

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Did the two wish to keep their relationship from all their friends? If not, then it is difficult to understand why it is not mentioned or even hinted at in the wealth of correspondence among Brenner’s confidants. After Brenner’s death, Hassia Feinsod-Sukenik gave Brenner’s letters to Poznansky, who edited and published them. Even then, neither Chaya Broide nor Brenner’s friends reacted to them. Hassia provided no explanation of the letters, but she also did not keep them secret, and Poznansky, who would usually question the correspondents, did not do so in this case. During the period Brenner lived in Jerusalem, he continued to publish his important articles in Hapoel Hatzair. In early 1913 he included a long article on Berdyczewski, a writer close to his heart. 93 Brenner also gave Hapoel Hatzair a long article dedicated to Yehuda Leib ­Gordon, in which, along with praising Gordon’s poetry, he criticized the ­Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) concept embodied in the aphorism “Be a Jew in your home and a man outside it” because it did not grasp the importance of territory nor understand that “a real man among us is he, and only he, who is a true Jew, namely, a proud Jew devoted to his people.”94 Although he wrote and published a great deal, it was not enough for the editor. Aharonowitz scolded him, claiming it was their duty to promote a responsible literary journal. Brenner replied that he was not a Zionist and was therefore not obliged to foster a Zionist journal. To which Aharonowitz responded: “Everything you say about ‘a Zionist journal,’ ‘I am not a Zionist,’ etc., is, with respect, just words. Nobody is asking you to write Zionistic articles. We are only asking that you give us what you are capable of giving as a writer.”95 Brenner rejected this kind of plea and later told Rabbi Benjamin: “I shall not write if I do not wish to. I do not want to. Absolutely not.”96 The situation at Ha’akhdut with regard to Brenner was not much ­better. Ben-Zvi complained bitterly: “After all the promises and our and your conditions with Brenner, he has still not begun writing for us.”97 Part of this imbroglio stemmed from Brenner’s sporadic distaste for his work, no matter in which journal. He would start off enthusiastically, but with time his enthusiasm would wane and the burden of writing essays would begin troubling him. Then he would clutch at ideological reasons to excuse his avoidance of writing. But when Eliezer Lipa Sukenik asked him why he did not travel abroad

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and get to know Jews throughout the world, Brenner replied: “What do you think: one kindergarten in Palestine is more important to me that all the Jews overseas!” And Streit remarks: “That is very typical! That is Brenner.”98 When Brenner heard that Schoffman, who was in Vienna, was thinking about going to the United States, he wrote him a sort of invitation to come to Palestine for the first time: “Schoffman, if you are unable to go to America and also cannot remain in Vienna, do not return to Lvov, come here.”99 But at the same time he also declared: “I do not believe in the future of the Yishuv.”100 Early 1913 brought the end of Brenner’s “dry” literary period. A story he had been turning over in his mind for many months began to mature into writing and was completed in July 1913: “I finished writing ‘Enosh ki yidkeh’ [A depressed man] today,” he wrote to Shimonovich. “In my opinion, it is better than anything I have written so far.” He was familiar with the writer’s syndrome, in which the last piece written always seems the best of all, so he added: “Perhaps that is how it seems to me today because I have just finished it. Brother, how I would love you to be here. We could read the manuscript together. It still needs some work.”101 This was a declaration of friendship to Shimonovich as a man who understood Brenner and his writing. Brenner expressed no such longing toward Agnon. Klausner met with Brenner when he visited Palestine in 1912102 and did his best to persuade him to give his new story to Hashiloah. At first Brenner was evasive, claiming that the manuscript was still incomplete and that he was finding it hard to write. When the manuscript was completed, he informed Klausner, who was still hounding him, that it was unsuitable for Hashiloah. “I know,” he wrote him, “that Hashiloah has no fear of paganism, but the nether regions—that is, ‘the demonic elements’ at the very bottom of certain types of souls—it will certainly not want. And there, in this story, it is the essence, and the fiction is subordinate to it.”103 As far as we know, Brenner’s preoccupation with the subconscious did not come from exposure to Freud but rather from reading Dostoevsky. Along with his implied criticism of Hashiloah’s conservatism, he continued his boycott of the journal that had been in place since it published “A Pleasant Mistake.”104 On Sukkot Eve 1912, Meir and Batya Brenner, his brother and sister, came to Palestine.105 Brenner felt responsible for his siblings, but

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his need for privacy was stronger, and his brothers and sisters had to find their own way in Palestine and not live with him. In June 1913, Meir, who was a worker in Hulda, fell gravely ill.106 Brenner himself suffered recurring bouts of malaria that debilitated him.107 “The Palestinian diseases and poverty are playing havoc with me in the technical sense and are not allowing me to work,” he complained to Lachover and Zeitlin.108 But with all these troubles, he wrote Breakdown and Bereavement and articles for Hapoel Hatzair, Ha’akhdut, and other journals, continued editing In the Meantime for Revivim 3/4, and began work on Gnessin’s commemorative anthology, Hatzida. He also began editing the fifth issue of Revivim, which appeared in 1914 and included his great article “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes,” written during the fall of 1913. It thus appears that his situation was not all that bad. “Our Self-Evaluation” is an analysis of the three volumes, originally in Yiddish, that Mendele Mocher Seforim had rewritten in Hebrew. Brenner traces the development of Mendele’s writing from its initial Haskalah-apologetics point of view, which blames the Gentiles for the wretched situation of the Jews and at the same time fights the battle of the Enlightenment against the benighted (the religious Jews), to Mendele’s later perspective, which sees the Jews as they are, warts and all, and attributes their weakness first and foremost to their character, their natural qualities. After condemning the parasitic character of the Jews (“The Jew does not know how to live. He will never be a pioneer, a military man”109), Brenner demonstrates how Mendele makes peace with his characters, characters who are on the borderline between harsh realism and tragic caricature, because they are his people—with all his criticism he is compassionate toward them and accepts them as they are. This long article is followed by a twelve-page addendum in which Brenner further hones his message, claiming that Otto Weininger was right when he said “this nation possesses feminine characteristics! It has no male potency, no productive force, no fundamental influences. . . . The Jewish character is feminine.”110 Brenner’s challenge was intended as a protest against the absence of creativity and seriousness in the settlement of Palestine, and mainly against the absence of a mass movement of pioneering nation builders: “If we presently do not have a national settlement movement . . . [it is] a mark, a mark of Cain, that

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middlemen let it be so.”111 But like Mendele, Brenner, in the end, becomes reconciled with his people: hope is not lost, even though logic asks, “How can we become not-us?” As in Here and There, Brenner replies with an intuitive-mystical revelation that is beyond logic: “The yearning for life in us says: Anything is possible. The yearning for life in us whispers hope to us: Workers’ settlements, workers’ settlements. Workers’ settlements—that is our revolution. The only one.”112 To Brenner’s regret, this article did not elicit a great public response,113 even though the article in its entirety, like the lectures on which it was based, was intended to provoke, incite, and encourage a debate.114 On this occasion, however, Rabbi Benjamin responded with extremely harsh criticism: the Jews are no worse than any other people. The parasitism and the aversion to physical labor that Brenner attributes to Jews are not a true reflection of reality—millions of Jews all over the world are engaged in trades and crafts, not just mediating. And regarding the “redeeming” workers’ settlements, other forms of settlement are no less worthy. Brenner’s exaggerated indictment of his people separates rather than brings them closer.115 At the end of January 1913, Rabbi Benjamin’s wife gave birth to a son. In the postcard in which the happy father informed Brenner of his son’s birth, he also thanked Chaya “for the trouble she took with ‘Kavim’ (Lines).”116 This is the first hint of the budding relationship between Brenner and Chaya Broide. Some two weeks later, Rabbi Benjamin congratulated Brenner on his new accommodation (apparently adjacent to Chaya’s room).117 The relationship between Brenner and Chaya was known to their close friends, for when he invited Brenner to his son’s circumcision ceremony, Rabbi Benjamin added a special invitation to Chaya and also appended an invitation to K. Y. Silman, who apparently knew about the Brenner-Chaya relationship as well. Rabbi Benjamin wrote to Brenner in May that “we received a postcard from Chaya. Please give her our regards”; in other words, Brenner was now the address for exchange of information concerning Chaya.118 In June 1913 Brenner and Chaya began a continuous correspondence that was extremely important for their developing relationship. This time Brenner experienced neither the powerful emotions nor the self-­assurance in the profundity of his longing and the rightness of his choice with Chaya that he had felt with Hassia Feinsod.

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This time it was a friendship that developed slowly, an intimacy that grew gradually. By June 1913, when their correspondence documents the relationship, it had been going on for several months. Chaya appears to have been the prime mover in their relationship. After about six months of intimacy, she wrote a warm and candid love letter to him from Jaffa, expressing concern for his wellbeing: “I kissed my pillow, I kissed my hand—the place touched by your lips, and I fell asleep.” She signs it, “Yours with great love.”119 He received her letter lovingly but replied with restraint: “When you return I shall expand, instead of being brief, as I am now.” He signs the letter: “With affectionate kisses on your hand and the fringe on your forehead.”120 Had it not been for his letters to Hassia Feinsod, one might think that he was always so reticent about revealing his feelings. In the two months that followed, Chaya was in Jerusalem, so they did not correspond. But they lived next door to one another, and Brenner would go into her room to work. Chaya went to Jaffa again in August 1913 to attend a teachers’ conference, and their correspondence was renewed. The loneliness caused by her absence was good for Brenner: “All day today and yesterday too, I felt very good, a light and easy mood, truly the joy of loneliness.”121 He was not yet thinking about a lasting relationship but hoped that in the coming winter they would be neighbors and help one another. He feared “those terrible moments you know about, when everything is a burden on me,” and that because of them their relationship might founder. He wanted a relationship but was afraid of it, either because he was incapable of maintaining it or because Chaya was not the woman for him. He had doubts about Chaya that he had not felt with Hassia. Chaya possessed qualities that were not to his liking. “I thought that despite all your negative aspects, which are no fault of yours, just as I am not to blame for all my shortcomings, you are a good person, you suffer and seek good and reform, and your positive qualities are greater than your negative ones,” he wrote her in a display of uninhibited candor and from a sober view that love did not distort.122 In Hassia ­Feinsod’s letter to Lipa Sukenik from that fall, she responds to his news that Brenner and Chaya were an item. “I do not believe your news about Chaya and Brenner. I know his opinion of her. With such an opinion of a woman is it still possible [for him] to be for her what you write?”123 There is no way of knowing what short­comings Brenner had

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enumerated in Chaya. Was it her lightheartedness that bothered him? Perhaps he detected a degree of selfishness in her that angered him? Or was it her assertiveness and independence that put him off? Was it superficiality that bothered him? Or perhaps it was her possessive tendency that frightened Brenner, who wanted to protect his privacy and monkish lifestyle? Just as he did not ignore Chaya’s shortcomings, he also recognized his own: the difficulty of being with him when depression struck, his difficulty in being a partner. He wanted to love her, he wanted the emotional equilibrium that the relationship had created for him, but he feared that even the slightest deviation from the existing situation might upset the harmony. While she was in Jaffa, he turned down her request for him to join her there: “If you only knew the good life I am presently living here in your room, then you would, like me, be afraid that I might lose this great happiness were I to leave.” He goes on to explain: “I am particularly concerned about and wish to protect the peace and friendship I now have for you . . . and I want it so much—and now it is here, right now.”124 It sometimes happens that absence really does make the heart grow fonder. While Chaya was in Tel Aviv, Brenner reached the conclusion that he wanted a permanent relationship with her. “Today I thought: she has suffered so much at my hands, perhaps more than I at hers. Our friendship is sealed with torment and cannot be undone. Happily, it also need not be undone,” he wrote to her, adding, “afterward I thought about you a lot with affectionate longing.”125 Brenner’s restraint is revealing: he avoids using the specific word “love,” which he used when writing to Hassia without a second thought. Chaya, however, gushes: “I would take your head into my arms and cover it with kisses,” she writes in response. “Yes, my torments were many, and I am willing to suffer more, and in my heart the hope will not be extinguished that at one great moment you will be able das alles ­oiskoifen [to repay for all this].” She sees herself as a victim of his mood swings but hopes that in the end he will take the bull by the horns and make their relationship a lasting one. “And, involuntarily, I see before me a scene from Crime and Punishment, the one that comes at the end of the book, when Raskolnikov kneels before Sonya.”126 The Raskolnikov-Sonya image was unsuited to their relationship: she was no prostitute and he was not a repentant murderer. But this image

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of Dostoevsky’s protagonists and their spiritual torment, which led to purification, reveals Chaya’s state of mind. She expected an act of redemption from Brenner, expected him to recognize her suffering and soothe and compensate her for all her anguish. Being apart from her strengthened Brenner in his emotions. He put the strength of his longing to the test. “I would like to see you in a way that I could never have imagined,” he wrote to her.127 He was happy in his loneliness in Jerusalem, but to his surprise he missed her. He warns her about the anguish that both of them will face in their closer relationship. He describes how they will spend their leisure time together: “Eating together, studying the Bible, reading Schoffman, walks to Kerem Avraham [Abraham’s Vineyard, a Jerusalem neighborhood] and Rachel’s Tomb.” He continues: “If I have the strength, as I have at present, to kiss you as I wish and place you as a seal over my heart, then surely the emptiness will dwindle to almost nothing. But there will be torment.” He leaves the decision on whether to continue their relationship to her. “You know that there will be suffering because of my difficult and unsure character, so do what your heart tells you.” He appends to the letter a list of the shortcomings he finds in her and suggests that she compile a similar list about him. Unfortunately, the list was not preserved. Chaya possibly preferred not to keep it. And for the first time he signs the letter, “I give you a long kiss.”128 A few days later, after her return to Jerusalem, Brenner proposed. They walked to Motza one enchanted night, and it seems that the decision was made there. “I cannot forget how we went back to Motza after accompanying S [Silman?] and that whole evening!” she wrote to him emotionally. The rumor spread rapidly. “I met Silman yesterday,” Chaya wrote to Brenner, who was convalescing in Motza, “and he started. . . . He had heard, he wanted to know whether it was true, he doesn’t believe it. The truth? He was genuinely and wholeheartedly happy. ‘You have won, Chaya,’ he said, ‘you have won.’”129 It was clear to the couple’s friends that Chaya very much wanted to marry, whereas Brenner was undecided. Throughout the month of September, they exchanged words of affection and love. Brenner was grateful for the love that Chaya heaped on him. But the depression returned to assail him, not allowing him to celebrate like other people. His moods changed from one day to the next: one day, he felt that he was criti-

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cally ill, that the stay in Motza was not helping him; the next, he was fine;130 whereas she was dreaming of the intimacy of a family room, a warm and friendly home, with both of them reading, talking, and working together, with the light of love shining on them.131 The ceremony was conducted by the elderly Azar, a worthy and observant Jew. Brenner was thirty-two, and Chaya twenty-four. On 1 October 1913, Hapoel Hatzair published the following announcement: “The editorial board offers its congratulations to its author Mr. Y. H. Brenner on the occasion of his marriage to Miss Chaya Broide.” At the end of September 1913, Brenner informed several colleagues and close friends about his marriage. “I wish to inform you that I have taken a wife,” he wrote to Berdyczewski.132 “I received a letter from Brenner today in which he informed me that he has recently married Chaya Broide,” David Shimonovich wrote to Dina Feffermeister. Dina, ­Chaya’s close friend from Berlin and now a kindergarten teacher in ­Rishon Lezion, already knew about it: “Nu, so what do you say about it?” she wrote back to Shimonovich. “Had I seen you,” Shimonovich replied, “I would have found material for an hour-long talk, perhaps even two hours, and maybe more. But as I sit down to write, my strength fails me and I have nothing to say.”133 The historian can only regret S ­ himonovich’s laziness, for he was among those closest to Brenner. Agnon, who lived then in Germany, heard about Chaya and Brenner’s marriage after the event and sent the couple his congratulations. “The saying goes, ‘Mazel tov un lekach is kein mal nit shpet’ [it is never too late for congratulations and cake]—and so my dearly beloved friend, I wish you and your house mazel tov and all the happiness in the world, that you should have a long life with your chosen wife and be joyful with her all your life!”134 A few months later, he sent Chaya some chocolate and wished her, “May you and your spouse enjoy it.”135 Lachover heard about Brenner’s marriage relatively late, at the end of December 1913. “I could hardly believe the rumor I heard,” he wrote to Brenner, “but Shimonovich was here and showed it to me in print.”136 Itzkovitz heard about the marriage in October 1913: “Congratulations to all of us,” he wrote to Poznansky. “Our Brenner has married. Did you read about it in Hapoel Hatzair? I saw it yesterday and was astounded. Nu, nu.”137 Reactions to Brenner’s marriage were a mixture of surprise and a certain perplexity. But his loyal admirer Menachem Poznansky re-

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sponded with a love letter: “And you know, Brenner, that sometime in the future I was going to reveal the secret of my love for you? You are a hard man and feel nothing. If you only knew how many things are hidden within me regarding that love.” It seems that Poznansky himself was somewhat embarrassed by this outpouring of sentiment and felt the need to explain it: “Had it not been for that short line in Hapoel Hatzair about your ceasing to be a bachelor, I would never have written you about it. What will you say about my joy? But I accept the verdict, which is pleasing for me, pleasing and close.” And then he makes a remark that is both enigmatic and revealing: “And on the other hand I appreciate that it is as if the defect in my heart has been fixed, the defect caused by the words you once uttered to me in Lvov on this selfsame subject.”138 What did Brenner say to him in Lvov that caused this defect that was repaired by his marriage? Did Brenner say anything that hinted about his unfitness for marriage? That he was unable to be a husband? It is doubtful that such a thing would have deterred an admirer like Poznansky. But is it possible that Brenner blurted out something that was construed as his lack of feeling toward women? This would explain the defect in Poznansky’s heart and also his subsequent avoidance of the subject. It also fits with Poznansky’s willingness to express his love for Brenner once the menacing erotic interpretation had been removed by the writer’s marriage. Brenner, who had been in touch with Poznansky intermittently since the Lvov days, responded to what he called “the love letter” in the spirit in which it was written: the platonic love of a pupil for his teacher, of an admirer for his idol. “I have received your love letter. I enjoyed it of course. But there is one bitter drop in this glass: that perhaps this love is nurtured by a mistake. Perhaps I am not the man.”139 Brenner chose not to respond Poznansky’s comment about the defect that had been repaired. Uri Nissan Gnessin passed away in Warsaw on 6 March 1913. Brenner and Gnessin had not been in touch since the London days. Brenner had sent him regards through others, but it is doubtful whether he wrote to him. The same was true of Gnessin. The two friends would occasionally inquire about each other’s doings through a third party. At Menachem Gnessin’s home, Brenner would read Uri Nissan’s letters to his brother and father, and Uri Nissan would ask Beilin about what Brenner was writing.140 Uri Nissan asked ­Bichovsky, their mutual friend

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from ­Pochep, for issues of Ha’akhdut with Brenner’s articles “because I would like to know what that Jew is engaged with at present.”141 Among the few books that Brenner published himself— Orloff’s H ­ aggadat hamavet (The tale of death), Agnon’s And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, and Reuveni’s Beit hamarpeh (The sanatorium)—there was one translation, by Gnessin, of a Chekhov short story, “Mire.” We do not know how Brenner negotiated this with Gnessin. Brenner gave the translation fee to Menachem Gnessin, who was living in Palestine at the time. He wrote to Bichovsky that he was sending him two copies of the book, “one for you, and the other for the translator, whose whereabouts are unknown to me.”142 There is a note of sadness and also vexation in Brenner’s avoidance of mentioning Uri Nissan’s name in his letter to their mutual friend, which is similar to Gnessin referring to Brenner as “that Jew.” In early 1913 Gnessin lay dying from heart disease for many long weeks in Warsaw, with Lachover attending him. A month after ­Gnessin’s death, Lachover informed Brenner of his friend’s passing: “You should know,” he wrote, “that on his last night he was talking in his sleep (sleep that bore more than a shade of death) and when he was awake about Petach Tikva, a boyara [woman farmer], a ‘Polya,’ and about you. At times he called out your name, and when one of us told him that you were not here and asked him whether he knew that, for some reason he answered in Russian: ‘Of course I know, but I have to tell him something.’”143 We do not know how Brenner responded to this. We can only imagine his heartbreak over his dead friend, over their friendship that had soured, the precious contact that had been severed. His guilt feelings are clearly evident in his moving essay, the conclusion written for the Hatzida anthology that he edited in Gnessin’s memory. During his lifetime Gnessin did not see a critique of his novellas that was worthy of the name. They were for connoisseurs, a delight for the very few. But with his death, several people sought to perpetuate his memory. They naturally approached Brenner, asking him to edit an anthology. According to the proposal by the Russian group, whose spokesman was Bichovsky, the anthology would take the form of memories of and articles on Gnessin. The plan did not appeal to Brenner. He wanted a literary-artistic anthology, containing new literary pieces and perhaps reproductions of paintings, things about

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Gnessin that had not yet been said, and, mainly, Gnessin’s letters.144 It seems that B ­ ichovsky accepted Brenner’s conditions, and Brenner began writing to all his writer friends with an energy reminiscent of the ­Hameorer days. The list of writers he approached contained not only all his closest friends but also some he liked less, such as Zalman ­Schneur. Hazman published an item about the upcoming anthology.145 It was quickly apparent that obtaining new original material was fraught with difficulty. Frishman replied enthusiastically: “I cannot tell you how much I liked this man,” he wrote to Brenner. “He was perhaps the one genuine talent of all of us. In any event he was the most profound in his feelings.”146 Frishman, however, only agreed that Brenner could republish his article on Gnessin, which had appeared in Hatsfira; he was not prepared to write something new. Brenner suggested to Beilin that he expand and further develop an article on Gnessin he had published in Hatsfira and also that he publish Gnessin’s letters to him. Beilin’s reply touched a raw nerve: “I am unable to publish the few letters I received from Gnessin,” he replied tersely, thus hinting that the letters contained references that would concern Brenner.147 In the end, the anthology consisted of a few of Gnessin’s poems written in his youth, some of his letters, a previously unpublished piece from his estate, and pen portraits by his admirers and friends, a mélange of appreciations of his works, on his personality, and a few memories. Brenner did not receive the literary works that he had wanted to publish in the anthology. Writers who had promised to write, including Beilin, Kabak, Nomberg, Poznansky, and Berdyczewski, disappointed him. Even Lachover, who was so close to Gnessin, abstained. Schoffman wrote a piece titled “Gnessin,” describing their meeting in Homel and the excitement he felt at meeting a kindred spirit: “Things like that are experienced only by novice writers, boy writers, when they come across a like-minded soul in a foreign land, when wandering, at the beginning of autumn,” a definition that also fit his relationship with Brenner. Brenner’s essay on Gnessin, “Uri Nissan,” which concluded H ­ atzida, is some of his best prose. “All day I was alarmed by the lamentation of life and the profound sorrow,” Berdyczewski wrote him after reading the essay. “God almighty! You possessed such great poetry and poured it onto paper incidentally.”148 The cry was stifled, the pain restrained,

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whereas the love was forthright, gentle, and warm. It seems that this was one of Brenner’s works in which he reveals his writing talent when not striving to write as an “author.” The so-human gentleness in it is reminiscent of the concluding scene in Here and There. Nothing separates Brenner and the reader. It is self-flagellation, atonement for Brenner’s sin in London, when he was impervious to his friend’s suffering, when he did not see that he was gravely ill. He attempts to apologize with the excuse that Gnessin did not tell him about his illness. “Had I known, perhaps it would have been different.” But his ignorance, as Beilin wrote much later, only reinforces the impression that his focus was on his own suffering. Brenner condemns himself: he censures his own pettiness, his ignoring his gentle, noble friend’s suffering. He concludes the essay with an expression of pain on the rift between them: “From then until his dying day, from Pochep, and from Warsaw, he continued writing to Beilin, but I did not receive a single line from him, nor chance regards.”149 Uri Nissan Gnessin was not one of the people whom Brenner viewed as a source of inspiration. But on the personal, emotional level, he had a special place in Brenner’s life. With the appearance of Hatzida, the anthology bearing the title of Gnessin’s celebrated story in the spring of 1914, Chaya was already pregnant. The child would be named Uri Nissan. The second half of 1913 was a period of intense activity for Brenner, despite his recurring complaints about both his health and financial situation. He also continued to support his family in Palestine and Russia, and it appears that poverty was not his lot. As mentioned earlier, he finished writing “Enosh ki yidkeh,” which was to become Breakdown and Bereavement. Lachover suggested that he publish his new book in the second Netivot collection, because the first collection had made a fine impression with both its quantity and quality. Brenner agreed but demanded that the book would be published under a pseudonym. He decided to waive the high author’s fee for a writer of his stature and publish the book without his name, if only to save him from being “a rag on which everyone wipes their hands.”150 He was prepared to give up a substantial sum to avoid strife, even though it was hard for him to lose a penny. Agnon tells about one of his friends from Jaffa, who drew his attention to the careful way Brenner undid and closed his purse, saying, “Not that he is a miser, it is just hard for him to spend

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a penny on himself.”151 He would send letters to Rabbi Benjamin and his sister in the same envelope. Chaya’s comment that the cost of postage was minimal fell on deaf ears. “What do you think,” he replied, “a few pennies is also money.”152 In the end Brenner decided to postpone publication of his book and informed Lachover that he should publish the second Netivot without him.153 “Enosh ki yidkeh,” which he also called “Zvula batraita” (Last frontier) and “Al saf hamargea’a” (On the verge of serenity) did not yet have its final form and title. Brenner’s moral and human sensitivity was renowned in the Yishuv. People in need of help had no hesitation in approaching the famous writer. There is a story about a young man from Lodz who came to Jerusalem, lodged with a widow, and wooed her seventeen-year-old daughter. He was an unknown quantity for the mother, and out of concern for her daughter, she poured out her heart to Brenner. Without further ado Brenner wrote to Poznansky in Lodz and then wrote again, asking him to make inquiries about the young man to pacify the anxious mother.154 Another instance is the Bezalel School student who ambushed a Jew in the dead of night and murdered him, and then the murderer and his accomplice vanished. The victim’s widow sought the public’s help in finding the murderer and bringing him to justice. Appended to the letter she published in Haherut was a letter of support from Brenner, Heshin, and Reuveni. “Let none among us hide the murderer and his accomplice when they have been traced, for this lies at the very core of our being.”155 Brenner was the best known of the three. A group of students from the Herzliya Gymnasium in Jaffa wanting to learn about vegetarianism, but in Hebrew, approached him with a request for bibliography.156 When the “language war” broke out in fall 1913 (a public struggle led by teachers and students for the exclusive use of Hebrew in the Ezra network schools, which also taught in German, with a technical school about to open in Haifa that would teach in that language), a group of teachers’ seminar and business school students in Jerusalem (the business school was owned by Ezra) that had organized to fight the use of German in teaching the sciences approached Brenner and entrusted him with a students’ oath of loyalty. The oath was a warrant by all the signatories that they would leave the school en bloc if the management did not accept their de-

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mands, or if it tried to drive a wedge between them by dismissing any of them for their activities in the struggle. The oath was entrusted to Brenner “for safekeeping, and it is incumbent on the latter to publicly shame those comrades from among the undersigned who break this oath.”157 And indeed, one of the five signatories, Shimon Menashe, “broke his oath,” and Brenner published the matter in Haherut.158 These events, written testimonies of which have been preserved, were probably but a drop in the ocean among the approaches made to Brenner by people in distress who knew that he would not turn them away. Shlomit Flaum mentions the “zeal, with which he always seeks to quietly help his fellow man,” adding that “contrary to his ungainly and unpolished appearance, he was very soft and gentle, and his heart was open to all.”159 It is small wonder that he aroused love and loyalty in people like Poznansky or ­Itzkovitz. In far-off Galicia, Haim ­Itzkovitz heard about the appearance of Revivim 3/4 and recalled the time when Brenner was in Lvov and edited the previous anthologies. “The same superior man whom I shall never forget,” he wrote to Poznansky; “I would be overjoyed if I were able to sit beside him and see the nervous smile on his serious, kindly face.”160 The contrast between Brenner’s desire for reclusion and his ability to detach himself from his human surroundings, on the one hand, and his incessant involvement on behalf of the deprived, on the other, is one of his paradoxical characteristics. The young family settled into its new life during the fall and winter of 1913–1914. Brenner and Chaya moved into a new apartment. “Our house is almost all arranged and gives a pleasant impression,” Chaya wrote to her husband; “only your room is somewhat desolate.” Hassia Feinsod, who had returned from Poland, was friendly with Chaya and visited her frequently. She remarked on Brenner’s “desolate” room, and Chaya explained that she was fulfilling its occupant’s wishes.161 Brenner, as we know, needed this monkish atmosphere. Thus, two domains were created in the one apartment: that of Chaya, who wanted a home like that of Rabbi Benjamin or the Streit brothers—in the European petit bourgeois style—and the other of Brenner, who wanted to maintain his asceticism. Chaya Rotberg, a young woman worker who came to Palestine in 1913, went to Brenner’s house with her partner. It was a single-story stone building with a long hallway, and in the rooms

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off it lived the Heshin family, with whom Rotberg was friendly, Aharon Reuveni, and the Brenners. Lunch, to which Rotberg and her partner were invited, was served on a white tablecloth with proper silverware and consisted of soup, chicken, a dessert, and white bread. Rotberg the worker was astounded: she had not had a meal like it since leaving her parents’ home in Russia.162 But despite the inbuilt difference between the way of life that Chaya wanted and the one Brenner was used to, their relationship was based on mutual concern: Chaya tended to Brenner’s comfort, his clothes and underwear, and was his “helpmeet.” She was also sensitive toward her husband’s family. When Brenner complained about his brother Binyamin’s situation and said that they would have to bring him to live with them in Jerusalem, she immediately agreed. When he lamented his sister Ahuva’s situation, Chaya volunteered to take on extra work during the summer so that they would be able to help her make ends meet.163 The letters exchanged by the Brenners are filled with warmth and love. “Throughout all this time my heart is filled with a special emotion for you, Chayaleh, which to my regret I cannot express,” Brenner wrote to his wife.164 To which she replies: “I dream about you every night, Yosef Haim, every night. And last night I dreamed I was pressed close to you and covered you with innumerable kisses.”165 In his recollections of Uri Nissan Gnessin in Petach Tikva, M ­ aharshak, a friend of the Brenners, wrote that Gnessin held family life in high esteem but with particular requirements: he thought that “what is needed at this time for an educated man, who is a bundle of nerves, is a simple wife, a Jewish woman of the old kind, a housewife, without excessive wisdom, a wife who will not trouble her husband with questions about literature and art, with questions about life.”166 Thus Gnessin. Did Brenner subscribe to this view? According to Agnon he was not far from it. Nevertheless, he chose Chaya for his wife and encouraged her to take part in his work. She helped him with the proofreading of Ha’akhdut, copied his articles, and kept the reviews of his work.167 Brenner made her a part of his intellectual life. Chaya was considered to be not only Brenner’s life partner but also a partner in his work to the extent that he allowed it. She continued working as a kindergarten teacher after her marriage, a rare occurrence at the time. All of this shows that Brenner was relatively open to equality in their relationship.

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The people of the Second Aliya treated sexual relations as a very private subject, shared only with a few close friends. Although not puritanical in their relationships, they kept them under a heavy shroud of secrecy and mystery. Much later, when Poznansky edited Brenner’s correspondence, he did everything in his power to conceal Chaya’s existence. Brenner’s letters to her were presented in fragmentary form. Brenner’s references to his wife were brutally deleted. Almost the only place where Chaya’s name was left in was in a short letter from Brenner to Azar, who had married the couple, informing him of the birth of Uri Nissan.168 Even references to Chaya made by others were deleted. Whether this was Poznansky’s decision or Chaya’s, whose wishes Poznansky respected, is unknown. In the correspondence between Chaya and Brenner in December 1913, when Brenner was away on a lecture tour, one subject was kept secret: they expected, hoped, and prayed that Chaya was pregnant. “The state of my health has not changed. A big appetite and lack of knowledge,” Chaya wrote to him at the beginning of the tour.169 He responded with hope and the fear of disappointment: “Regarding the ‘lack of knowledge’ you wrote about, in an old medical book I found by chance, it says that cessation of Mn [menstruation] is not a sign at all. It is only in the third month that the woman starts to feel something . . . and I have stopped hoping as I did before.”170 He looks forward to news from her. In the meantime he inquires about purchasing a half-acre plot of land in Nachalat Yehuda, a new moshav, so they can live in a village, and in his heart he hopes for a child.171 Chaya was indeed pregnant, and it was a good time for them both. There is no continuing correspondence from the pregnancy period, and there are only sporadic references to their relationship. Brenner’s attitude toward Chaya, who was carrying his child, was as if she were the mother of the Messiah. But a worm continued to gnaw at him. He writes her a letter intended to bring them closer, to touch both their souls, to reveal the depths of their feelings. But the innocent reader cannot but wonder about the nature of the relationship that is revealed. Brenner asks himself: “Is Chaya uplifted by marrying me or not?” He is not convinced that he has made her happy, because he is incapable of doing so, but “had you learned anything from it [their marriage], then you would have also found something in me as I am, and in our

The Jerusalem Years, 1911–1914

present life too.” Did he feel that she found no interest in their life together? Had she expected something different? “I know what you can and cannot do—moralizing will not help.” And he goes on: “I, Chaya, understand everything and know everything. Everything, everything.” Does he mean the negative qualities he found in her before their marriage? But he asks the very same question of himself: “And you, Yosef Haim, have you been elevated?” Here, too, he replies in the negative, but qualifies himself: “But I have seen and learned a great deal, I have delved deep.” And he concludes with an enigmatic sentence: “And for that I am grateful. And ready for anything. Do you hear? Anything! Anything that might happen to me. Do you hear?” He concludes this letter with expressions of love: “From me, your true friend, who is prepared to hold you and be your support inasmuch as he is able, and who asks the same of you.”172 This letter, written at the peak of the burgeoning love between Brenner and Chaya, when he guarded her like the apple of his eye, hints at something that was missing in their relationship, at opposing expectations, at an intimacy that had been missed. It is unclear what exactly went wrong, but whatever it was became apparent just a few months after the wedding. On 20 July 1917, Chaya gave birth to their son. The circumcision ceremony took place on the appointed day, and the child was named Uri Nissan Brenner. “We heartily congratulate our friends Yosef Haim and Chaya Brenner on the birth of their firstborn son,” the Hapoel Hatzair announcement read, “May you live to induct him into Torah study, marriage, and good deeds!”173 In early August, Brenner sought more than ever to realize his membership in Moshav Nachalat ­Yehuda, some six months after being accepted as a member. “Now that Chaya has given birth safely, my one wish is that the child grow up in a moshava, not the city.”174 But larger forces intervened: World War I broke out only a few days later, and his plans to move to the country­side came to naught.175 Dark clouds suddenly gathered on the horizon. The young couple and their infant son now faced long years of uncertainty.

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The thunder of the cannons in August 1914 heralding the outbreak of war in Europe was also heard in faraway Palestine. The Yishuv was cut off from its lifelines overnight: maritime contact with the outside world was broken. Import and export came to a halt: the country was unable to market its citrus fruit and wine or import staples, such as fuel, sugar, rice, and flour. Cultural and welfare institutions, secular and religious, Zionist and anti-Zionist, suddenly found themselves without financial support, and their existence was in jeopardy. There was a run on the banks as people withdrew their deposits. Within two days the Anglo-Palestine Bank paid out a quarter of a million French francs, and the Turkish government declared a moratorium, postponing payments until after the war. Bank deposits were frozen. There was a severe shortage of gold coins, the most accepted form of payment. Turkish banknotes were severely devalued. Those who could hoarded basic staples, fearing the approaching shortages. “The situation is terrible,” Kruglyakov wrote to Brenner. “There is no credit, even for people with money in the bank. The price of food has increased drastically. The situation is grave. Nobody has any money, there are no buyers, and it is impossible to bring in merchandise, even if there were customers.”1 Inflation soared from day to day. From this point on, shortage became a frequent visitor in the homes of thousands of families. The old Yishuv, which depended on the distribution of charity, was cut off from its source of income. The new Yishuv was also hit hard, especially the city dwellers engaged in trade and crafts who depended on the import of raw material and goods. The inhabitants of the moshavot and the farms, who grew their own food, suffered much less. Hundreds of workers were fired

Wartime, 1914–1918

because of the slowdown in construction and the cessation of export of agricultural produce. In the months before the outbreak of war, Brenner received several offers of work intended to ease the young family’s financial situation and enable him to devote himself to writing. But only a month passed and the whole picture changed. The journals stopped paying. From early summer on, Brenner did not receive his salary from Hapoel ­Hatzair.2 When he complained to Aharonowitz that the shopkeeper was about to cut off his credit, Aharonowitz replied, describing the situation in Jaffa: “It appears from your letter that your situation is very good, [because the shopkeeper] cut off ours a long time ago. People are not giving credit anywhere, even a pruta [penny], and there is no money.”3 All the plans in the cultural realm were shelved. People were thinking solely about the immediate crisis. At the end of September 1914, the USS North Carolina sailed into Jaffa carrying 50,000 gold coins, a donation from the Jews of the United States to the Jewish Yishuv. This was the outcome of an approach to Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador in Constantinople, by the Committee for Easing the Crisis, headed by Arthur Ruppin. The United States entered the war at a late stage, in 1917, and in the meantime was neutral and bore great influence in Constantinople. Thus, American vessels were able to reach the shores of Palestine on a monthly basis, bringing in money and food and evacuating foreign nationals “stranded” in Palestine who wanted to go back to their own countries. Italian vessels also evacuated foreign nationals until Italy entered the war in 1915. The ships from the United States were the Yishuv’s lifeline, and it is estimated that during the war years they brought some one million dollars into the country.4 The money was distributed by public figures organized into special committees for this purpose, first and foremost representing the new Yishuv and the ­Sephardi community, which cooperated with the Yishuv leadership. A few days after the arrival of USS North Carolina, Brenner was invited to join the Jerusalem committee for the distribution of the American aid.5 It allocated money to soup kitchens, hospitals, and old-age homes, provided cheap foodstuffs for the needy, and tried to find work for the unemployed. The committee elected Brenner as its secretary, a salaried post.6 This was an expression of trust in him as an incorruptible man who favored

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neither rich nor poor. But it was apparently also the result of efforts made by the Jerusalem intelligentsia to ensure that the young Brenner family would not go hungry. The committee’s minutes were taken in Hebrew and are in Brenner’s handwriting. He did not contribute a great deal to their deliberations. The intrigues and friction that were quickly revealed and the tension between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the committee’s discussions were certainly not to Brenner’s liking. Also, he was completely inexperienced in allocation of funds.7 Part of the U.S. aid allocated to the Zionist Organization’s Palestine Office was given to the various journals, enabling their continued appearance. The printing presses were given financial support so they could continue employing their workers, which reduced unemployment. Writers were given aid money for make-work, translations of selected world literature. Aharonowitz decided to continue publishing Hapoel Hatzair, while Ha’akhdut fought for its continued existence. At this time Brenner received an invitation from the Ben Shemen farm, managed by his old admirer Yitzhak Wilkansky, to move there with his family. Wilkansky saw an opportunity for not only doing a good deed but for also providing work for writers: he wanted to establish a professional “agricultural library” and also a journal, Bakfar [In rural life], which would publish “stories in the pioneering spirit or of idyllic country life.” His intention was to translate works, with Brenner as editor. Funding was provided by the Palestine Office.8 Subsistence worries in Ben Shemen were probably not as pressing as in Jerusalem. At the agricultural settlement there was bread to eat and milk to drink, which was very important for a couple with a baby. The spirit of Ben Shemen also fell in line with Brenner’s dream of having his son grow up in a settlement of tillers of the soil. The Brenner family moved from Jerusalem to Ben Shemen in November 1914.9 They were given a pleasant corner room in the farm’s big building, where they lived in relative comfort.10 Brenner did not go back to Jerusalem to live until his final days. Meanwhile, the political situation worsened. On 8 September 1914, Turkey announced its abrogation of the Capitulations, agreements with the Great Powers that gave foreign consuls the right to sit in judgment over subjects from their own countries. The protection foreign subjects had against the arbitrariness of the Ottoman government was now withdrawn. Abruptly, everything was in the hands of

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officials for whom the duty of care for the rights, wellbeing, and welfare of the people under their jurisdiction was not part of their guiding ethos. The Jews were particularly vulnerable: first, because most of them were foreign nationals, and second, because in October 1914 Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-­Hungary), turning all Russian Jews into enemy subjects. People such as Brenner, who had fled Russia clandestinely, did not possess a passport of any kind. Subjects of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Turkey’s allies, were given preferential treatment, but then those countries’ Capitulations were also abrogated. Whether to “Otto­ manize” became the burning question. The Turks demanded that foreign nationals, especially the subjects of enemy states, must either leave the country or be issued an Ottoman identity card. The problem was that accepting the identity card meant compulsory conscription into the Turkish army, where service conditions were appalling: hunger, disease, filth, whippings, humiliation, and sexual exploitation. 11 Those who were able chose to waive the privilege of defending the Ottoman homeland. The other possibility was to leave Palestine. Thousands chose this option so as not to be subject to the grace and favor of a tyrannical and arbitrary regime. But after the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, which challenged the autocracy by restoring the constitution and establishing a parliament, Poalei Zion thought that the Yishuv should integrate into the Ottoman Empire, which was why Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi went to Constantinople to study Turkish law. Now this party led the fight for Ottomanization and against fleeing the country.12 All the members of the editorial board, the printing workers, and the activists hastened to register as candidates for Ottomanization. Hapoel Hatzair also supported this step, but less enthusiastically. In addition to doubts about the wisdom of such a move, registration entailed a financial penalty: a 37.50 franc Ottomanization tax.13 Nevertheless, within a month some two thousand people registered in Jerusalem for Ottoman citizenship.14 On “Black Thursday,” 17 December 1914, the inhabitants of Tel Aviv and Jaffa were hit by an expulsion decree applicable to all foreign nationals. The announcement was sudden and informed all foreign subjects that they must immediately board an Italian ship anchored in Jaffa

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Port and go into exile in Alexandria. In her book Le’et ata (Meanwhile), Devorah Baron describes how the meal was laid on the table, the stove was lit, and milk warming on it—and then the decree hit them and in one fell swoop ripped the routine of life apart. The expulsion was brutal and came without warning, with no time to pack, get organized, or put house and family matters in order. The police and soldiers acted with ruthless force against the deportees. In the ensuing pandemonium, parents were separated from their children, women from their husbands. Baggage was loaded onto the ship without its owners. All this was done while humiliating the deportees and with contemptible acts of robbery.15 Panic arose, and within only a few days some 1,400 Jews had left the country.16 The intensive activity of the Poalei Zion leaders was to no avail: Ha’akhdut was closed down by order of the censor. The Turkish authorities viewed Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi as dangerous, and they were among the first ten deportees.17 These were the first signs of persecution of Zionists and discrimination against them by the Turkish authorities. But not only Jews were subject to the authorities’ arbitrariness; the entire population suffered at their hands. Hassan Bek, the kaymakam (governor) of Jaffa, and Baha al-Din, the city’s commandant, vied with one another in their abuse of the inhabitants. No one’s life, property, or human dignity was safe. Jamal Pasha, the supreme commander of the Turkish forces from Syria southward and commander of the front against the British was one of the triumvirate of pashas that had taken power in 1913. He possessed all the qualities of a tyrant, along with aspirations of bringing the achievements of Europe to Western Asia. For him, any sign of nationalism spelled danger for the empire. He wrathfully and furiously hounded the Arab dignitaries and had no hesitation over executing fifteen of them in Damascus on suspicion of nationalist leanings. At best, his attitude toward Zionism was one of suspicion; at worst, hostility. Baha al-Din was a Turkish-Arab patriot, and his hatred of Jews stemmed from both his Arabness and his Ottoman loyalty. All Jewish national symbols were forbidden.18 The Yishuv leaders were ordered to be deported to either Constantinople or Damascus, and, after importuning and groveling, to Tiberias. The leaders of Hashomer, Manya and Yisrael Shochat were also deported. A few months later, so were Aharonowitz and his family.19 Zerubavel left the country early in 1916.20

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Out of the country’s 85,000 Jews in 1914, only 56,000 remained when the British arrived in 1918. The rest had either fled or been deported, while some died of disease or starvation. It was thanks only to its ties with American Jewry and the Zionists of the Central Powers that the Yishuv was saved from annihilation. Every time the Jews came under threat, they called on their brothers, who would plead their case with the government in Constantinople. This custom did not endear them to the local authorities. Brenner was a partner in the deliberations of the Yishuv population on Ottomanization. He harbored no illusions about the character of the Ottoman rulers. Following the revolution of the Young Turks, Ahad Ha’am heaped praise on the new rulers, claiming that, as opposed to the Russian revolutionaries, who believed in materialism and pinned their hopes on violent action, the Turks followed the path of winning over hearts and minds and implemented a nonviolent revolution. It was moral force, he contended, that triumphed in the Turkish revolution.21 Brenner responded to this claim sarcastically. He termed Ahad Ha’am’s words “prattle, in every sense of the word.”22 His profound anxiety—manifested in a perception that Jewish life everywhere was in a state of constant danger and that Palestine was built on a dormant volcano—was bolstered by the Turks’ tyrannical behavior. It was as if his worst nightmares were coming true. Even so, he did not wish to leave the country and wander to a new place in wartime, when nobody knew where a safe haven might be found. As a husband and father of a baby, his fears were considerably heightened. His two brothers and two sisters were also in Palestine, and he saw himself as responsible for them as well. Chaya’s parents also lived in Palestine, which certainly made it hard for her to leave them at such a time.23 And so, when flight was out of the question, and in any case there was nowhere to flee, Brenner, like many others, left himself the option of Ottomanization by registering himself and his family as Russian—thus circumventing the problem of not possessing a passport—and registering himself and his family with Haham Bashi, the Sephardi chief rabbi, as candidates for Ottomanization.24 In the end, Brenner became Otto­ manized.25 According to one testimony, he even wore the red fez, a symbol of Ottoman identity.26 The Brenner family lived in Ben Shemen for the greater part of 1915.

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Brenner published many more articles in Hapoel Hatzair than he had in the previous year, when over a six-month period he published only two articles and his translation of Tolstoy’s short story “Master and Man.”27 The 1915 articles are mainly critiques of books and commemorative articles on Jewish writers who had passed away. They contain hardly any references to everyday events, as a result of the authorities’ stringent censorship, which had closed down Ha’akhdut. Apart from the articles, Brenner published excerpts from his novel Break­ down and Bereavement in installments. It seems that in the days that followed Aharonowitz’s deportation and the closure of Ha’akhdut by the authorities, Brenner felt an obligation toward Hapoel Hatzair. He enlisted his friend K. Y. Silman to write for it: “I am now taking part in its editing,” he explained.28 When Jacob Rabinowitz was thinking about not writing any more, Brenner vehemently demanded that he continue, for Hapoel Hatzair was “the only journal in Palestine and perhaps the only Hebrew journal in the whole world.”29 This was but a momentary shouldering of responsibility. Between Yitzhak Lufban, who replaced Aharonowitz as “the editorial board,” and Brenner, there was no rapport. In the 24 August 1915 issue, Brenner published an article about the workers in Europe who had sprung to the defense of their respective homelands, abandoning their internationalist ideals. As usual, he applied his criticism to the situation of the Jews, in which he saw “bankruptcy, after which there is nothing,” because the Jews had all enlisted under the flag of their respective countries; there was no Jewish collective. Beneath the article, Lufban added a comment: “This article contains certain representations to which we do not subscribe. —The Editor.” Brenner took umbrage and a rift opened between him and the acting editor.30 Hapoel ­Hatzair was closed down by the authorities in early 1916, and the “editor in charge,” Zvi Kasdan, an Ottoman subject who served as a cover for the real editor, was arrested and served a two-year jail sentence.31 Brenner took up the editorship of the Besha’a zo: Lesifrut uleinyanei hayishuv (At this time: On literature and Yishuv affairs) anthologies, which replaced the journal. It was also a way of easing the writer’s dire financial straits. Three anthologies appeared in the course of 1916, the most important of which was the second, which Brenner dedicated to Bialik to mark twenty-five years of his literary activity and which con-

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tained Brenner’s “Hane’eman,”32 praising Bialik and proving that he, Brenner, was above old hostilities. In summer 1915 the Brenner family moved to Tel Aviv, to a fine house on Gruzenberg Street. Brenner was accepted as a temporary teacher at the Herzliya Gymnasium. That year, the gymnasium celebrated its first decade as the world’s first school to teach all subjects in Hebrew. Jacob Moser, a Jewish philanthropist from England, donated money for the construction of the gymnasium’s permanent home, which was completed in 1910. It was the most imposing of Tel Aviv’s buildings, standing at the end of Herzl Street. With the students came teaching and administration forces, and in 1911 Metman was replaced as principal by Ben-Zion Mosensohn and Haim Bugrashov. They introduced a radical Zionist atmosphere, nurtured the students’ dedication to the principle of “Hebrew, speak Hebrew,” and endowed the gymnasium with the character of a national and secular institution. With the outbreak of war the two principals were deported, and ­Metman came back to run the gymnasium.33 Scores of foreign students found themselves stranded in Palestine, without parental support and with no possibility of returning to their homes in enemy countries. The gymnasium took responsibility for their welfare and education. The constant threat that the gymnasium’s graduates would be conscripted into the Turkish army added to the already existing tension. Despite Brenner’s aversion to the teaching posts offered to him in the past, the present offer, with the opportunity for permanent employment, was extremely attractive now that he was a family man. Even if it were only for a year or two, he hoped that the war would be over by then. The possibility of living in Tel Aviv apparently made Chaya happy, for she loved the city, and life in faraway Ben Shemen was probably not what she would have chosen. Brenner was accepted as a Hebrew literature teacher in the fifth department (today’s ninth grade), even though he had no previous experience or training as a teacher. His hiring as a teacher at the gymnasium was not according to standard procedure. The administration did not seek the opinion of the supervisory committee—that is, the public figures who constituted a sort of board of trustees, headed by Dr. Haim Hissin. One of the committee’s dignitaries, Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen, who also frequently participated in pedagogical committee meetings, viewed this

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as the administration’s intentionally bypassing the supervisory committee. Hacohen’s reservations about Brenner, whom he had known in Homel, originated in the “Brenner affair”; although it had taken place five years earlier, it had not been forgotten. H ­ acohen was a prominent figure, a man of property and fixed ideas, and an observant Jew. He, along other well-to-do citizens who shared his views, found the secular direction taken by the gymnasium unacceptable. Mosensohn, for instance, taught Wallhausen’s Bible criticism, which drew harsh criticism from Zalman Epstein, a religious intellectual, and even from none other than Ahad Ha’am.34 The combination of the radical trends espoused by several of the gymnasium’s teachers and Brenner’s challenging heresy seemed extremely dangerous to Hacohen.35 He decided to check on the new teacher. Over the next two months, Hacohen attended several of Brenner’s lessons. Hacohen was a fair man and had no hesitation in admitting to himself, and apparently in public too, that his fears had been groundless. “I am very happy to acknowledge that in Brenner the gymnasium has acquired a very important pedagogical force,” he wrote in his diary. Brenner was found to be a teacher who taught in the spirit of tradition. He demonstrated love for the rhythm of the liturgy, and according to Hacohen, he endeavored “to bring to the class the traditional volkishness and endear to the students the national assets sanctified by our people for generations.” Brenner’s teaching methods reminded him of those used in the yeshiva, where the students question and answer, reason and refute. The students’ active participation in the lessons stood in refreshing contrast to the boring lectures delivered by other teachers. Hacohen summarized his opinion: “A good teacher: knows his subject and loves his work.”36 Brenner’s inexperience was manifested in the high standard of the lessons he prepared for the fifth-department lessons. His first subject was “literature as national creation.” The lesson began with a definition of literature as “a mirror on life, an expression of life, influenced by it and influencing it.” Then Brenner defined nationalism: in his view the national collective is “an organic composition of individual forces in the chain of the generations.” At the bottom of the page he wrote questions for discussion: What is a people? One race? One religion? The citizens of one country? Speakers of one language? People with a

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shared destiny? And then came the definition: “People sharing a common destiny (historical unity).” From the general definition he came to the Jewish people and defined a series of characteristics: “National dispersion, political degradation, economic backwardness, the lack of a robust peasant class, the lack of a language.” According to him, the solution lay in Zionism. In contrast with the complexity of his attitude toward Zionism, he chose in his role as a teacher to be unequivocal in his messages.37 The Zionism he preached was socioeconomic and cultural, close to the views of Hapoel Hatzair. For Brenner “national will” was a key concept. During exile, he explained, our national will was not revealed, “and therefore the history of our exile is only history in the borrowed sense, for it does not show the connections among our deeds but rather records the deeds that others perpetrated against us.”38 This concept, which was to have an impact on education in the Zionist youth movements in Palestine and overseas, would later be given full expression in the celebrated short story by Haim Hazaz, “Hadrasha” (The sermon; published in 1942), in which Yudke (a generic Jewish name) announces, for reasons very similar to those propounded by Brenner, that the Jewish people have no history. Brenner also raised for discussion the question, What is Hebrew literature? He contended that what is not written in the Jews’ languages and does not deal with Jewish affairs is possibly part of Jewish history but not a part of Jewish literature. He was, however, prepared to accept as part of Hebrew literature works dealing with Jews that were translated into Hebrew, from either Yiddish or other languages, for he assumed that with time they would become an integral part of the national corpus, similar to how, in his opinion, the German translations of Shakespeare had become part of the German corpus.39 In his analysis of the history of Hebrew literature, he reserved a place of honor for liturgy and legend as two styles that gave expression to the nation’s soul at a time when the dominance of religious law led to the drying up of any creative originality. Brenner also devoted several lessons to literary criticism. “The ­critic’s role,” he noted for himself, “is similar that of the poet: to reveal the depths of life.” He drew distinctions among three critical methods: aesthetic, sociological, and impressionistic. He rejected aesthetics as a guiding principle and even rejected the existence of rules in this sphere.

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Brenner espoused a sociological approach to criticism, but with reservations. He felt that placing writers and works within a political and economic framework does not account for the individual author who, in the final accounting, is the heart of the creative process. He summarized the role of criticism as follows: “To link literary works to environmental phenomena and the spirit of the times, and at the same time to reveal the writer’s unique soul.”40 Brenner’s lessons were not structured as methodical analyses but as a sort of memo he wrote for himself, flashes of ideas that came to mind as he prepared for the lessons. This is why they contain contradictions in terms and dialectical oppositions. But precisely because they were not intended for other eyes, they reveal Brenner’s thought processes, his engagement with the various prevailing literary currents and criticism of the time, and his aversion to committing to any form of dogma in the sphere of writing. And on the margins of the discussion rises his mystic and positive attitude to life as a mysterious, all-determining force, a source of creativity and power. Within a short time, Brenner had to acknowledge that he had set an intellectual standard for the class that was beyond the students’ abilities.41 He then tried to adapt his lessons on “elucidated reading,” or the reading of literary texts and summaries of stories, to the level of his students. He demanded that his students write compositions both in class and at home. Some examples of composition subjects are “a letter to Jerusalem about our school”; “what I have read recently”; and “what I would like to be when I grow up.” In the exercise book belonging to Yehuda Shertok (Sharett), there is a composition on “prayer in the life of the Jews,” with positive comments by Brenner on his student’s identification with “the Jewish elders.”42 There were also discussions on the nature of literature, its forms, styles, and its relationship with other spheres of art. A special discussion was devoted to Mishnaic and legendary literature, with the Ethics of the Fathers and Sefer Ha’agada (The book of legends) as the primary sources. Teaching grammar was a thorn in Brenner’s side. The grammar textbook was excruciatingly out of date, with its language and explanations completely unsuitable for the students. Another big difficulty was the shortage of books: Brenner wanted his students to read entire works, not the excerpts that appeared in a textbook, but the number

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of copies available for the works he taught was insufficient for even half the students. There were some industrious students who followed their teacher’s advice and copied the poem or story before the lesson, but they quickly tired of this and stopped. Sometimes there were three or four students to a book, which was not conducive to class discipline. Brenner felt that the majority of his fifth-department students did not know proper Hebrew. There were also big differences among them in terms of motivation and ability: some were talented; the rest “are not bad children, they are easy, but lack national enthusiasm and don’t have many spiritual demands.” Later, when he wrote his novella Mehatkhala (From the beginning), he saw those students before him: tongue-tied, their Hebrew stammering, and they did not even speak other languages well. The issues of the day did not interest them. They were far more preoccupied with the thrills of adolescence, discovery of the opposite sex, and busied themselves with intrigues among themselves. Only here and there, through the wall of words and pretense, peeked the figure of a boy or girl with a heart and sensitivity. In writing his story, Brenner used the diaries and correspondence given to him by the students.43 Teaching the fourth department was more to his liking: “Natural, understanding, attentive, orderly, and filled with an idealistic spirit.” The girls displayed greater keenness than the boys. For this class Brenner chose texts of a public “and especially national” character. The texts were intended to illuminate “the Jewish world in all its dispersions” and reflect the life of the Jews. “I think that the tendency of not teaching the ‘exile’ to students of the Hebrew Gymnasium in Palestine, and to educate them to be ‘birds of rebirth,’ for whom the pain of exile means nothing, is harmful.”44 Thus, Brenner challenged the trends already evident at the gymnasium. Brenner, the great negator of exile, wanted his pupils to reject the notion that they were the scions of mythological ancient Jews (the picture painted in Mosensohn’s Bible lessons); rather, they were an inseparable branch of the ancient and beleaguered tree that is the Jewish people. To that end he chose to teach them the tales of Judah Leib Peretz, some of Berdyczewski’s stories, excerpts from Mendele Mokher Seforim’s novel Be’emek habakha (In the vale of tears), Judah Leib Gordon’s poem Beyn shinei arayot (Between the lion’s teeth), and poems by Bialik and Tschernichovsky.45

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The book list he recommended for home reading included the best of the classics in Hebrew translation: some of Shakespeare’s plays, Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Hamsun, Miguel Cervantes, and, of course, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky—a weighty list that probably was suitable for only a few of his students. The premise behind it was that a large portion of the students read French, some knew Russian, and others German. The list of Hebrew writers included most of the prominent authors. Of his own works he recommended all the important literary ones, with one exception: Here and There. Did he perceive it as being too “Palestinian” and thus unsuitable for his aspiration to teach his students “the pain of the Diaspora”? The list was a mixture of books that aroused nationalistic identification and books of adventure and romance to meet the young people’s need for thrilling experiences. Brenner’s socialistic leanings were manifested in his preferences, but in moderation and with priority given to developing the imagination, spiritual life, and the literary taste of the young readers.46 The students were required to read ten books each semester, write down unfamiliar words and expressions, and ask the teacher to explain them. These guidelines, like Brenner’s impression that the students were not fluent in Hebrew, demonstrate the fragile hold Hebrew had.47 The gymnasium in which Brenner taught was totally unlike the one in its halcyon years, before the outbreak of the war. The best of its teachers, Yosef Luria, Mosensohn, and Bugrashov, who endowed the institution with its educational leadership and inspiration, had been deported. Metman and the remaining teachers did not possess those qualities. Pedagogical committee meetings chaired by Metman were conducted in an unseemly manner. “With the disorder, the confusion, and the uproar, the meeting could have competed with the well-known ‘meetings’ of some ‘community’ in a small Lithuanian town,” Hacohen grumbled.48 Gymnasium graduates wrote a memorandum to the administration criticizing the institution for its lack of a permanent curriculum, the lack of continuity among the classes in the teaching program, the shortage of Hebrew textbooks, and teachers who came to lessons unprepared. The administration filed the memorandum and did nothing to rectify the faults.49 Before the war, relations between teachers and students were close and friendly, but now the teachers who had no authority relied on

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distance and formal discipline. Teacher-student relations deteriorated. The gymnasium gave financial support to those of its graduates who were recruited to the military academies in Baalbek or Constantinople, for without a permanent grant they would be unable to withstand the harsh conditions of the Turkish army. The foreign students who remained in Palestine and lived in the gymnasium’s boarding quarters continued to receive funding even after they were taken out of school, otherwise they would have starved. But teachers competed with students over the gymnasium’s meager resources: “It happens that a teacher complains that there is not even a cup of milk in his house because it all goes to the students’ kitchen.”50 The gymnasium’s expenses for feeding its boarders, its financial support of its graduates in the Turkish army, and the absence of income from tuition fees took the institution to the brink of disaster.51 Brenner was affected as well. The gymnasium employed him parttime, beginning with four hours a week, increasing to fifteen in 1916–1917. According to Metman’s records, his annual salary was 1,500 francs, or some 120 francs a month, which was one of the gymnasium’s lower salaries.52 According to Brenner, he received five or six Turkish pounds a month, “Which was not even enough for rent and dry bread.” When he was given the extra hours, his pay for them was smaller and did not include pay for the summer vacation. “How did I exist?” Brenner explained after the war. “From private loans that I am repaying to this day.” The “new Ottomans” were given a year’s grace; in other words, their conscription was postponed for a year. Like another fifteen of the gymnasium’s teachers, Brenner was supposed to enlist at the end of the year. At the end of September 1916, the gymnasium paid Brenner’s indemnity for his military service in the sum of 688 francs, with a further 293 francs “loss,” which was apparently a code word for a bribe given to the Turkish officials. It was a vast amount of money—some twothirds of his annual salary. The sum was considered a loan that Brenner would have to repay in installments.53 This debt haunted Brenner for years.54 Once the indemnity was paid, the gymnasium began deducting a certain sum from Brenner’s salary to cover the interest payments. It even took the manuscript of his translation of Crime and Punish­ ment as collateral.55 He made up the shortfall in his teacher’s salary

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­ uring the war by doing translations, which was one of the ways the d aid committee supported the intelligentsia. Apart from Crime and Punishment, which he had translated before the war, he also translated chapters of Anna Karenina56 and Timiriazev’s The Life of the Plant, which was commissioned by Berl Katznelson for W ­ ilkansky’s agricul57 tural library. Neither translation was ever published. Brenner was one of those teachers who are never forgotten by their students. Not all his students understood him, but there was something in his way of talking, the seriousness with which he regarded literature, his love of writers and their works, and also his attitude toward his students as young people with their own souls and personalities, that left an indelible impression on them. As with everything pertaining to his contemporaries’ admiration of him, in his teaching, too, we must take into account that his student’s impressions were probably influenced by his tragic death and his becoming a martyr of Hebrew culture. There can be no doubt that sensitive students had a profound connection with him, and it was he who shaped their love of Hebrew literature and their links to the labor movement. His teaching method, the subjects he chose, and mainly his personality as a moral compass also influenced those not infected by a love of literature.58 Lipovetzky speaks of “a deep respect for the teacher’s personality,” of “a bridge of the heart” between the students and Brenner.59 Another example of his impact as a man and a teacher can be found in a letter written in 1935 by a former student to Poznansky: “It is hard for me to speak about Brenner the teacher. I only saw him teaching for a short time and even then his effect on us (on me and the other students) was tremendous, more as a man of noble qualities than as a teacher.” Brenner had a great influence in shaping his life, he writes, “and lastly, I shall tell you the truth: his memory is dear to me to such a degree that it seems I shall never be able to publicly speak of my memories of him.” 60 These words reveal something intimate, warm, and close that had not dissipated even many years later. In winter 1917 Brenner became involved in an altercation not of his own making, between his brother Binyamin and the staff of the Jerusalem teachers’ seminar where Binyamin was a student. Ever since Binyamin had arrived in Palestine, he had not been a source of pleasure for Brenner. The boy was unstable and moody. Brenner did not

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want to play parent to his siblings. He supported them financially as best he could but was not prepared to guide them. His sister Batya became a worker and found her place. Meir was initially a worker and then a guard. Ahuva (Lyuba) tried her hand at all kinds of work. But ­Binyamin, the youngest, was lonely, without psychological support, and was compelled to take care of himself. Brenner’s marriage and Uri Nissan’s birth further strengthened Binyamin’s feeling of alienation from his elder brother, whom he saw as a surrogate father.61 When Binyamin decided to study at the Jerusalem teachers’ seminar, he went to Ben Shemen to ask Brenner for a letter of recommendation to one of the seminar’s teachers. Brenner welcomed him warmly, but in the letter he wrote to A. M. Epstein, one of the seminar’s senior teachers whom he had known in Lvov and also from the Jerusalem intelligentsia circles, he did not go overboard in praise of his brother, as B ­ inyamin expected.62 As long as Brenner was working at Hapoel ­Hatzair, he supported his siblings financially, but when the journal closed down he was unable to continue doing so.63 Binyamin was forced to ask the institution’s director, David Yellin, for a monthly stipend, like other needy students, and also to allow him to join the students who ate in the seminar’s kitchen.64 He complained about his studies at the seminar and wanted no more to do with them because they were boring.65 Nevertheless, he was a good student and even attained a certain status among his fellow students: he was elected as a student representative and also ran the library.66 Yet this standing did not prevent him from mischief-making and tormenting the teachers with his annoying and wicked outbursts and wild behavior, contributing to the general lack of discipline in the institution.67 He was always short of cash, and every time he received money from his brother or sister his spirits were immeasurably lifted. He wanted to move to Jaffa to study at the ­Herzliya Gymnasium, but Brenner did not encourage him. Chaya sent him homemade jam, an important addition to his meager fare at the time.68 But he was not invited to live with them in Tel Aviv. One winter’s day in 1916, Binyamin heard that a Talmud teacher, Noah Hacham, had accused him of stealing one of his books, a copy of Isaiah and the Minor Prophets with scientific commentary. Another student had borrowed the book and mislaid it, and a third boy claimed he had seen it among Binyamin’s books in his room. Binyamin de-

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manded that Hacham disclose which of the students had accused him, but he refused. Binyamin then arranged with another student that he ask Hacham about the book in class, and then Binyamin would come in and confront him. Hacham was not an assertive teacher: he had difficulty in maintaining discipline “because he was soft and powerless.”69 Binyamin eavesdropped on the teacher from behind the door, and when he heard him say that he believed the boy who had accused Binyamin of the theft, he burst in shouting that Hacham was “a liar and a fool.” Hacham demanded that Binyamin should be expelled from the seminar, but he only was suspended. Everyone concurred that Hacham had not behaved in an appropriate manner by casting doubt on a student whose guilt was not proven. But at the second faculty meeting Hacham again demanded Binyamin’s expulsion on the grounds that he had insulted him. The more lenient teachers, led by Shlomo Schiller and Slouschz, argued that the punishment should be limited to a one-year suspension. Lifschitz sided with the more severe approach “to compensate the teacher whose honor has been tarnished, to maintain the dignity of the school, and to strengthen discipline and morals among the students.” In the end, they reached a compromise: Binyamin would be suspended for a year, and if he wished to return to his studies, he would have to repeat his third year, and if he apologized to Hacham and the teacher accepted his apology, he could sit the examinations and be accepted for the fourth year of studies.70 Upset and agitated, Binyamin fired off a letter to Brenner telling him of the suspicions against him, what he had done, and in all probability  of his concerns about expulsion. Expulsion also meant the termination of his student stipend. Brenner was roused to come to his brother’s aid. Rabbi Benjamin, too, wrote to Lifschitz and Yellin, asking them, in gentle and conciliatory terms, to find a solution—a compromise— wisely for there was reason to believe, he claimed, that there would be an intensification of Binyamin’s “depressive mood, . . . and, heaven forbid, he might put an end to his life.”71 Rabbi Benjamin’s letter reflected Brenner’s anxiety. At first Rabbi Benjamin persuaded Brenner not to go to Jerusalem “because of the stress of the times,” but Brenner’s concern for his young brother prevailed, and he went. On the way to his meeting with Lifschitz, he met Aharon Reuveni, his friend and disciple from

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Ha’akhdut. Right away, Reuveni began maligning Lifschitz, as if it were he who had prevented a more lenient decision regarding Binyamin, as if Hacham was prepared to forgive Binyamin but Lifschitz had persuaded him to change his mind, as if he spoke in favor of Binyamin as not guilty of the theft in public, whereas behind the young man’s back he was accusing him. Another of the community’s dignitaries, H. Rivlin, also accused Lifschitz of hypocrisy.72 Lifschitz, a scholar who conducted himself with restraint, now seemed to Brenner to be a cunning man who was leading him and his brother by the nose and plotting to expel Binyamin from the school because of his secular inclinations (Lifschitz was an observant Jew) and because of Binyamin’s refusal to show him respect. Brenner was highly respected among the seminar’s teachers and students alike. The teachers were prepared to make every effort to accommodate him and drop the charge of theft against his brother, but not the suspension. Brenner, who in the meantime became convinced that Lifschitz was behind the chain of events, decided to punish him. On 10 December 1916, he confronted Lifschitz in a corridor in front of teachers and students and slapped his face. The slap was accompanied by a volley of insults, and he would have slapped the other cheek had it not been for the intervention of Yellin and the seminar secretary, who separated the two men.73 The seminar teachers’ meeting demanded that the national education committee must punish Brenner and determined that “a man liable to commit such an act cannot be a teacher and educator”; in other words, it demanded his dismissal from the Herzliya Gymnasium.74 Had it been anyone else, he would have been instantly dismissed, but Brenner was Brenner. The education committee members, who knew that his dismissal would damage his livelihood, sought a way of getting him out of the hole he had dug for himself. It was decided to hand the matter over to five judges, who would discuss the matter and reach their findings. The panel’s composition showed bias in Brenner’s favor. The judges’ first meeting took place in Jerusalem, and after that in Jaffa.75 A month later, on 24 January 1917, the judges announced their decision. Brenner was severely reprimanded for his violent action, but extenuating circumstances were found. “It is clear to us that Mr. Y. H. Brenner became entangled in the web of intrigue spun by several ­mischief-makers in Jerusalem around Mr. A. M. Lifschitz.” Brenner was

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found to have “the inner consciousness” that “he was duty bound to defend his brother’s honor”; in other words, his psychological state explained his behavior. Binyamin Brenner was exonerated of the charge of theft. “As a teacher, Dr. Hacham made an unforgivable error by voicing his suspicions about the student Binyamin Brenner.” Thus, Brenner was found guilty but was also the victim of both a plot and an uncontrollable mental state; Lifschitz emerged as a paragon of virtue, and the onus of guilt fell on Hacham. Brenner, who denigrated the two teachers in a booklet he published, “Lemishpat hatsibur” (For the public to judge), was ordered to withdraw the publication and express his remorse. The following day, Brenner wrote to the education committee and the teachers association in Jaffa as follows: “Dear Sirs, I hereby accept the decision of the honorable judges to withdraw the booklet I wrote on the matter of Hacham-Lifschitz with regard to my brother Binyamin. I likewise accept its decision and express remorse for the violence of the slap in the face.”76 On the face of it, Brenner accepted the panel’s verdict, but in fact expressed his remorse solely for the slap and not for his denigration of the other parties. It was only partial remorse. Binyamin was compelled to terminate his studies in Jerusalem. Once again, he wanted to come and live with the Brenner family, but apparently his brother did not agree. “You must surely have known, my dear sister, that I was unable to live in my brother’s home for many reasons, the main and decisive one being that it was simply difficult for Yosef Haim to feed me. I therefore had to seek another place of refuge.”77 He found a teaching post in Hulda and a reprieve from the consequences of his mercurial character. In his letters from Hulda, he sounds invigorated, jolly, and even pleased to be living in the breathtaking landscape of the Judean Hills. With the egotism typical of youth, he did not stop for even a moment to consider the problems and distress he had caused his brother. At first Brenner did not recant his accusations against Lifschitz. “Regarding Lifschitz—my charges are justified,” he wrote to Poznansky, “but regarding the slap, because it is out of character for me, I should not have allowed myself [to do it].”78 But some time later, once he had calmed his concerns about his brother and considered the matter, Brenner realized that he had accused an innocent man of intrigue and publicly shamed him. After the war he received regards from his dear

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friend Berdyczewski through Lifschitz, who had been to Berlin. Brenner was deeply moved: “To receive regards from B through Mr.  A.  M. ­Lifschitz touched my very soul. It is hard for me to recall that of all the many crimes in my life, the sin I committed against Mr. Lifschitz, who did me no wrong, is surely one of the worst. At the time I sinned badly out of bitter despair and anger. And like every sin, it has no atonement in admission and forgetting. It weighs heavily on me.”79 The Brenner family’s life in Tel Aviv is shrouded in mist. During this period Chaya’s voice is not heard at all. She apparently did not work or worked part-time, either because almost all the city’s kindergartens were closed or because she had to care for little Uri.80 In all probability life at the time was very frustrating in the atmosphere of constant tension, shortages, and the wearying and unsatisfying routine. Brenner found an anchor for his life in Uri’s tiny, helpless figure. Nothing that Brenner could do for him was too hard. His friends were astonished by the concern and love he heaped on the child. “His love was uncommon, almost unnatural in a man’s character,” wrote Ya’ari-Poleskin, in an expression of the reservations held by that generation about a father’s devotion to childcare, especially the care of infants.81 When Wilkansky described the Brenner family’s life in Ben Shemen, he emphasized Brenner’s “dayto-day worries of what was for him a new nekuda [center]—the worries of raising a child; the slightest disturbance would throw him out of kilter.”82 Whenever Uri caught some childhood ailment, Brenner was as anxious as if the child had contracted a grave illness. He would watch the baby as he slept and was troubled by the expression on the child’s face. In it he saw sadness and depression, which worried him very much. Where does a baby get an expression like that from, he wondered, probably fearing the effect of heredity on his son’s character.83 The child was happy and clever and developed well. He ruled his father imperiously, and Brenner doted on him. The people of Little Tel Aviv remembered Brenner’s ungainly, gloomy figure, his big hand clasping his little son’s tiny one as they strolled down Rothschild Boulevard and Nachalat Binyamin Street or sat on one of the benches. Ziona RabauKatinsky recalled seeing the two sitting in the shade of the poplar opposite her house. “He sat straight, and his penetrating gaze was fixed on me with the shadow of a smile hidden in his beard. But his kindness abounded and touched my heart.”84

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The relative tranquility of his teaching years in Tel Aviv was shattered when, on 28 March 1917, nine days before Passover Eve, Jamal Pasha ordered the inhabitants of Jaffa and Tel Aviv to leave the city, fearing that the Turkish southern front would collapse in the face of advancing British forces. The inhabitants of Tel Aviv packed their clothing, bedding, food, and valuables. The braver souls stayed to hold the Passover seder in their homes, but the last of the city’s inhabitants left the following day. Tel Aviv was a ghost town, with only a group of watchmen left to guard peoples’ property from vandalism and looting.85 The Brenner family joined the column making its way to Petach Tikva, whose inhabitants did not welcome the refugees—called “emigrants” in the parlance of the time. “They did not show us kindness,” Ziona Rabau-Katinsky recalled. They seized the opportunity to charge extortionate prices for apartments and rooms, and many of the poorer people were forced to live in cowsheds and stables. This was not the case in Ein Ganim, whose residents welcomed the exiles with open arms. The Herzliya Gymnasium settled in Ein Ganim and with it the Brenner family. The Streit family helped them, although where the family lived is not known. They stayed in Ein Ganim for more than a month. Several of the gymnasium’s classes were transferred to Shfeya, and Brenner was asked to move with the students and continue teaching them. Although he would have preferred to stay in Ein Ganim, he acceded to the request. In Shfeya the family suffered considerably. Chaya described their dwelling to Manya Poznansky: “Our room is spacious, with two windows and two doors. One shutter cannot be opened, and the other window does not close. One door leads to the kitchen through the landlords’ bedroom, and the other to the street. I mostly get to the kitchen by walking around.” Attempting to make light of the situation, she added: “I fetch water from the spring on a donkey, and the path to it is strewn not with roses, but rocks. Uri says that in Herzl Street [in Tel Aviv] there is a sidewalk. It is better there.”86 Life was hard, but there were also some pleasant moments. The beauty of the hills, the clear air, the shows put on by the gymnasium’s boarders, all made the time more enjoyable. Uri spent most of his time with the horses and donkeys, a new experience for the city child.87 In the hard times of the expulsion, there was also relative serenity in Shfeya. Chaya invited Manya Poznansky and her son Binyamin (Beba), Uri’s beloved

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friend, who were living in Haifa, to come for a holiday. The friendship between the two families turned living in remote Samaria into a pleasant summer adventure.88 But behind the apparent tranquility lay difficulties. “Our present situation is not terrible,” Brenner reported to Poznansky, “we are not living and not dying.”89 He continued to fulfill his teaching duties, but the students’ minds were not on lessons. They preferred to spend their time in the woods around Shfeya. They did not like Brenner’s Bible lessons, which he did not teach as well as he did literature.90 This situation continued until the summer vacation, when the gymnasium administration informed Brenner that he would be well advised to look for another job.91 The Brenners then moved to Zikhron Ya’akov, where they rented a room. The “emigration committee,” which dealt with the evacuees, gave Brenner and Chaya the task of opening a school and kindergarten for the emigrants’ children, most of whom were Yemenite and numbered close to sixty. Chaya hastened to organize a kitchen to provide breakfast and lunch for them, so at least they would not go hungry. The kindergarten and school lacked the requisite resources, but they still functioned. Brenner and Chaya received 140 francs per month from the emigration committee. It was a temporary arrangement, for only the summer months.92 During the months the Brenners lived in Zikhron Ya’akov, Brenner continued teaching at Shfeya for a few hours a week, with payment for his efforts deducted from what he owed.93 In the end, in September 1917, the gymnasium administration informed him that because of its financial situation, it was no longer able to employ him, and he was finally dismissed. The Brenners then returned to Ein Ganim. They were fortunate to have left Zikhron Ya’akov because in early October 1917 the Nili espionage ring was exposed for assisting the British, the moshava was placed under Turkish martial law, leaving its inhabitants in grave danger. Chaya’s brother was living in Ein Ganim, and the Brenner family lived in his hut as subtenants. Later, they moved in with the Pasilov family, with whom Brenner had lodged during his first stay in Ein Ganim.94 For a moment it seemed they had found relief. The Hapoel Hatzair editorial board, with Yitzhak Lufban and Yosef Sprinzak, reorganized in Petach Tikva, along with Yeshayahu Streit and other writers. Brenner spent a lot of time in the editorial office. On 16 November 1917, the

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British entered Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and Petach Tikva a few days later. Had Brenner and his family made a speedy return to Tel Aviv, like his editorial board fellows, they would have avoided many months of wandering and suffering. But they remained in Petach Tikva, which was retaken by the Turks a week later. In the pandemonium of the re­ occupation, the “emigrants” fled from Petach Tikva to Kfar Sava, and carts were sent from Hadera to evacuate them to Gan Shmuel. They spent ten days in Gan Shmuel before moving to Hadera. The Brenners rented a room from one of the farmers. Thus, they were more fortunate than many of the pitiful refugees, who were mainly in Kfar Sava, a godforsaken moshava in the zone between the British- and Turkish-occupied areas. It had been almost completely abandoned, and its ruined houses and their adjoining shacks housed about a thousand refugees. The atmosphere was one of hope for “­redemption”; in other words, British occupation, which would put an end to concerns about conscription into the Turkish army, food shortages, and uncertainty. The Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the Jewish Legion in the British army were already common knowledge. It was a moment of vacillation between despair and great hope, between anxiety and dreams of imminent salvation. Brenner withdrew into himself and shunned human society and even avoided joining any cultural activities in the moshava. He spent his time with his son, while asking countless questions about the front, which was marked by a balloon hovering close to Kfar Sava.95 The residents of Hadera did not display brotherly love toward the “emigrants.” The tension reached its peak when it became known that some of the wretched evacuees in Kfar Sava were about to come to Hadera. Beyond the shortages, the shelling, the inhuman living conditions, there was an outbreak of typhus that took a heavy toll among the emigrants. The inhabitants of Hadera tried to prevent the emigrants from coming to their moshava. In his story “Hamotza” (The way out) Brenner describes the clash between the clean and organized inhabitants of Hadera and the refugees from Kfar Sava. His blood ran cold at the hardheartedness and lack of compassion exhibited by the inhabitants of Hadera. Only a few young men and women volunteered to build eucalyptus branch lean-tos for the uninvited guests, to bring them bread and cheese and a little milk, and to disinfect them

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and their belongings. One case—that of a young woman refugee with a babe in arms—was etched on Brenner’s memory and later incorporated into the story. The baby was dying and was unable to even drink the milk brought for it with much effort. The local doctor reluctantly agreed to examine the infant, but she too was unable to save it. When the baby died and one of the local young men, Aharon Zisling, wanted to bury it, he was unable to find farmers willing to help him dig a grave. Brenner took the dead baby in his arms and with the help of a Jewish Sephardi worker buried the tiny body.96 Poznansky, who at the time was living in Haifa with his family, heard about Brenner’s devotion to the wretched evacuees. “It befits you in the fullest sense,” he wrote to Brenner. “Since I first heard about it (when you were still in Hadera), it is joined in my memory by those Russians . . . who went to famine-stricken districts or fought cholera, even though the resemblance is not identical.”97 In “Hamotza,” which was published in 1919 in the Ha’aretz veha’avoda (The country and labor) anthology, the Brenner figure is described as an elderly teacher who comes to the aid of the wretched, bringing them food, and at the end of the story he brings the baby to burial with the help of a Turkish soldier.98 He wanted to underscore the hardheartedness of the inhabitants toward their own people, and so he included the contrasting figure of a foreign soldier who displays humanity. The elderly teacher in the story is also not completely innocent: he uses a wound in his leg that he acquired during the burial to free himself from caring for the refugees and “was therefore free of all the needs of others. Completely free. He was relieved.”99 It seems that Brenner himself felt helpless in the face of the great suffering he witnessed. He also did not know how to organize aid for so many. He did acts of charity and generosity for a few, but no more than that. He channeled his guilt feelings for the paucity of his actions in the face of the refugees’ needs into this story, which he published after “the redemption.” The Brenner family spent some eighteen months on the road, moving from one temporary accommodation to another, from one poorly paid job to another. Their “exile” did not better relations between Chaya and Brenner. To the external tensions were added tensions within the family. A short while after they came to Zikhron Ya’akov

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for the first time, Chaya wrote a jocular letter to Manya, and Brenner added a note to Pozanansky: “You wonder about my silence. And I wonder about your wonder. There are no impressions from the outside world. And I shall not speak about the internal world. The truth will not be told. And why lie? And where is writing to be found?”100 Brenner is possibly referring to the internal situation in the Yishuv, and perhaps to his own inner world. He was in the depths of depression. In a situation beyond his control—worried that he might be conscripted into the Turkish army, concerned about his son, and not sure whether he will be able to provide for his family—it is perfectly natural for such a sensitive man to be depressed or, as he put it at the time, “in a mood.”101 But he was not detached from what was happening. During their stay in Ein Gamin, he wrote “Leregel haknisa” (On the entry [of the British into Palestine]), an article in which he cautioned against the euphoria gripping the Yishuv with the imminent change of government. The article was published in Ha’aretz veha’avoda in March 1918, while its author continued wandering among the moshavot of Samaria under the old regime.102 He also read a story sent to him by the young writer Dov Kimchi, his acquaintance from Jerusalem, and sent him a response that was both heartening and discouraging.103 The travails of the war did not impair either his critical or journalistic ability. He also engaged in translation. But since completing Breakdown and Bereavement before his marriage, he had written no new literary work. It is therefore small wonder that his spirits were low. He poured out his heart to his friend Poznansky, whom he called “the real poet,” a year later: “My days pass in null work and null health. My hands are idle, my body failing, and my soul—its total substance— is the pain of deliberation that yields no fruit (let alone flowers).” These words may be seen as a continuation of Brenner’s old complaints, in which he mourned his bitter fate. And he is possibly referring in the letter to his having stopped writing and only making another copy of Breakdown and Bereavement. Brenner added that his prognosis for the Jewish people and Jewish literature remained unchanged (following the British occupation), which only added to his “pain of deliberation.” There was nothing new in this position—his pessimism was unconnected to external political circumstances. But in the next sentence, which Poznansky deleted from the letters he published, lies another

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key to Brenner’s suffering: “The good and precious child (despite the heavy burden of his inheritance) [an allusion to his father’s state of  mind], who is with me in the house, is growing up in an atmosphere of nervous anger, and concern for his fate and future is well grounded.”104 His concern for Uri’s fate as a result of the burden of heredity is not a new element, but the “atmosphere of nervous anger” in the house hints at deteriorating relations between him and his wife. In the correspondence published by Uri Brenner, there are two notes from Chaya to Brenner, written in the summer of 1918, before the family moved to Haifa. Chaya issues orders: “You must immediately,” and again, “you must” and “you must.” Brenner receives orders from her to speak to one person and to move another’s things into the storeroom, “to get Yemenite women to launder everything,” to return utensils and various items to someone or other.105 She herself remained in Zikhron Ya’akov to obtain carts to take the family to Haifa. “If I am here, tomorrow we shall have carts, and if I go to Shfeya, there will be no carts.”106 In Chaya’s tone there is something assertive and belligerent that is absent in her previous letters. She had known much suffering during the period of their wandering while trying unceasingly to maintain a stable household in which the dishes were clean, the underwear laundered, and the child washed and fed. Her husband showed no understanding of everyday life and was not capable of lending a helping hand in their hardship. He also did not voice any opinion on the small details that she viewed as vital but which to him, accustomed as he was to self-neglect and his monkish existence, seemed unimportant. Although he was concerned about the child’s welfare, he was worried about all the Jewish people. He refused to eat the food Chaya sent him while the refugees who had come to Hadera went hungry. He gave some of his shirts, over whose sewing Chaya had probably labored, to make shirts for the refugees’ children. These were acts that came from the depths of his heart and conscience. He was incapable of acting differently. But it is doubtful that they pleased Chaya, who bore the responsibility for her own family’s welfare.107 To all this was added the depression that haunted him. His admirer Poznansky wrote to him, “I want to write to you, Brenner, and it is hard to do so, for there is no way to break through your reserve.” But Brenner’s remoteness from all those around him could not be bridged: “You are probably closed

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and withdrawn now, as you were in Jaffa when I would come to you and look at you.”108 In normal times Chaya was able to cope with the breakdown in communication when he was in a depression, but when her husband’s depression was added to the hardship, the shortages, and the feeling that she did not have a supportive, helping partner at her side, result was the “atmosphere of nervous anger” that Brenner mentions in his letter. These were the first signs of the crisis that was to erupt eighteen months later.

N i n e   Under British Rule, 1918–1921

The Tel Aviv to which the Brenner family returned had begun its recovery from the sufferings of the deportations. With a sigh of relief, the family moved back into their old apartment on Gruzenberg Street. The joy of their return was dampened somewhat when Uri contracted what was apparently chickenpox, which caused Brenner deep anxiety.1 Chaya started work as a kindergarten teacher, and after recovering from his illness, Uri went with her.2 As if emerging from a natural disaster, people hastened to send signs of life to dear ones in Palestine and overseas, trying to renew contact, checking that relatives and friends were still alive, but it was not easy. The end of the war did not bring political stability, and mail services remained irregular. Palestine was still completely cut off and under British military rule, which did not allow the renewal of civil maritime contact with Europe. As if from Noah’s ark, Brenner too sent out signs of life to his nearest and dearest. The first to reply to his postcard was Yosef Aharono­witz, who had been deported to Alexandria with his family. “I received your few lines,” he hastened to write, “and if I say I was overjoyed, I have said nothing. You and your family survived . . . , so should we not be thankful for miracles?” He mentioned the writers about whose survival he had heard and asked for news about Hapoel Hatzair writers.3 Berdyczewski wrote to Brenner from Berlin: “Now that the war is apparently over, I wish to send you a sign of life and ask you to do the same.”4 Asher Beilin sent Brenner his story “Bli-ma” (Without anything) from faraway London, with the dedication, “To my dear friend Yosef Haim,” and in the accompanying letter asked him to write, or at least send a photograph, because he had heard he was married. “If you

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do not have the desire to write,” he added with a touch of their old intimacy, “I shall read between the lines.” The letter was written in Yiddish, the story in Hebrew.5 When Brenner met one of the Jewish Legionnaires from the United States, he discovered that he knew Marmor, and Brenner asked him to give Marmor his regards. In Hebrew that had become somewhat rusty with lack of use, Marmor replied warmly: “My dearly beloved friend Y. H. Brenner,” he wrote, “I was very happy to hear that you are well and that you asked about your old friend. Sarah is busy raising the children, which is why she is not writing herself,” he added, explaining her silence, “but she demands that on her behalf I send countless greetings to you and yours.” Shmuelik (the infant who had thwarted Brenner’s inept courtship of his mother) was now sixteen and about to embark on his university studies, Marmor reported, and they had two other sons. He told Brenner that he was editor of the Western Jewish Daily Forward, published in Chicago, but did not tell him that during the war he had left Poalei Zion and joined the Jewish Communist Party, to which he remained loyal to his dying day. He sent Brenner photographs of his children and asked him to do likewise. He mentioned that he had read hardly anything Brenner had published after his immigration to Palestine, adding his home address—a gentle hint to Brenner to send him some of his work. The letter is signed, “Your true friends, Kalman and Sarah Marmor.”6 Agnon wrote to Brenner from Munich: “To my beloved Brenner. Perhaps on this occasion my words will reach you, and you will know that, throughout the time I have been apart from you, I have been thinking of you.” He described a recurring dream he had in which Brenner is carried away in a cart as a prisoner of the Russians: “Total loving acceptance of the burden of life was clearly apparent in you.” He wanted to know “How are you faring materially and spiritually, and how is your dear wife? How many children do you have? If you knew how much love I have for you, then you would not have written so little.” And from the depths of his heart, he adds: “I have met many people in the course of my wanderings but have never found one like you. How pleasant were the nights in Jerusalem as we strolled together on long white paths.”7 But his yearning for the Jerusalem nights and his love for Brenner did not bring him back to Palestine. In contrast, David Shimonovich, who spent the war years in Bobruisk in Russia, was

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planning his return to Palestine with the receipt of his laissez-passer. He wrote to Brenner, asking him to contact his beloved Dina Feffermeister (who had studied with Chaya in Berlin), give her his regards, and at the same time write him about what was happening with her.8 There was an embarrassing and frustrating contrast between the feelings of elation with which the Jews of Palestine greeted the British conquerors and the British reactions. The Yishuv was excited by the transition to the rule of a European power. Believing that henceforth there would be proper governance and tolerant rule of law for the Jews, they expected the British to be its saviors. After all, the British government had drawn up the Balfour Declaration in support of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people. Furthermore, in 1918 the Jewish Legion became part of the British Army, joining the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and the 39th Battalion, which was made up almost entirely of Jews from the United States and Canada, volunteers under the flag of Judah who had come with the victorious army to conquer Palestine. The air was filled with messianic fervor and a feeling of imminent redemption. It was not by chance that many children born during this period were named “Geula” and “Yigael” (or “Yigal”), both derived from the Hebrew word for “deliverance.”9 This then was the background to enlistment of Palestinian Jews in 1918, which led to the formation of the 40th Battalion. But the British maintained a chilly aloofness. The gates of Palestine remained locked, and the army, using the excuse of maintaining the status quo until such time as the country’s fate was decided in a peace treaty with Turkey, refused to grant the Zionists the national rights they expected following the Balfour Declaration: immigration, land purchase, settlement, official status for the Hebrew language, none of which materialized. Hardship and shortages continued, and the people’s great expectations stood in stark contrast to the disappointing reality. The wave of elation greeting the British conquerors may have led to the movement of enlistment into the Palestinian Battalion. It also aroused bitter controversy in the small workers’ movement that remained from the Second Aliya. These events took place in the south of the country, while the Turks still controlled the north. Brenner’s best friends were divided on the issue: on one side of the fence were the majority of the Hapoel Hatzair membership, who opposed volunteering,

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and on the other stood the members of Poalei Zion, who were joined by many of the “nonpartisans” led by his friend Berl Katznelson. A. D. Gordon, also a nonpartisan, opposed volunteering for the battalions. Brenner was not swept up by the messianic zeal. In an eloquent article in which he described the two sides of the debate as “remnants of old discussions,” he displayed his negative position in the epigraph at the head of the article, apparently inspired by Gordon: “Faith in our Messiah is the result of our weakness—or also the reason for it; in any event, our Messiah will not come mounted on a noble steed.”10 Brenner had not brought with him from London a great liking for the British. The conquering army’s arrogant coldness (real or imagined) roused hostility in him. He also did not believe in the Balfour Declaration. As far as he was concerned, the Jewish State was still as distant as it had been twenty-five years ago. Brenner was averse to Zionist high diplomacy, which he perceived as disengagement from concrete action in favor of declarations that promised the moon, empty symbols that were nothing but a charade.11 He did not like Vladimir J­abotinsky, who for him represented giving pride of place to posturing rather than action, externalizing nationalistic feeling rather than internalizing it. He saw Jabotinsky as a Jewish version of Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the city of Fiume and was considered one of the founding fathers of fascism. The messianic mood revolted him. “The impressions one gets from the atmosphere are enough to make one despair,” he wrote to Poznansky, who had not yet returned to Tel Aviv from Haifa. “Abhorrence and nausea—that is the overriding feeling. Not good!”12 The post–British conquest Yishuv held back from intensive pre­ occupation with cultural matters, which during the Ottoman period had been at the center of its life, apparently because of the difficulty in acting in other spheres as well. This troubled Brenner, for it affected topics that interested him, first and foremost the move away from Hebrew literature to spheres far distant from his spiritual life. On his return to Tel Aviv, he embarked on feverish literary activity, his first project being the publication of the sixth issue of Revivim.13 At the same time, he approached Abba Goldberg and Daniel Persky, proponents of Hebrew in the United States, and American Yivria (Hebrew) associations, requesting their support for the publication of a

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series of original books that would present local Hebrew belles lettres, provide an opportunity for writers to publish their work in Palestine, and increase “the power of original Hebrew prose.” The list of eleven titles he appended to his request, “for the time being,” included works by all his dear friends and some who were not, such as S. Ben-Zion and Moshe Smilansky, and intellectuals such as Rabbi Benjamin and ­Gordon.14 The series was designed to be the first big literary project of the British period, but within a short time Brenner realized that he would be unable to obtain the funds required for a literary enterprise of this scope.15 It was at this time that Avraham Stiebel became the leading publisher in the sphere of Hebrew literature, initiating largescale enterprises for translating world classics into Hebrew. Brenner therefore approached his Palestine agent and suggested that Stiebel publish his translation of Crime and Punishment and also his Break­ down and Bereavement. He was prepared to sell the manuscripts to Stiebel, even though he had bitter memories of the way in which his Here and There was published overseas and had always preferred to publish his works in Palestine under direct supervision. His haste in selling his manuscripts to Stiebel stemmed from his desire to obtain an immediate advance that would enable him to resume the publication of Revivim. “I see a necessity in publishing [the journal] precisely now, when our audience seems to be immersed in politics. The objective of the anthologies is to provide the Hebrew audience with living, original Hebrew words that come from the heart in story, poem, or article form.”16 He received a few score Egyptian pounds (the Palestinian currency of the time) and immediately set to work publishing Revivim 6. He was still heavily in debt both to the Herzliya Gymnasium and the Palestine Office, so putting the payment toward the publication was a sacrifice.17 But his hopes for the anthology were soon dashed: it lay sadly on the shelves because the public did not buy it.18 The Hebrew readership was not open to literary anthologies; rather, the main pre­occupations were the hardships of daily life and political debates. Readers were also seeking something new and different, not an oldfashioned literary anthology that did not engage with current affairs. The return to Tel Aviv did not lighten Brenner’s mood. “My mood is bad, no less so than in the better part of the last year,” he wrote to Poznansky.19 After a brief period of seclusion at home, he accepted

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work with Bakfar and in publishing Jewish National Fund informational booklets. At the same time, he taught at the teachers’ and kindergarten teachers’ seminar.20 Hoping that a change would help him overcome his bouts of malaria and perhaps even his persistent depression, Brenner went to Ein Ganim for a few weeks at the end of April 1919, while Chaya and Uri stayed in Tel Aviv. Uri started sending regards to his father, written in big letters, that he copied from what his mother wrote for him. Chaya wrote to Brenner about Uri and his “clever sayings” and made sure her husband had clean underwear. When she suggested visiting Ein Ganim for a weekend with the boy, who was missing his father very much, Brenner advised against it; the room is unsuitable, he told her. He told her that he had completed From the Beginning, a novella about young people at the Herzliya Gymnasium, but along with the good news about his surge of writing, the first since he wrote Breakdown and Bereavement seven years earlier, he also informed her that “my health is not good, I do not know what will become of me, unimaginable weakness, weeping all the time.”21 Brenner’s hypochondria was linked to his mental state, but with medicine being what it was, it is doubtful that the doctors would have been able to diagnose the problem, much less find a cure. Chaya tried to pacify him. “I too have a constant headache, fever, and lack of appetite, and it is very difficult for me to work,” she wrote him. “But there is some peace of mind, and that is the main thing.”22 Chaya intuitively understood that “peace of mind” was central, but it seems that Brenner did not think that was the problem. At the end of April 1919, the Aharonowitz family returned to Palestine from their exile in Egypt. “He has aged slightly, but there is a pleasing appeal in his face that was not there before,” Chaya wrote to Brenner, who was still in Ein Ganim.23 Like Brenner, Aharonowitz was frustrated by visionary flights of fancy that were not supported by deeds. “The Jews of Palestine now resemble people who believe that fate will shine on them and on that basis build themselves castles in the air; meanwhile, they leave their dilapidated houses unrepaired and end up with the worst of both worlds,” he wrote to their mutual friend Yitzhak Wilkansky.24 Hapoel Hatzair reappeared, and Aharonowitz and his colleagues also sought to renew the Ha’aretz veha’avoda anthologies and invited Brenner to be the editor. Apart from the good

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financial terms they offered, they also accepted his condition that the anthologies would not be “a political organ” and would not discuss political issues. The editor would be “free to air his views, even though they might not fall into line with party policies, provided they did not oppose the spirit of Hapoel Hatzair.” Aharonowitz would read Brenner’s articles before publication, “and Mr. Brenner must consider his comments.” Should there be differences of opinion, they would be arbitrated by Azar, Jacob Rabinowitz, and Menachem Poznansky, all of whom Brenner trusted.25 The agreement was not signed because another actor appeared on the cultural stage: Berl Katznelson and his new party, Akhdut Ha’avoda (Unity of Labor). Ever since his early years in Palestine, when he lived in Ein Ganim, Brenner had kept a warm spot in his heart for Katznelson. Katznelson was overwhelmed by the British occupation, which found him in Jerusalem. At the Seventh Agricultural Conference, held in Rehovot in 1917, he delivered his lecture “Likrat hayamim haba’im” (Toward the coming days), in the first part of which he expressed his great belief that a new era was beginning. It was a speech replete with messianic and Kabbalistic messages that gave voice to the great change that was imminent. Not that smaller deeds had lost their value, but the time for great Herzlian deeds had come. “We are standing on the threshold of the future. The time for fulfilling ancient dreams is approaching,” he declared. He defined the role of the barefoot crowd that gathered in Rehovot and bore him aloft: “You are the rock on which the temple of the future will be built,” in the vein of German Jewish socialist Ferdinand Lassalle. Zionism, when implemented, would have to recognize that the vital, creative, and dynamic force was to be found in the Palestinian workers’ movement, which would be the forerunner of the nascent nation. The soaring visionary part of his talk was followed by the practical part, a prosaic work plan designed to outline the spheres of action vital for the implementation of Zionism: immigrant absorption, settlement, consolidation of agriculture, and so forth. Among the other spheres he mentioned was the role of culture, with inculcation of the Hebrew language first and foremost.26 He perceived volunteering in the Palestinian battalions as an act that would release pent-up mental energy and lead to spiritual uplift. In volunteering he saw the impetus for coalescing a mass movement that with

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its waves would sweep away old hostilities and lead to purification, revealing mental forces that are concealed in normal times. Katznelson’s reason for volunteering was the one anarchists gave for the electrifying revolutionary deed that would arouse the masses. The first historic meeting between Ben-Gurion and Katznelson took place in the battalion camp, initiating the process that led to the establishment in Petach Tikva of the Zionist-socialist association Akhdut Ha’avoda (Labor Unity) in February 1919. It was a party that sought but failed to unite all the workers of Palestine. The Hapoel Hatzair people did not join the union between Poalei Zion and the nonpartisans, which was formed, according to Katznelson, on the basis of the unity of life. As a consequence of the new organization, considerable hostility was created between former close friends: A. D. Gordon vehemently opposed the union with Poalei Zion, and particularly the new association’s use of socialist terminology.27 While all these changes were taking place, Brenner did not take a stand. Like his friends in Hapoel Hatzair, he too did not hear the beating of the wings of history. He was invited to the inaugural conference of Akhdut Ha’avoda in Petach Tikva but did not attend. He praised the practical part of “Toward the Coming Days,” letting Katznelson understand that he had reservations about the soaring visionary part. In his talks with Katznelson, Brenner poured cold water on the idea of the union: it would not succeed; it would cause discord and bad blood between people who were close. “My absolute positivity, my Zionistic optimism, frightened him,” Katznelson explained some time later. Brenner’s position was not out of the ordinary. The majority of the Yishuv intelligentsia harbored reservations about the ideological adventure inherent in the establishment of Akhdut Ha’avoda. The partnership with Poalei Zion seemed dubious. That party was thought to be ambivalent regarding the hegemony of Hebrew in Palestine, and some of its members would in the near future establish the antiZionist Communist Party. The use the new party made of socialist terminology hinted at a Marxist connection, which the intelligentsia rejected outright. All the reasons for Brenner’s having preferred to work for Hapoel Hatzair rather than Ha’akhdut now worked in favor of the Hapoel Hatzair party and against Akhdut Ha’avoda. But what deterred Brenner most of all was Katznelson’s ecstatic rhetoric, his un-

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ambiguous optimism, which did not fall in line with Brenner’s skeptical perspective.28 According to Katznelson, one day Rabbi Benjamin and Brenner came to Mikve Yisrael, where he was stationed, to offer him their condolences on the death of his beloved Sarah Shmuckler. Perhaps it was Katznelson’s mental state—or maybe other factors—that led to his outburst, but in any event, according to his account, “I poured out all my bitter anger on him. I did not want to see him like all the other writers, saving his own skin rather than becoming involved in a dispute that is ‘not his.’” He demanded that Brenner make up his mind, that he become involved in the literary activity of the new party, which had embarked on the publication of a modest weekly, Kuntress (­Pamphlet), edited by Katznelson. It is doubtful that Brenner joined Akhdut Ha’avoda, but he moved closer and was committed to it. He did not explain the reasons for the change in his position.29 He backed out of the agreement offered to him by Hapoel Hatzair and signed one with Akhdut Ha’avoda. Aharonowitz ascribed Brenner’s decision to the better terms offered by his competitors. He even assumed that there was no change in the relationship between Brenner and Hapoel Hatzair and that he would continue publishing his work in the journal; in other words, that it was a marriage of convenience rather than love.30 The memorandum signed between Brenner and Akhdut Ha’avoda regarding the publication of the monthly Ha’adama (The soil) was similar in structure to the one he did not sign with Hapoel Hatzair, but apart from the improved terms of remuneration, it also contained semibinding stipulations: the journal was intended to publish “matters pertaining to the life of labor” and “articles on contemporary issues and views on the labor movement in Palestine and overseas.” In other words, it would not be a literary journal lacking political color, but one designed to express the movement’s spirit and the topics on its agenda. It was emphasized that the journal “will be edited in the spirit of Akhdut Ha’avoda, which is the spirit of the editor,” but “Mr. Brenner is still free to print in Ha’adama anything he deems fit.” The memorandum was concluded with the names of the same arbitrators Brenner had chosen for this role in earlier Ha’aretz veha’avoda proposal.31 Once it became known that Akhdut Ha’avoda was publishing a monthly, Hapoel Hatzair quickly followed with its own monthly,

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Ma’abarot, edited by Ya’akov Fichman. Although Brenner did not like the competition, he had to accept it.32 A particularly warm relationship was formed between Brenner and Katznelson. Grieving over Sarah Shmuckler’s death, Katznelson found consolation in the most melancholy writer of all, whereas Brenner joked about their collaboration: “I will be your helpmeet in Kuntress and you will lie with me in the ground [ha’adama]” (a pithy translation of a Yiddish idiom). Well aware that such jocularity was a rarity with him, he added an explanation: “You see, I am once more given to clowning. The prospect of action makes me happy.”33 But they still had serious disagreements about the journal’s character. The Ha’adama program, as published by Brenner in Kuntress, was not to Katznelson’s liking. No concrete reference was made to questions of “the working man” and his culture or to issues related to the realization of Socialist Zionism. With regard to the cultural aspects, Brenner determined that “we shall not fear walking along roadsides”; that is, unpopular positions would not be censored. He insisted on emphasizing “personal expression, the attitude toward the ‘how,’” but avoided mentioning the “what,” as Katznelson rightly pointed out. It was a vague program for a literary journal that did not commit itself to expressing the workers’ world. Katznelson sensed that Brenner had reservations about being identified with a party journal, and reacted resentfully. Brenner responded gently to Katznelson’s complaint, showing both his good spirits and the special feelings he had for him: “I approach the editing of the journal as a cultural [that is, not political] enterprise necessary for our world.” If the intention was to make Ha’adama a fighting, party journal, then Brenner was the wrong man for the job. If people wrote confrontational articles, the journal would obviously publish them, but Brenner himself was no adherent of workers’ ideology and would not preach it in the journal. “And anyway, why are you making me the writer-worker?” he rebuked Katznelson. “I shall never say what people are waiting to hear from me. I shall say what is in my heart.”34 Brenner’s only commitment was to his own truth.35 Katznelson’s love for Brenner made up for the writer’s reluctance to devote himself to the movement Katznelson had founded. Brenner stuck to his views of previous years: “To the extent that I know what is called the Jewish people, I do not believe that it will settle the Land of

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Israel,” he wrote to Katznelson.36 He treated with suspicion a personality such as Pinhas Rutenberg, a veteran social-revolutionary who had been scarred in revolutionary activity first during the reign of the tsar and then against the Bolsheviks and had now reached Western Europe and joined the Zionist camp. Brenner contended that with people like Rutenberg, “Who knows what resides in them more, God or Satan? . . . This man is an adventurer. He is not needed in Palestine. If he comes, he will be here no longer than a week.”37 Katznelson, however, felt that this period presented a historic opportunity that must not be missed. He was drawn to Rutenberg’s personality and drive. This larger-than-life man—with his entrepreneurial vision that was far bigger than the small confines of Palestine—was in his view “perhaps the most important [human] capital that Zionism has.” He would give Rutenberg his full backing in the Palestine electrification project.38 One of the events that roused people’s emotions was the Bolshevik Revolution. Far from the borders of little Palestine, in the belovedhated motherland they had left many years ago, a world-shaking event had taken place, one that was unparalleled in history: a revolution that sought to achieve complete social equality and to establish the kingdom of justice on earth. Katznelson would later say: “There is no movement in the world to which masses of people, millions, looked with messianic yearning as they did to the Russian Revolution.”39 There were rumors of a brutal civil war, of the Red Terror, and also of pogroms perpetrated against Jews by the White forces. The press in Entente countries was replete with negative reports of what was taking place in Russia, but the pioneers of Palestine tended to reject the bad news and believe the good. Katznelson wrote to Alexander Heshin, who had returned to Russia, asking him to write “good, reliable letters from inside the upheaval.”40 The Russia of the people of the Second Aliya was that of the great Russian nineteenth-century literature. The novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky provided them with images with which they could interpret the world and the human soul, its exaltation and its baseness. When seeking to address the revolution, about which they still knew very little, they explained it to themselves by means of this conceptual world. In an article titled “Likutim” (Gleanings [from literature]), which he published in Kuntress, Katznelson attempted to deal with the m ­ ystery

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of the phenomenon known as Russia, inferring from the literature to life. The contrast between the greatness of Russian literature and the backwardness of the Russian people, between the unambiguous moral dictates of the authors and the blood-soaked reality of life, created an insoluble riddle. Katznelson cites Ivan Karamazov, who was a prevalent image in Hebrew literature, one that represented the absolute moral values of Russian literature as Jews perceived them. According to Katznelson’s interpretation, Karamazov returns his entrance ticket to God because he is not prepared for the world’s happiness to be obtained at the price of a baby’s tears. For Katznelson, the nineteenthcentury humanist and critic Vissarion Belinsky—who demanded from historical Providence a full account for every lost soul and refused to sacrifice it for happiness and progress—represents the moral purity of the 1905 revolution, which although it failed did not lose its conscience. Whereas now, he asks, “Which road are you taking, martyred and tortured, holy and crazy Russia?” He turns again to Dostoevsky’s novels: “Who can understand you? As child-pure as Raskolnikov or as darkness-defiled as Smerdyakov?” (referring to characters in Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov) and adds a further sentimental comment: “Distant-close homeland, foreign and precious.”41 Brenner never expressed yearning for the country of his birth or addressed the Russian people sentimentally. He was fully aware of the mixture of kindness and cruelty, innocence and cunning, the pinnacles of morality reached by the literature and the despicableness of the masses, which he had come to know during his military service in the tsar’s army. Unlike Katznelson, it is doubtful that he would have called Russia his “homeland.” But he did not remain indifferent to the revolution. The appearance in Hebrew of Vladimir Korolenko’s story “Makar’s Dream” and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons gave him the opportunity to reveal some of his feelings. For Brenner, Korolenko’s protagonist was a shining example of the deep-rooted Russian, the man of the soil who knew suffering and toil, the diametrical opposite of the Jewish luftmensch (Yiddish: literally, “air person,” the opposite of a worker). “We, who have more than enough books on morals, but so few moral men . . . have need of this book,” he declared.42 Bazarov, Turgenev’s nihilist protagonist, “is the progenitor of all those who, standing firm in their views, . . . fought for the people for fifty years . . .

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and are still ­fighting.”43 With the last four words, Brenner expressed his positive opinion of the Bolsheviks, who were then fighting for control of Russia. A short time later, Katznelson, who was on a mission to London, sent him some publications in Russian and Yiddish about what was happening in Russia, among them a series of journalistic articles by Maxim Gorky from 1917.44 Brenner published the articles, which included harsh criticism of the Bolsheviks, in the fifth issue Ha’adama. In the same issue he published a long article based on his own internal conflicts on the phenomenon known as Soviet Russia. Brenner shifted back and forth between his fundamentally positive attitude toward the revolution and his revulsion toward the phenomena it entailed—between his intuitive and moral identification with the idea of equality and his understanding that man’s natural instincts were opposed to it and that human beings are not prepared to accept a mechanical equality without material recompense for the industrious and talented. He wondered whether Russia, that vast country with its millions of peasants, which had severed itself from its political moorings, would be able to again accept the authority of law and order without the use of terror. The actions of the Bolsheviks—a peace treaty with the Germans, dividing the larger estates among the peasants, handing factories over to their workers—attracted Brenner and were acceptable to him. He viewed with derision the contentions of the Marxist purists that the Bolsheviks had skipped the developmental stages and fomented a revolution in a backward country not yet ready for a revolution, in the vein of the Ahad Ha’amist arguments on the need to “cultivate hearts” before building Palestine. Brenner accepted “forcing the issue,” the concept that the avant-garde serves as the “midwife” of history and accelerates processes in the desired direction. He was even prepared to accept the view that the Bolsheviks, who were in a life-and-death struggle, should not be expected to observe accepted moral rules: “Which of us, so far away from the action, sitting on our hands, is entitled to accuse, to demand absolute morality from them?” he claimed. Furthermore, “we should not demand of Lenin the moral dictates of a charity house manager.” But still he had his doubts: “Is there no limit? How can we be sure” that the terror is “only a temporary, necessary evil, for the eternal good?” From the history of the French Revolution and his knowledge of the human soul, he knew that evil was always lurking.

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“How can we be sure that they will not become rulers for the sake of rule?” Were the Bolsheviks’ acts “mistakes” or “evil acts that are grounded in their nature and are irreparable?” In other words, was the system fundamentally flawed, or were the Bolsheviks making mistakes as a consequence of historical circumstances? In the end he voiced his doubts about the new regime’s character: the bureaucracy was the same bureaucracy, and the commissars were basically no different from the chinovniks, the old regime’s officials. They were not “the apostles of socialism.”45 Ha’adama, nos. 10–11, carried a translation by Tal (pseudonym of Tuvia Levin) of Alexander Blok’s poem “The Twelve,” which describes the acts of twelve revolutionary army soldiers as they run wild, drink, kill, and love.46 The last stanza ends: “So they march with sovereign tread / Behind them limps the hungry dog, / and wrapped in wild snow at their head carrying a blood-red flag / . . . / crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls / a flowery diadem of frost / ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.” Brenner wrote a critique of the poem, which again illuminates his ambivalent attitude toward the Bolshevik Revolution. He draws a distinction between the Bolsheviks’ “party politics” and “the Bolshevik movement, the Bolshevik vision, Bolshevik Russia.” Is “The Twelve” the number of the Tribes of Israel or the Twelve ­Apostles?—an echo of which appears in the mention of the Acts in an earlier article about Soviet Russia. The patrol symbolizes the licentiousness and the breakdown of social order that came with the revolution, the eruption of primal, animal lust, but it is still adorned with the typical Russian admixture of sacred and profane, faith and heresy: “Naked, bestial heresy, and merely sylvan faith intermingled.” In Blok’s description of the murderer who is remorseful after killing his beloved, Brenner feels “a Russian melody, limitless in its human profundity.” For these soldiers, in Brenner’s summary of the poem’s content, the icon is lost—faith in God, love is lost, they have come through a cathartic fire: “Before them—before these dissolute murderers, men of the Red Army—will march man’s redeemer, the redeemer of humankind.”47 It was not by chance that he made sure that the poem was translated for the Hebrew reader not long after its appearance in print. In his view the revolution was a monumental phenomenon with religious-messianic characteristics. It was an outburst of primeval, vital

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forces, and Brenner, who yearned for it but was incapable of it, could not but be moved by it. But when he moves from the language of poetry and literature to the cold language of logic, he rejects Bolshevism as an opportunistic, hypocritical political system no different from that of its opponents. Although he has no interest in saving the bourgeoisie, he also keeps his distance from the Bolsheviks because only a few of them truly seek world reform.48 Additionally, Brenner is concerned for his own people: he fears Bolshevism’s erosion of the Jews, most of whom are small merchants or lumpenproletariat who would lose what little they had and not find another means of livelihood. Their miseries in adapting to the communist regime distress him. Rumors of the large number of Jews in the Bolshevik leadership frighten him: “If what our haters are shouting is true, that among the officials of Bolshevism there is an inordinately high percentage of ‘the Jewish seed,’ then ruination is certain.” That the Reds, unlike the Whites, are not perpetrating pogroms against the Jews does not impress him. He sees it as opportunistic behavior that can change overnight.49 If the Bolshevik government needed to shed “the blood of all the Jews of the [Eastern Mediterranean] to drive out English imperialism, it would not bat an eye,” he states in one of the last articles he was to write.50 Although Brenner was not committed to expressing the socialist trends dear to the heart of Akhdut Ha’avoda in Ha’adama, his journal did contain many articles of a clearly socialist hue: articles on socialist colonies by Tugan-Baranovsky; on utopias and utopianists by Y.  ­Mehaber (possibly his own adaptation of articles he had found); on “The Working Intelligentsia” and on cooperatives in England and Belgium by Y. Norman; on Gustav Landauer by Martin Buber; as well as articles by Otto Bauer and Karl Kautsky. Regarding Otto Bauer’s article, which dealt with the transition from a bourgeois to a socialist society by nationalizing the means of production, the editor noted: “there is actually not a great deal to learn from it. Our socialist program can be directed to only one end: to establish a reality, any reality, from the beginning, and not repair the flawed, which is also not ours.”51 That was the essence of the “constructive socialism” of the time. The prevailing belief was that in Palestine it would be possible to skip the capitalistic stage of social and economic development, just as

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the Bolsheviks had in Russia, and to build a just society from scratch with no need for a class war or revolution. Brenner also devoted space in his journal for enlightening but boring articles, such as “The Olive and White Viscum” by Ephraim Rubinovich and “Notes on Hygiene” by Dr. M. Baruchov.52 All of this was dues paid to Akhdut Ha’avoda, but as far as Brenner was concerned, the prime importance of Ha’adama was the platform it provided for young writers. Ever since the days of Hameorer, Brenner had tutored writers. He would complain that anyone holding a pen in his hand would send him his work seeking his opinion, but at the same time he encouraged young people to write and would revise and comment on their work with infinite patience if he found a grain of talent there.53 In the journal he even addressed “our worker comrades” who sent “stories and drawings from their life” to the journal, encouraging them to continue to do so, even though the material was not worthy of publication.54 In fact, workers did not publish a great deal in Ha’adama. When Brenner was living in Jerusalem, he gathered several young Sephardi writers around him, including David Avissar, M. D. Gaon, and Yehuda Burla, all of whom experimented with writing. “In those days,” Avissar recounted, “he took an interest in anyone who approached him on literary matters, encouraged them, and influenced [them] a great deal.”55 Burla, who had recently graduated from the teachers’ seminar, brought Brenner his first story, “Luna,” for his opinion. “I knew that my doubts would end with his opinion, for his opinion was the truth, for better or worse.”56 Brenner determined that he had talent, that he should continue writing, and advised him to add a few chapters to the story, but the outbreak of the world war disrupted the plan. After the war, when Burla was director of the Hebrew schools in Damascus, he sent Brenner his second effort, a novella titled Bli kokhav (Without a star), and Brenner was quick to publish it in three installments in Ha’adama. Ya’akov Kopelewitz, otherwise known as poet and critic Yeshurun Keshet, tells how Brenner treated him as an equal, and he only a young man who had published just a few poems. In the talks they had on evening strolls in Little Tel Aviv, Brenner would draw him out, asking his opinion about various writers. In the end, he convinced him not to stop at writing poetry but to write reviews too. The first such work he published was in Ha’aretz

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veha’avoda, edited by Brenner, and later he published in Ha’adama.57 Dov Kimchi was one of the young writers who frequented Brenner’s house in Jerusalem. After completing his first novel, Ma’abarot (Transitions), he immediately sent it to Brenner. Brenner wrote him that “there are many boring pages” and “all the protagonists are steeped in the Meller (Kimchi’s former name) style”; nevertheless, he found promise in his “ability.” He also advised him to cut out the superfluous psychology but still recommended that he publish the book “as it stands.”58 Kimchi was overjoyed: “Last week, I sent him Ma’abarot to read (he is the first reader of this novel), and I have already received a reply,” he wrote excitedly to Shalom Streit. “He gives a completely positive opinion: he thinks it should be published as it stands. He writes that there is a great deal of vitality in it. ‘There is a novelist’s ability here, and quite a considerable ability it would seem,’ and more. In any event I was very pleased with his opinion—and it breathed new life into me.”59 Kimchi is but one example of a young writer nurtured by Brenner to write fiction, essays, and even to translate.60 Another writer Brenner discovered and encouraged to write was Zvi Schatz. Schatz was steeped in Russian culture and had no knowledge either of Hebrew or of Jewish sources. He learned Sephardi-accented Hebrew and tried his hand at writing poems in that meter out of a belief that only thus would popular local poetry be able to flourish. Brenner was not enthusiastic about the poems. “I was born a prosaist and I shall die a prosaist,” he answered him. “Are the poems good? Are they lyrical? I do not know. Please forgive me.”61 Schatz wrote an article on the kvutza (the precursor of the kibbutz), which Brenner published in Ha’adama, and later two stories, “Belo niv” (Without expression) and “Batya.” Brenner urged him to study the Bible, and Schatz would write to him from the battalion’s camp at Kantara about his progress reading the Book of Ezekiel: “What self-knowledge and majesty!” he wrote, “It seems to me that neither Isaiah nor Jeremiah possessed such prophetic consciousness.”62 Ha’adama was also home to the works of authors and poets whom Brenner had discovered in previous years and in whose publication he invested considerable effort. One was Aharon Reuveni, whose Bereshit hamevukha (At the beginning of the turmoil) was published in the journal in installments translated by the author, who “is

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gradually becoming accustomed to Hebrew,” as Brenner wrote to Stiebel in an attempt to spark his interest in publishing a novel by his protégé.63 Another of his protégés, L. A. Orloff, whose Haggadat ­hamavet Brenner had published before the war, published a new story in Ha’adama, “Yeshimon” (Desolation). Brenner thought highly of both Orloff and Reuveni. The poet Mordechai Temkin was another of Brenner’s discoveries. Jacob Rabinowitz told Brenner about David Shimono­vich’s enthusiasm for the young poet: “He thinks he is a real poet.”64 Ha’adama gained fame both in Palestine and overseas. Initially, Brenner had approached every author and poet he knew, inviting them to write for the journal. Now established authors such as Moshe Smilansky65 and Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen66 approached Brenner offering to write for Ha’adama. The journal’s uniqueness lay in its innovativeness, the unknown names, and the Palestinian idiom that sprang from it. Berl Katznelson shared heartwarming impressions of his encounters in Vienna in the summer of 1920: “If Brenner had known how Ha’adama is read and what a readership the writings of Sarah Chizik [one of the Tel Hai fallen whose diaries and letters were published in the journal] has, Zvi Schatz’s story, Burla, and so forth, he would not speak as he usually does.”67 Just as Hameorer had provided a platform for the Schoffman, Schneur, Bercovich, and Hirschbein generation, Ha’adama presented a new generation of Hebrew writers, publishing their first works. The Hameorer generation came mainly from the Pale of Settlement and were yeshiva refugees, whereas the new generation mainly consisted of graduates of nonreligious schools, some of which were Hebrew schools in Palestine. Only one story expressed the connection between Brenner’s old and new worlds, “Challah levana” (A white challah) by Lamed Shapiro, the writer with whom Brenner had been friendly in London before Shapiro emigrated to the United States. The story was translated from Yiddish and dealt with the mental processes undergone by a simple Russian peasant incited against the murderers of Jesus, who translates the incitement into an anti-Jewish pogrom even though he had fought side by side with a Jewish soldier. It appears that this is the only story from outside Palestine that Brenner published in Ha’adama. Brenner feared that Ha’adama would suffer a fate similar to that of the sixth issue of Revivim and have no buyers. “Tell me the truth,”

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he asked Berl Katznelson. “Do you believe that it can be published for a whole year?”68 Katznelson tried to reassure him: “Do not worry about the material fate of Ha’adama,” he wrote him. “I only hope that it will be a journal expressing our life and the literature of our life. Then our comrades will work for it with great devotion.”69 From distant Stockholm, where he was attending the 1919 Poalei Zion conference, Katznelson displayed interest in the situation of Ha’adama. Its first issue was imminent, and he wrote a mutual friend, asking: “How is Brenner? I am very concerned about his mood. But the journal will be robust.”70 On receiving the first issue, when he was already in London, he hastened to write to Brenner about the fine impression the journal had left on him: “Words of truth, of plain meaning and of [good] will.” He again pacified Brenner regarding funding: “Do not concern yourself about the financial fate of Ha’adama,” telling him of his success in finding subscribers for the journal abroad.71 Katznelson was excited by the journal: “Were you happy about Ha’adama?” he wrote to his friends in Palestine. “I was very, very happy. Its imprimatur is truth.”72 In addition to his happiness over the journal’s character and standard, Katznelson took care of Brenner. Just as in their first meeting in Ein Ganim, Katznelson felt as if he were his guardian. Katznelson’s optimism about obtaining funding for the publication of Ha’adama was somewhat exaggerated. After the publication of eleven issues, the Akhdut Ha’avoda coffers were empty, and publication of the last issue of 1919 was not possible. The members of Akhdut Ha’avoda tried in vain to raise the required funds, and Ha’adama became defunct.73 This was a harsh blow for Brenner, just like the one he had suffered with the closing of Hameorer. All at once the world was diminished, manuscripts stopped coming, and he lost the focal point of his life. Along with the demise of Ha’adama came a crisis in Brenner’s personal life. At the beginning of summer 1919, worries about the Brenner family’s livelihood had ceased. When Chaya and Uri went on vacation to Rehovot, Brenner wrote to Chaya: “Do not stint on money, for we have it.”74 Chaya and Uri would spend the summer months in places known for their clear, malaria-free air, such as Gedera. Brenner stayed in Tel Aviv writing. He was overly concerned about Uri, and Chaya tried to allay his fears. In early 1919 the Kindergarten Teachers A ­ ssociation

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published a journal, Ganenu (Our kindergarten), in which Chaya published articles that expressed her love of order and method, such as “Cleaning the Classroom for Festivals” and “The Educational Value of Housework in the Family.”75 On the face of it, all was well. K. Y. Silman, a close family friend and one of the first Chaya had told about her upcoming marriage, regarded them as a loving couple. He invited Brenner and Chaya “for a glass of tea and potato latkes” at his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah celebration; jokingly, he added: “Study the equal rights laws.” In another letter he sent “regards to the good friend Chaya and her son.”76 But something was troubling him, as if there were an undercurrent he could not fathom: “Is there anything that is troubling you?” he wrote. And he asked again, “please let us know if anything is happening.”77 At the end of February 1920, Chaya wrote a letter to Brenner, who was in Ein Ganim, saying that she wished to separate from him. Because her letter has been lost, we can only reconstruct what she wrote from Brenner’s reply. “I have read what you wrote and sent to me,” he wrote. “I have known it for a long time. But I am powerless to rectify it. I cannot be a husband. On that score you are completely in the right.” There is a hidden, allusive layer in that sentence. Brenner declares that he cannot be a husband—not only to Chaya but to anybody else as well. He can and wants to be a father, but he is unable to fill the role of husband, of partner, of friend for life, with its quotidian hardships. Was it the day-to-day intimacy of living with another person, whom it was very hard to avoid, that bothered him? Or was he challenged by Chaya’s femininity and unable to withstand it? In any event, he reached the conclusion that he was not made for family life. But the words “on that score you are completely in the right” imply that there was another side to the coin, wherein the blame lay with Chaya, not him. Chaya did not like housework. Did the way she ran the household, employing both a maid and a cook, bother Brenner, who hated luxuries? Perhaps it was Chaya’s character—assertive, forceful, and perhaps even tough—that did not conform to the qualities Brenner sought in a wife? These are questions to which there is no answer because we have no key to understanding Brenner’s reservations about his wife. We find Brenner’s only critical comment about Chaya in a letter to his sister Batya, in which he writes that Chaya does not possess

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mental equilibrium; he expresses his doubts about her suit­ability for kvutza life, which she had said she wanted: “The atmosphere there is poisoned even without her.”78 This is an intimate remark that conceals more than it reveals. For her part, Chaya was probably tired of her husband’s bouts of depression, his moods, the severance of their emotional ties, and the absence of discourse between them. She described the seven years of her life with Brenner as “hell” and “a terrible life.”79 But concealing intimate matters, as was the custom at that time, she did not go into detail about what caused her pain, at least not in her preserved letters. In Brenner’s eyes his relationship with Chaya was secondary to that with Uri. Although he was not keen about the idea of divorce, he did not feel entitled to force “the bonds” on her if she was unable to bear them any longer. “I hope you can find a little happiness, for if it is good for you, it will also be good for Uri Nissan.” In other words, she is important to him not on her own merits but only as a means to ensure their son’s welfare. He agreed to the separation and was prepared to leave Tel Aviv. “If you think it is the right thing so as not to tear the

Chaya Broide-Brenner and son, Uri Nissan Brenner, 1920. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

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heart of the poor child, without making any changes until the world opens up again and either of us can go abroad, I agree to that too.” He ends his marriage with the words: “I have no advice and no suggestions, for the main part of my accounts is closed and I am lost.”80 During the winter and spring of 1920, the pain of separation was somewhat alleviated by Brenner’s intensive work at Ha’adama. But in the summer of that year, the journal ceased to appear—the July–­August issue was the last. It was then, on 18 July 1920, that Brenner and Chaya divorced, and the day after the divorce was finalized, Chaya and Uri sailed for Europe. The divorce seriously affected Chaya. “Had I known how terrible this last bonfire would be,” she wrote to her former husband, “I would possibly have stayed in hell, if only not to go through it.”81 The divorce ceremony was a humiliating experience for her: “I felt a terrible shame that troubled me greatly.”82 Brenner responded to the divorce with equanimity: “The act of the first day neither magnified nor diminished the disaster. That act makes no difference at all,” he replied to her.83 From this point onward, the focus of their relationship was the child. “In the name of our dear son I extend to you my hand in peace and not in anger. Our ways have parted, but our relationship is not over. I wish for peace between me and the father of my son,” Chaya wrote to him.84 Brenner was prepared to accept any arrangement that would benefit Uri. He appeared to accept Chaya’s plan to make their separation easier by going to Europe with Uri for a year of pedagogical studies. She promised in advance that, should Uri not acclimatize there, she would return to Palestine earlier. Brenner did his best to help them financially. He informed her that he would place at her disposal the royalties he was due from Stiebel for his two books, in the sum of one hundred pounds. He even gave her some advice for the journey: to keep her money well hidden and give only small tips.85 The gates of Palestine were finally opened. It was now possible to travel to Europe, and those who were able went to recover from the travails of the war and to enjoy good food and European cultural treasures. On the ship that took Chaya and Uri to Trieste were writer and politician Zalman Rubashov (Shazar) and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who were traveling to a Poalei Zion conference in Vienna, and also Shalom ­Streit, Brenner’s close friend. In addition to Chaya’s regular reports on Uri’s welfare, who according to her had the soul of a tourist and felt

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better on the voyage than all the adults, Streit also told Brenner about Uri’s curiosity and charm.86 Only two days after Chaya and Uri sailed, Yeshayahu Streit wrote to his brother that he had found out that Brenner was living in Neveh Shalom, “and he misses Uri terribly.”87 In his letters to Chaya, Brenner wrote with restraint, but that was not the case in his letters to Streit, to whom he poured out his heart: “Desolation and emptiness are all around and within me. If there were anyone in heaven, he would have pity.”88 His “emptiness” refers, first and foremost, to his separation from his son, but also to the absence of a challenge in the sphere of literary endeavor. Brenner’s personal misery was projected onto his attitude toward the national sphere. He, who only recently had majestically eulogized Trumpeldor and his comrades who fell at Tel Hai, a eulogy in which he bound his fate together with that of Palestine, now wrote to Berdyczewski: “Things in this country are pretty bad, and everyone knows that Zionism is a vain dream.” In his view the country was small, inhabited mainly by Arabs, and although there are places that can be settled, “the Jews are not settlers. They are perplexed and misled.” He also informed Berdyczewski that he had made up his mind to stop writing literature, “worthless work,” and that he was thinking about making a living from proofreading and private lessons. He signed this depressing letter with the words, “I await my dying day.”89 Chaya, however, was able to breathe freely for the first time in years. She wrote to Brenner only about serious matters, such as money troubles, accompanied by stories about Uri and about meeting acquaintances and admirers. But in her letters to the Poznansky family, she allowed herself greater freedom. She told them about the beautiful scenery she saw through the window of the train carrying them from Trieste to Vienna, and about her need to spread her wings after living in poor little Palestine. She bought Uri some winter clothes and some small luxuries for herself, such as a coquettish hat and patent leather shoes.90 The Poalei Zion conference that took place at the same time in Vienna—ending in a split between those for whom Palestine was their heart’s desire and those who preferred the communist revolution—provided Chaya and Uri with the opportunity to acclimatize to Europe with the help of old friends. When Berl ­Katznelson

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mounted the podium to deliver his speech, Uri shouted his name from the audience and then clambered onto the stage and sat in his lap. Old friends—Zerubavel and Heshin—greeted them with hugs and kisses. With regard to Heshin, Chaya noted that he is “the same ­Alexander”—in other words, a charming, lighthearted man. “He is the most radical of communists,” she wrote to Brenner.91 Chaya also met Schoffman, whose appearance did not match the butterfly image she had of him: “Such a serious man, and modest in his appearance,” she wrote to Brenner in some amazement.92 Streit quoted Schoffman’s high praise of Uri, writing that “Schoffman is totally amazed: ‘Brenner has such a sheketzl [a lively little boy].’ Such a sheketzl, and he cannot take his eyes off him.”93 Brenner and Uri exchanged letters: Uri would dictate his letter to his mother, and she would write it in square letters that the boy would then copy in his own handwriting. On 21 September 1920, Chaya and Uri reached Berlin, their final destination, where they lived with the Tritsch family, friends from ­Chaya’s previous stay in the city. They were a well-to-do family with children Uri’s age. Brenner, who did not yet know that they had arrived in Berlin, expressed his fears to Chaya about Uri’s being constantly in the company of adults, which “with his great intelligence and delicate nerves” was liable to impair his development.94 He also wrote, “I am not well. Absolutely not,” but did not go into detail. In his letter to Uri, he wrote: “You are my whole life,” adding, somewhat mysteriously: “I pray that, when you return to Jaffa, I will still be alive and be able to see you.”95 In a letter to Shalom Streit in Vienna that he wrote the very same day, 28 September 1920, Brenner described his pain: My friend! It has been ten weeks that I have been on my own. I cannot live without U. N. [Uri Nissan]. I have absolutely no interest. I spend my days in bed. My stomach has stopped digesting food, and except for yoghurt, I cannot eat a thing. Nobody is to blame, but my tragedy is greater than that of Job. He had the question of the righteous man and the evildoer. I have no questions. Just my heart that is crying out without end: Uri! Uri! And why? For what purpose? Why does he have to drink from the cup of sorrow and be a gypsy child in a foreign city when he could be playing with a hoop in Nachalat Binyamin and be like everyone else?

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And his mother—it is bad for her in Vienna too. Why can she not rent a room here and live here? Why does she have to live there? I have been writing to them in Berlin all the time. I also hoped that Mordechai Kushnir would go there and teach Uri Hebrew. But Mordechai’s journey did not come about. And I think: children are being sent away from Vienna. Is that miserable city a place for children? And a six-year-old child with delicate nerves—does he have to make such efforts? Does he have to constantly be in the company of adults, even if they were all Shalom Streits? My friend! I am wasting away. That is all I can tell you. For these ten weeks, I have not opened my mouth to speak of my fate with anyone, for I cannot talk about it with anybody. You are the only one. What must I do? If I had the strength, I would go to Vienna. But I do not have the strength. I am gravely ill. Be well, my friend, and give my regards to U. N. and his mother. Yours, Y. H. There is nothing to say about Ha’adama. The A.H. [Akhdut Ha’avoda] publishing house has gone bankrupt. So have I. There is neither a people nor a world for me.96

The distance from Uri and the loss of his literary endeavor with the closing of Ha’adama caused Brenner one of the most serious bouts of depression he had ever experienced. He saw Uri as a sort of continuation of himself and was unable to bear the child’s being torn away from him. His lying in bed day after day and his inability to take food reveal the anguish resulting from his psychological state. It also prevented him from taking the step that might have eased his pain—going to Europe to be with Uri. His anxiety over Uri’s fate was, of course, exaggerated. He measured the child against the “hereditary suffering” he thought he had handed down to him. But Uri was a healthy, happy child, who quickly got used to his life in the Diaspora. Brenner did not tell Streit to show his letter to Chaya, but he did not order him to keep its contents to himself. It seems that deep at heart he wanted Chaya to know how he felt. When Streit received the letter (twenty days after it was sent), his anxiety over his friend’s fate sent a shudder through him. He told Brenner that he would give Chaya his regards and explain to her that it would be best for the child

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to shorten his “exile.” “I shall tell her in such a way that things must take their course.”97 And indeed, Chaya wrote to Brenner five days later: “Yosef Haim. I have read what you wrote to Streit. You can only imagine what an effect it had on me. I am willing to return to Palestine, for I lack the strength and courage to shoulder the responsibility for your health. Even though I do not believe that I will be able to help you. Because I wanted to help all the time but you would not accept my help.”98 Brenner’s letter to Streit caused Chaya profound anxiety. She feared he would take his own life. “With trembling hands and pounding heart, I would open Ha’aretz [newspaper].” It was then that she realized that the divorce had not given her the freedom she expected: “I passed from my parents’ charge to that of a husband, and from that day being my own woman was taken away from me, taken forever. Casting off the fetters did not help either. Fear will always hover over me; always be lashing my body. I shall always be dependent on [his] opinion.” She added: “How terrible this acknowledgment is for a person like me, who despite a terrible life of seven years has not learned to bow her head in tranquility.”99 Brenner’s fragile mental state was a sword hanging over Chaya’s head, who was unable to accept responsibility for the possibility that her former husband and father of her child might end his life, the man she had loved, and to whom she was still bound in her heart. Before Brenner’s letter reached Streit and Chaya’s reply reached Brenner, the situation changed dramatically. The depression passed, Brenner recovered, and the world seemed less dark and threatening to him. His fears for Uri were somewhat allayed. In the meantime he moved from Neveh Shalom to a nice, well-lit room in the apartment of David Remez, one of the leaders of Akhdut Ha’avoda.100 In reply to Chaya’s letter, in which she told him that she would remain abroad for less than a year and would even return immediately if need be, he wrote that Streit should not have shown her that letter, “which I wrote in a particular mood.” Now he was calm and serene and allowed her to stay in Berlin for the time being.101 Chaya also informed the Poznansky family of her intention to return shortly and asked them to reply immediately and tell her about the true state of Brenner’s health. Poznansky replied soothingly: “It cannot be said that Brenner’s situ-

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ation requires your return,” he wrote. He described Brenner as being calm in spirit and in a good mood: “At no time have I seen him here in Palestine so easy to talk to, to spend some time with without carping, as I have these past two months.” And he went on: “What I have written about Brenner I wrote with no intention of influencing or making decisions but solely for the purpose of information.”102 After Brenner’s death, however, Poznansky revealed to Chaya that he had written this letter “with Brenner’s knowledge and consent—that you should not come.”103 In other words, once Brenner’s mental state changed for the better, he tried not to disrupt the plans of the mother of his son. The change in Brenner’s condition was dramatic. At the end of October 1920, Yeshayahu Streit wrote to his brother that he had met Brenner by chance, and “he was well dressed and clean. He looked well and gave the impression that he was very happy, not as I had imagined him.”104 Poznansky also wrote about Brenner: “He is more serene, in a better mood, easier to talk to and even given to joking a little.” In the late evening, he would go out for a walk and tended toward jocularity. The arrival of his young friend Shimonovich, whose accommodation he arranged, had a beneficial effect on him.105 One day, Brenner and Asher Barash met Shimonovich to hear regards from their mutual friend Schoffman and see photographs of him and his new, non-Jewish wife. “I enjoyed seeing the photographs of you and your wife that Shimonovich showed us,” Brenner wrote to Schoffman. “Be well. At present I am fine.”106 At the end of November, Chaya told Streit that “he was ill. But he is better now and agrees that I should stay in Europe until the end of the year.” She incidentally reveals that “he has written some fictional pieces and his present condition is not bad. That letter was apparently written when he was in a particular stimmung (mood).”107 Was it writing literature that brought him out of his depression, or was that a sign of his recovery? Despite the inflation in Germany that increased the value of her Palestine pounds, Chaya’s living expenses exceeded the money she had at her disposal. She had intended to make a living by giving private Hebrew lessons or as a kindergarten teacher but had difficulty finding work. The money she was supposed to receive from Stiebel was delayed, so she borrowed from her brother Yeshayahu, who sent money from Palestine; from Shalom Streit, who was in Vienna; and even

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from an old friend who was visiting Berlin for a week, Agnon—“nu ­umbeholfener mensch, der Czaczkes [a helpless man, this ­Czaczkes],” as Chaya described him to Brenner. “He is happy now in his little house with his beloved wife.”108 She wrote that, after Kabak and ­Harizman published negative reviews of his work, “he fears Palestine and is very, very sorry.”109 In 1920 Brenner moved closer to the Akhdut Ha’avoda camp. In the first issue of Haadama, he preached unification of the Palestine workers’ movement in his own way. The two parties that were active during the Second Aliya, Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatzair, had undergone a process of moving closer to one another as a consequence, he contended, of their encounter with reality: the Marxism of one had dissipated, while the other had lost its “nationalist idealism.” Both sides recognized that “the salvation of the Jewish people and Palestine would come not through citrus growers or a spiritual proletariat but through new collectives of workers.” Berl Katznelson was a partner in this conviction, but the Hapoel Hatzair people rejected it outright; they saw a uniqueness in their party that justified continuation of its separate existence. One writer who cast doubt on the possibility of unification threw out the following one-liner: “You see the ships arriving, and I see the ones departing.” In other words, Zionistic optimism leads to unification; pessimism, to separation. Brenner adapted this statement so that it became a slogan: “The source of unification is in the hope for ships arriving—and that of separation, in seeing the departing ones.”110 Yosef Trumpeldor, who had founded the Hechalutz movement in Russia and whose members stood ready in the Crimea for immigration to Palestine, delivered a public call for a partial unification of Palestinian workers, so that the new immigrants would not encounter two employment exchanges, two health funds, two immigration ­offices, and so forth, as had been the case since the establishment of Akhdut Ha’avoda. He suggested establishing a joint council, elected by all workers, that would undertake all the work for developing the country and also establish trade unions. The proposed council was an early version of the Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish ­Laborers).111 Brenner expressed his support. Trumpeldor’s call for unification of the workers in Palestine became a sort of testament after

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his death.112 Pressure to unify came first and foremost from the Third Aliya pioneers, who had begun reaching Palestine in 1919, upsetting the balance between the two parties. In the July–August 1920 issue of Ha’adama (which did not actually come out until November), an article by Brenner appeared with a sloganlike title, “Let the Workers of Palestine Take Care of the Workers of Palestine,”113 a sort of Palestinian version of “All Power to the Soviets,” the contemporary Bolshevik slogan. Brenner carried the copies of the journal from Jaffa to the unification conference in Haifa, just as he had with Hameorer. The Akhdut Ha’avoda council convened on the eve of the conference because some members claimed that establishing the Histadrut would impair the integrity of party’s values. Katznelson spoke in support of unification, and his speech was the deciding factor in establishing the Histadrut. According to Katznelson, “Y. H. Brenner was sitting facing me and his face lit up.”114 Of an affectionately jocular remark that Brenner made after the speech, Katznelson later wrote: “Only very infrequently had I seen Y. H. Brenner as happy as I did then.”115 As the years passed, Brenner’s participation in the Haifa conference became a legend. The man, who was not a conference delegate, sat at the table reserved for the press and writers and held up proceedings with his interjections, so much so that the chairman, Yosef Sprinzak, demanded that he keep quiet because he did not have the right to speak. Brenner replied instantly that he had the right to cry out—and “the right to cry out” would come to express the voice of morals and conscience crying out against the rules of establishment democracy. Brenner followed the debates excitedly. He also spoke a great deal behind the scenes with members of Hechalutz and influenced them considerably in favor of establishing the Histadrut. In the end the newly established Histadrut stated its aims as follows: “It is the aim of the united federation of all the workers and laborers of Palestine who live by the sweat of their brows without exploiting the toil of others to promote land settlement, to involve itself in all settlement, economic, and also cultural issues affecting labor in Palestine, for the building of a Jewish workers’ society there.”116 Political activity remained in the hands of the parties. The “and also cultural issues” expressed the reservations of Hapoel Hatzair about handing over cultural matters to the Histadrut, which was supposed to engage solely with material issues.

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Brenner mocked his friend Aharonowitz for the scholastic use of the notorious “and also,”117 and indeed, life did its job and the separation between “the material” and “the spiritual” was short-lived. At the conclusion of the conference, all the participants burst into singing and dancing. “The enthusiasm was amazing,” wrote Eliahu Golomb, describing the scene to his good friend Moshe Shertok (Sharett), who was in London. And Brenner asked laughingly, “Why are you so happy? You have only formed a trade union!” The d ­ ancers bore Brenner aloft until he begged to be put down. In exchange they demanded that he go onstage and address them, and he agreed. His talk revolved around the first verse of Psalm 133, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,” and they danced all night its melody. He made a connection between “for brethren to dwell together in unity” and “workers of the world, unite,” the slogan of the Socialist International, contending that the two slogans were one, and then spoke about the history of the unification idea, explaining that the “and also” meant that brethren can also dwell together in unity.118 It was one of the moments in Brenner’s life in which he attained spiritual elevation like that of his Ukrainian ­Hasidic forefathers, whom he had ostensibly denied. In the fall of 1919, following protracted negotiations that began with the Stiebel publication house’s representatives in Palestine and ended with Brenner’s friend Y. D. Bercovich, who had been appointed the house’s U.S. editor, Brenner sent two manuscripts: Breakdown and Bereavement and his translation of Crime and Punishment.119 Having learned from the bitter experience of the publication of his earlier books, Brenner did not cease cautioning Bercovich about the need for meticulous proofreading and, in the event of typographical errors, including an errata sheet in the book. He was so persistent that Bercovich was offended and replied: “It seems to me that you knew me slightly in London, for I am not among the great transgressors and I sometimes have good intentions.”120 The manuscripts reached Stiebel in mid-November 1919. In July 1920 the galley proofs of Breakdown and Bereavement were sent to Brenner after scrupulous proofing. Unfortunately, the proofs reached Brenner only three months later, and he was quick to note the numerous errors in the book.121 On 20 November 1920, a year after the manuscript reached New York, Stiebel

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informed him that the book was out and ten copies were being forwarded to him.122 As we have seen, Breakdown and Bereavement was written in 1913, before Brenner’s marriage. Although he had copied the book several times, it seems that except for the title, the book did not undergo any essential changes. It was his first literary work after Here and There and his last novel. According to Brenner, he invested much thought in the narrative before sitting down to write it. The stratagem of a frame story recurs: the narrator seemingly conveys the contents of writings he found in another person’s knapsack. This time, the writer is not “one of the wanderers,” as in Here and There, but a man who has lost his mind and is taken off a ship sailing from Port Said to Alexandria. The similarity between the two characters is that both left Palestine and nothing is known of what befell them. In Here and There the frame story has its own logic deriving from the book’s content, whereas in Breakdown and Bereavement, the frame story has neither justification nor connection with the novel’s structure or content. The two books are very different in structure, focus, and form of writing. From a structural standpoint, Here and There is an extremely complex book. It has no continuity in either time or place, as if the author has done his utmost to delude his readers, especially his critics. Breakdown and Bereavement is a book that evolves along a time continuum, and the author even provides a timeline in the plot, which evolves over two years (from March, the time of Yehezkel Hefetz’s “catastrophe” when he was in the kvutza, to March two years later, one year after Miriam’s death).123 Although there are flashbacks here and there, Brenner does not make a riddle out of the structure. It is a well-constructed novel, with no attempts at structural innovation. Furthermore, as far as Brenner was concerned, Here and There was a nationalist book from the standpoint of its theme, its protagonists, into whose mouths he places different positions, and the issues it raises for discussion. The encounter with the characters is external, through a description of their positions and motives and the articles they write. In contrast, Break­ down and Bereavement is a book of internal monologues in which the protagonists reveal their spiritual life, their Weltanschauung, and their reflections. The main thrust of the narrative is in the insights on reality as expressed in the protagonists’ emotions. It is a psychological novel,

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in the vein of Bahoref. Here and There focuses on the new Yishuv, its hopes and frailties, whereas Breakdown and Bereavement engages with figures from the old Yishuv. The plot unfolds on the margins of the Zionist experience in Palestine and connects with that experience: for example, with Yehezkel Hefetz’s work in the kvutza before his “catastrophe”; through the simple, positive character of Menachem, whose name (“consoler” in Hebrew) is not a random choice, and who is perhaps a symbol of the New Jew; and the mysterious personality of Hanoch Hefetz, who is not prepared to engage in commerce but wants to work in the fields or as a guard and to ensure that Jewish land does not pass into nonJewish hands. But most of the novel takes place in old Yishuv circles, woven with the traditional behavioral norms that were gradually being eroded by interaction with the nonreligious society. National issues are secondary to the internal developments in the protagonists’ souls. When Yehezkel loses his sanity, he talks incessantly about national matters, but what truly troubles him are matters of a sexual nature. The main action of Breakdown and Bereavement takes place within the Hefetz family. Yehezkel Hefetz, a young man who immigrates to Palestine and works as an agricultural laborer, is assailed by depression, speaks a great deal about the Arab national movement, and even displays fear of a blood libel. He talks about every subject under the sun, with the exception of his longing for a wife and home. His comrades in the kvutza see nothing extraordinary in all his talk about national issues, but once he falls silent, they realize that he has a personal problem, and then he informs them that he is going overseas. For three years he wanders through Europe and in Switzerland works as a shop assistant selling secondhand clothing. He meets an abandoned wife with several children who tries to make a match for him with her eldest daughter. After much hesitation he decides that he loves her and is prepared to make her his wife. But then a student, Hamilin (a Russian name), appears on the scene: he is attractive in a Levantine way, a cheat and deceiver, and he seduces Hefetz’s fiancée. Hefetz is somehow pleased that he has been freed from his relationship with “the daughter of the deserted wife.” He remembers Palestine, immigrates once again, and works in a kvutza. His immigration to Palestine is a means of escaping the personal and the painful by espousing a national

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ideal. But in the course of his arduous agricultural labor, he is assailed by pain, which is caused by a hernia. Menachem, a temporary worker in the kvutza who knew him in Switzerland, volunteers to take him to his family in Jerusalem, where a doctor will examine him. The doctor recommends a truss, and the treatment ends there. Then the main action unfolds. Yehezkel lodges in Jerusalem with his uncle, Yosef Hefetz, who has two daughters: dried-up, bony, and ugly Esther and young, vivacious, good-looking Miriam. Another uncle, Haim, is a frequent visitor. Yehezkel’s mental state deteriorates once more. His mental illness conceals his real sickness, which is bound up with shame. In Yehezkel’s eyes his hernia is a condition associated with disgrace. He compares himself with Job, but his anguish carries with it neither greatness nor spiritual benefit. Because his affliction is base and ugly, Hefetz contends that he is unlike Job: “I have no complaints against God”; he does not sit in ashes “but in refuse.” Like Job, however, he keeps scratching himself with a potsherd: “it is probably the one thing I cannot do without.” The ashes suggest mourning, death, the end of a chapter of existence, while the refuse suggests the ugliness of this world, its unending anguish.124 Y ­ ehezkel recalls not only Job, but also Jesus, “the Galilean yeshiva student,” who sought a regime of justice. Job exemplifies acceptance of the torment, of divine, cosmic injustice; Jesus, the attempt to achieve redemption, justice, a world of salvation, an attempt that failed. When it becomes clear that Yehezkel is going mad, he is taken from his uncle’s house to an asylum, where he is hospitalized for ten months. Esther, his uncle Yosef’s unattractive daughter, desires him and goes to work in the asylum to help him. She is present in humiliating scenes, such as when one of the asylum’s workers beats him because he has soiled his clothes and refuses to eat tomato soup. The sexual background to his madness is revealed in what he says while hallucinating, that he is not agvan (salacious) and therefore cannot eat agvaniot (tomatoes).125 When he is discharged from the asylum, ­Esther pursues him. Brenner describes relationships in which each lover is doomed to be miserable, each one is the other’s hell: Esther loves Yehezkel, but he despises her. She nauseates him. Their acts of love are ugly, repulsive; they emit a bad smell.126 He is in love with the younger, vivacious, attractive sister, Miriam. But there is no chance that she will even look

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at him. Miriam falls in love with Yehezkel’s old rival, Hamilin, who has come to Jerusalem in all his finery and with the title of doctor (although he has not yet completed his studies), but he does not even notice her; he has come to marry the wealthy, sensual Henya Goldman, the former wife of Hanoch, Haim Hefetz’s stammering, purehearted son. Each member of the Hefetz family chooses the partner not meant for him or her, and each of them is thus condemned to misery and heartbreak. During his hospitalization Yehezkel suffers hallucinations in which the leading actor is Hamilin, who had apparently stolen the abandoned wife’s daughter from him unintentionally. Yehezkel conducts a hallucinatory conversation with Hamilin, in which the Hamilin presents his Nietzschean views on the advantage held by the strong and beautiful who rebel against every moral value and strive toward gratification of their drives and strong sensations: “Beauty, power, love.” Moral theories, according to Hamlin, are the weapons of the weak and ugly, who have sought revenge against the strong and healthy since the time of Jesus by following his dictum of passivity. Hefetz opposes Hamilin’s views, declaring that even the weak and ugly love life and have the right to live and be happy in their own way. But does he fulfill his own belief in that right? The two elder Hefetz brothers, Yosef and Haim, as well as ­Yehezkel (the first two letters of whose names in Hebrew are YH) serve perhaps as doubles of Yosef Haim Brenner. They representing the spiritual world and aspirations toward it, whereas the Goldman family and Hamilin represent crass materialism. Yosef is a Torah scholar, and books are his entire world. When he came to Palestine following the destruction of his town in a pogrom and the loss of his livelihood, he did not have the money to release his books from customs. In other words, he is cut off from the source of his vitality. His identity is dependent on his ability to study his books and quote verses from them. He tries to continue his studies and purchase the books he needs, even though he does not work, and it is Esther who supports the family with what she earns as a seamstress. Yosef was a respected teacher in his hometown, but in Palestine he avoids accepting a position because he feels that he would be unable to cope with the students. He has problems with his feet, and this condition frees him of the need to look

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for work. At the end of the book, it is clear that this is nothing but a nervous condition. As with Yehezkel, sickness is an excuse not to face up to the outside world. In contrast, the second brother, Haim, who in his home country had been a smuggler and came to Palestine to escape the authorities, does any work that comes his way: he is a stonemason, a housepainter, the janitor of a charity hospice, and leads bathers to the hot springs in Tiberias. He admires his erudite brother, but in fact it is he who possesses the more positive personality of the two. What agonizes Haim is the vow he made to donate a Torah scroll to a synagogue, a scroll that had been given to Henya Goldman as a guarantee for her ketuba (marriage contract) when she married his son Hanoch. In the meantime, Henya divorces Hanoch and takes their son with her. Although most of the sum stipulated in the ketuba had been paid to her, the forceful Goldman refuses to return the Torah scroll, and in the end it is he who donates it to the synagogue. Unlike his brother, Haim is not an educated man, but he has a spark of spirituality in him as evidenced by his desire to donate the Torah scroll, his admiration of his scholarly brother and the work he does, which does not entail exploitation of others. This stands in stark contrast with the avaricious Goldman family, who deceive and rob those weaker than them while professing to observe the commandments and give charity. An example of the duplicity of Goldman—the indefatigable server on religious committees—is that his children attended a mission school.127 Three members of the Hefetz family suffer traumas: Yehezkel tells Esther that he keeps away from her because of his fear that his mental illness will recur. He does not reveal his sexual obsession (he has no belief in his sexual potency) to her. In his eyes his hernia is an external manifestation of his impotence. He is characterized by three qualities: melancholy, deformity, and tragedy. His melancholy is a mental illness; his deformity, the hernia; and the tragedy, his loss of sexual ability.128 He treats Esther unfairly, revealing but also obscuring the real reason for distancing himself from her, his sexual feebleness. But in fact this weakness is in doubt. In all probability, had Miriam wanted him, his sexual impulse would have been roused. But Esther revolts him for physical reasons. He knows he owes her his gratitude for caring for him during his hospitalization, and that, too, provokes

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his ­revulsion. But he also recognizes their wretchedness, in that both of them, two defective people, were made for one another, and he should be compassionate toward her (and himself) and accept her. When at long last he makes up his mind to ask her to marry him, she feels such hatred toward him that she pours the contents of a chamber pot over him. That is the peak of the humiliation, a sadomasochistic act, the final scene in a twisted relationship that began with her seeing him beaten in the asylum. From Yehezkel’s point of view, this humiliating act is a sort of redemption: Esther is cured of her lust for him as a man, and thenceforth their relationship takes on the guise of a fraternal one, once the menacing shadow of sex—for him—is removed. In fact, Y ­ ehezkel accepts his sexual weakness. His fear of a binding relationship wanes. Yosef Hefetz suffers the trauma of the death of his daughter Miriam, who leaves their home in Jerusalem without his blessing and moves to Jaffa to find her way in life. Completely at a loss, with no money and not knowing what to do, she pricks her finger with a hairpin, causing her death from septicemia. Yosef is stricken by pangs of conscience because he had disowned her and had not even visited her as she lay dying. But after her death he sees her in a different, more positive, and warmer light. Haim loses his son Hanoch, who fell ill when working alone in a distant flour mill; an Arab who chanced by takes him to hospital in Safed, but in vain. Hanoch is one of the novel’s most enigmatic characters. The name Brenner gave him, Hanoch (Enoch), alludes to a direct connection with God, although Yosef says of him that he did not walk with God. He is not religiously observant, and in the only speech he utters in the book, he rejects both the existence of God and any thought of reward and punishment as part of the purpose of the world.129 Hanoch stammers and does not know how to write. He brings to mind the figure of the shepherd boy who offered his whistling, the one thing he could do beautifully, up to God on Yom Kippur. He, the heretic, is the true righteous man whose morality is not derived from expectation of catastrophe or fear of punishment but because this is his nature, his life. Jesus was the patron of the wretched who tried to face up to Pontius Pilate but failed, just as the weak always fail in their struggle with the truly powerful.130 Hanoch represents the existentialist who lives for life

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without any pretense of understanding the world. But he, too, fails in his contest with fate. Fate, or God, is blind and does not discriminate between good and evil: Goldman, Hamilin, and others like them prosper, whereas the Hefetz family members suffer even though they have done no wrong. Breakdown and Bereavement is a story of the downtrodden whose world has crumbled: Miriam tries to escape her miserable life in Jerusalem and in the end dies; Esther seeks to extricate herself from the life of an unattractive old virgin and fails; Hanoch tries a new life, different from that of his ancestors, and dies too; Yehezkel flees from the reality of life to the consolation of madness but comes back again and again. It is a world without mercy and compassion, with death or madness the only way out. But none of this is absolute. As in Here and There, at the end of Breakdown and Bereavement there is the light of compassion and conciliation. The thirty-year-old Yehezkel conducts his moral stocktaking and admits that he is “a beaten man,” for he has not fulfilled his main purpose: “He never experienced the real resolute feeling of life.” There have been, however, some inexplicable happy times in his life. According to him, the essence of life, its main purpose, lies in one sunny Sabbath eve afternoon in the Jerusalem orphanage, when Hanoch’s little son was there. The Hefetz family wanted him to come to them in Tiberias, to save him from the misery of life in the orphanage, which nevertheless was not devoid of happiness. Life is worth living, even if it filled with wretchedness and suffering: “Happiness is to live and love life.”131 Yosef finds his redemption in Torah study, and his brother Haim, who transports people to the hot springs in Tiberias, supports both of them. The sounds of the Tiberian alley on the Sabbath eve, the children playing, the women talking, the girls chatting, the serene landscape of the Sea of Galilee and its surrounding mountains, the silent camel caravan—all create a mystical, mysterious atmosphere. Yosef, the rationalist and philosopher, looks at the sky and thinks that the star twinkling at him is perhaps his beloved daughter Miriam. Then a little boy comes up to him and for no apparent reason kisses him in a simple act of human love. The boy reminds him of Hanoch’s son, to whom, when he comes to Tiberias, Yosef will teach chumash, the Pentateuch, the chapter on Hanoch who is taken by God (much as Amram in Here and There learns about the avenger

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of blood [Exodus 21:12]). The world of childhood is one of innocence: children take the Bible stories for granted, stories in which God is not a just judge but acts arbitrarily, “punishing and showing mercy as He wishes.”132 In other words, without knowing it, they espouse the conclusion of Job or Enoch and do not seek a meaning, a purpose, or an explanation. The book’s final scene unfolds on the shores of the Sea of Galilee on a Sabbath, where a single boat is sailing. Haim is lying on the shore watching a group of Bedouins bathing. He is enjoying the scene, the Bedouins’ primal vitality as they jump into the water and swim out. He feels inferior to them but is consoled, thinking that someone who does not go in the water will not drown. With this feeling of happiness and tranquility, he picks up a pebble shaped like a potsherd and scratches himself with it. The boat’s mast sways, as if it were saying: “It isn’t hard, it isn’t hard . . . soon we’ll be on our way, soon, soon we’ll be on our way.” The book’s last word is given to Job: Jesus failed, Enoch failed. Acceptance of fate, of life as it is, with its suffering and moments of happiness, is the essence of the human race. And in the end, “soon we’ll be on our way”; in other words, the great tranquility will come, the moment of leaving this world. Unlike Here and There, whose conclusion is that the entire account has not been settled, Breakdown and Bereavement ends with acceptance, with resignation. Job goes on living in his suffering and loss until his time comes. The serenity of the acceptance reached by the Hefetz family in Tiberias does not remain for long: it is unclear whether the grandchild indeed comes to his grandfather’s house and finds salvation there, or if it is simply a plan that came to naught. When Yehezkel was thirty-three, he left the country and lost his mind. Like the fate of “one of the wretched wanderers in the Diaspora,” the fate of this pitiful ugly man remains unknown. In other words, the illumination of the ending is partial, temporary, and does not bode well.133 Breakdown and Bereavement is Brenner’s most muted book of ­outcry. The peak of confrontation and humiliation comes when E ­ sther pours the contents of the chamber pot over Yehezkel. But it is an out-of-the-ordinary peak in the book. Even the deaths of Miriam and ­Hanoch are mentioned in hushed tones. Compared with the deaths of the hunchback and his infant son in Here and There, the grief is

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restrained. Yet Breakdown and Bereavement engenders in the reader a very strong sense of destruction, and the final acceptance of reality fails to provide a satisfactory catharsis. Unlike Dostoevsky, Brenner does not leave the reader the option of the consolation of atonement, just as he does not pin human wretchedness on a sin, either contemporary or primeval. The world he describes is a world without God, without a guiding hand, without justice, and without purpose. But it is the world in which man is doomed to live, and in his eyes life is very precious and has its moments of grace. Human beings in the main are base and wretched, selfish and petty, and there are no superior ones among them. But there are revelations of humanity at unexpected moments, and there are people whose morality is self-determined and does not need a divine seal of approval. They are the true righteous men. Breakdown and Bereavement is one of Brenner’s least autobiographical works, although it does contain certain elements originating in his own experiences: the daughter of the abandoned wife is somewhat reminiscent of the anemic figure of Tinka Lampert from Lvov. Yosef Hefetz’s ailing legs and the journey to the hot springs at Tiberias for treatment are similar to Brenner’s own illness, for he, too, went to Tiberias, but it is doubtful that the spring waters were of any help. Yosef’s nervous condition is reminiscent of Brenner’s psychosomatic illnesses. Miriam’s death from septicemia is reminiscent of the young Rivka Chizik’s death, for which Brenner was inconsolable. In the newspapers of the time, one can find sources attesting to several contemptible acts by the ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, which Brenner describes in the book. Apart from these examples, it is difficult to find any similarity between Brenner’s life and the lives of the three Hefetz family members, even though their names suggest a closeness to Brenner. Brenner’s “melancholia” is unlike either Hefetz’s voluble madness or his obsession with sex. Although Breakdown and Bereavement has a realistic background, it is mainly a psychological novel; its inner core is the fruit of the author’s imagination. The book contains motifs found in Brenner’s earlier works: Hamilin, strong, handsome, modern, and self-assured, recalls such masculine, gentilelike competitors as Borsieff (In Winter) and Shtaktorov (Out of the Depths); the mysterious H ­ anoch is like the otherworldly characters in Beyond Boundaries and Out of the Depths); Goldman brings to mind the materialistic characters of

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In Winter, Out of the Depths, and “Between Waters”; and Yehezkel, the loser, resembles Feuerman (In Winter), Abramson (Around the Point), and Shaul Gamzu (“Between Waters”). But this book is quite different from its predecessors, creating a fictional reality that, although grounded in the Palestinian background in a specific period, possesses humanistic and universal meanings to a far greater extent than any other of Brenner’s works.134 Typically for Brenner, this message contains a contradiction: it makes a declaration in favor of life, come what may, and rejects death, but also it declares that there is no consolation, no escape from human suffering, only in death or madness. The appearance of Breakdown and Bereavement was an important event in the community of Hebrew literature and in the social circles surrounding it. Ten copies reached Palestine in 1921. “We all want to read it,” Mordechai Kushnir wrote to Brenner, “Remez, Berl [Katz­ nelson], me, and Yehuda Shertok [Sharett] wants it too.”135 Brenner replied to Kushnir, “you could have taken them all and sent me just one.”136 Demand for the book among the workers of Palestine was so great that the Histadrut Cultural Committee had difficulty meeting it.137 Brenner, who at the time was in the Gedud Ha’avoda (labor battalion) camp, where very few read Hebrew, found an intelligent young man familiar with both Hebrew and Russian literature and gave him a copy of the book to learn how young “graduates” of the Bolshevik revolution would react. The young man was perplexed and distressed by it. Chaya wrote to him from Berlin, asking for a copy of the novel, adding: “Czaczkes would also like a copy.”138 Brenner, who had still not received the copies he had been promised, had to turn down her request but sent regards to his friends, especially his “brothers,” Streit and Agnon.139 Jacob Rabinowitz, who was in Vienna, wrote to Streit about the reactions of other writers to Breakdown and Bereavement, noting that both Zvi Diesendruck and Schoffman “say the book is superb. Diesendruck told Schoffman that in one place there are twenty ‘finallys’ and suchlike. Schoffman turned up his nose but speaks of the book with great enthusiasm—that is, he does not say anything more, but just that.” Rabinowitz himself was excited by the book: “I am at the end of the second part of Breakdown and Bereavement. A great book. There is something in it that does not satisfy me, but in general it is a book.”140 Rabinowitz and Streit visited Alexander Heshin at his

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splendid home in Vienna. Although Heshin had become a Bolshevik, “he still has great affection for Palestine, and especially for Hebrew literature.” They talked about writers, Frishman and Brenner in particular. Heshin did not hold Frishman in high regard and thought that, while he had talent, he lacked character, personality, which he felt was the most important thing. After reading Breakdown and Bereavement, Streit lauded Brenner: “How the two elements collided within him on his entry into the world of literature: the artist and the man, and how in the end the man subjugated the artistic element, producing this wonderful creation—Brenner.” The other two agreed.141 On 1 March 1920, Trumpeldor and his comrades were killed at Tel Hai. For several months before the incident, the Yishuv was engaged with the issue of defending Northern Palestine, an area that was a no man’s land between the British-held territory in Palestine and the area under French control in Syria. There was unrest in the region as a result of the struggle between the French and King Faisal, the deposed Arab ruler of Syria. Clashes between Arabs and the French provided fertile soil for the robbery and murder of the Jewish settlers, who were not part of this struggle. The cooler heads in the Yishuv leadership, such as Jabotinsky, suggested withdrawing from the area until French rule in Syria became stabilized, but the workers disagreed. Yosef Trumpeldor—a former officer in the Russian army, who during the Second Aliya had founded a commune in Migdal and in the World War had commanded the British army’s Zion Mule Corps, which fought at Gallipoli—returned to Russia and then came back to Palestine to prepare for the immigration of Hechalutz, groups of young pioneers he organized in the Crimea. Now, along with other young people, he went up to the isolated outposts in Northern Palestine to help in their defense. In a clash at Tel Hai between Arabs and the inhabitants, he and five of his comrades, including two women, were killed. His comrades reported that, as Trumpeldor lay dying, he said, probably in Russian, “Never mind, it is good to die for our country.” That young Jews would be ready to lay down their lives defending a settlement was an unknown phenomenon in Palestine. Trumpeldor and his comrades set a new and moving model; they would become a legend as soon as Berl Katznelson penned his secular Yizkor (prayer of remembrance) in their memory. On this occasion Brenner did not

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doubt—as he had when the Yizkor commemorative volume was published—whether the time had come to sanctify the fallen. In commemoration of Trumpeldor and his comrades, he wrote an article in Ha’adama, asking, “Are we, those remaining, worthy of such sacrifices?” Was the Yishuv doing all it could so they would not be “on the front without a home front.” Brenner accepted dying in defense of a settlement as an act with no choice, one that stemmed from the very notion of settling Palestine: there was nowhere to retreat. Brenner turned the willingness for self-sacrifice at distant Tel Hai into a test of individual loyalty: “When the time of the difficult test comes . . . will every one of us stand fast—with the names of Yosef Trumpeldor and his comrades on our lips—in the place that fate decreed for him?”142 Brenner taught modesty of expression and caution regarding heroism. He despised the tendency of Jabotinsky and his followers toward grandiose talk: “The rattle of sabers (of iron or paper?).”143 Only two months before the Tel Hai incident, he wrote a eulogy for Michael Halperin, one of the flag bearers of high-flown heroism in the Yishuv. Brenner described him in his misery, stressing the discrepancy between the delusional plans he had about power and force and his true ability. Halperin was “as weak as a child, glorying in the outward appearance of things like a child, and attractive, even when he was ludicrous, like a child.”144 The old Halperin, who was a guard at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jaffa, was brought to the hospital where Brenner was hospitalized. He had been robbed of his weapon and had been shot by his Arab assailants, but that did not stop him from boasting that his Browning would never be taken from him. This anecdote apparently served as inspiration for the story of the wounded hunchback in Here and There. Halperin did not stop declaring “M’darf a korban . . . m’darf a korban” (we need a sacrifice), and Brenner derided him.145 But when he found himself in the face of unadorned self-sacrifice, as at Tel Hai, he did not turn his back: “Did not all of us hear the silent, exalted call of the one-armed hero: ‘It is good to die for our country?’ It is good! Happy is he who dies knowing this—with Tel Hai as his pillow of earth.”146 Ever since he had written “He Told Her,” Brenner had viewed self-defense as an expression of the need to protect the dignity of the weak Jew, downtrodden by the stronger everywhere. Therefore, while

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still criticizing Jabotinsky and his comrades, who sought to nurture the cult of militarism, he also wholly rejected the pacifistic notions of Nathan Hofshi, who preached “the ideal of the sheep, in its inordinate kindness, allowing itself to be led to slaughter.”147 He also did not change his opposition to the pan-Semitic ideas propounded by his friend Rabbi Benjamin, who believed that Jewish benevolence toward the Arab inhabitants of Palestine would lead to Jewish-Arab amity. Brenner viewed these ideas as a mockery of the downtrodden, as “preaching infuriating morality where all the conditions are against it.”148 But in the years that followed the British occupation, Brenner tended to rethink the question of “us and our neighbors.” His attitude became more complex than in the past: he expressed his fear of the smoldering volcano that he felt the Arabs represented, but he also perceived Arab resistance as the fruit of British imperialist incitement as well as that of the effendis and the clerics; and therefore sought to believe in cooperation with the Arab peasantry. Brenner was influenced by the revolutionary winds blowing in the big world, which viewed the national contrasts as secondary to class differences, and also by his Akhdut Ha’avoda comrades, especially those from Poalei Zion. For instance, he praised the social analysis of “the hidden question” in BenZvi’s article “Hatenu’a ha’aravit” (The Arab movement), which explained the Arabs’ hostility toward the Jews as deriving from the anger of “parasitic elements” among the Palestinians against the British, who would not allow them positions of power, leading the Arabs to use the Zionist movement as the most convenient punching bag.149 He was familiar with Borochov’s theory, whereby the fellahs of Palestine are the descendants of the ancient Jews, but it is doubtful that he espoused it.150 Despite his statement pinning hostility toward the Jews of Palestine on the effendis and the clerics, Brenner continued to adhere to his intuitive belief that the Jews were persecuted in Palestine just as they had been in the Diaspora and that the volcano was still smoldering. On the arrival of the SS Ruslan, the harbinger of the Third Aliya, Brenner welcomed the arrival of the scores of children who had survived the pogroms in the Ukraine—“it is good that this small camp of survivors has been brought to a safe haven”—but added, “in our joy we won’t ask: ‘safe haven?’”151 Brenner continued to perceive the Arab opposition to Jewish settle-

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ment in Palestine as total, stemming from their sense of ownership of the country, and he consequently assumed that it would not disappear. But now he sought an opening for a different future. He challenged the moral validity of Arab resistance: “Are all the half-deserted areas of their countries so small for the Arab nation that it cannot suffer Jews coming to settle in Palestine, which long ago was the land of their forefathers and for some of whom this settlement is a matter of life or death?”152 Brenner compared the great need of the Jews in Palestine with the marginal damage caused to the Arabs by Jewish settlement and reached the conclusion that the Arabs’ claims against the entry of Jews into Palestine were replete with “Levantine envy.”153 He was prepared to understand Arab opposition to a Jewish state, but not to Jewish settlement in sparsely populated areas of the country. In Brenner’s view, opposition to the establishment of “a workers’ society where the area is vacant and [the Arabs] have no need of it” was immoral; “here we are in the right.”154 His position shows the influence of socialist ideology, whereby in a just world the land and its resources are divided according to needs; in this world the rights of ownership are invalid, and the land can be reapportioned. Brenner began linking Arab resistance to incitement by the British authorities in the wake of the Passover 1920 riots in Jerusalem. At the time of the Turks, he contended, only criminal elements would have thought about attacking Jews. The British were conducting a divide-and-rule policy to justify their control of Palestine as peacekeepers between the two opposing communities.155 Brenner’s views, like those of his friends, were not based on information regarding the hostility of the British military government and some of its officials toward Jews in general and Zionism in particular. They arose from a Pale of Settlement Jew’s fundamental suspicion of the ruler. Now he propounded the premise that “we are the victims of evil, the victims of those who maliciously seek wider rule and greater assets, victims of imperialism,” as if before the British conquest, the Arabs had not been hostile toward the Jews. All of a sudden, Brenner claimed that the workers’ struggle for Jewish labor in Jewish fields was not for a national interest but out of pain for the exploited Arab worker, “who is forced to earn only a bishlik, and also for our brother who hires him . . . and for whom exploiting [the workers] is a prerequisite for his ex-

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istence.” He even declared in the Socialist International vein that “the day will come when there will be a strong bond between us, the Jewish workers, and them, the Arab workers.”156 In all probability these sanctimonious statements derived from the Akhdut Ha’avoda worldview of the time. They reflected the contemporary debate with the Palestinian Communist Party, which presented Zionism as the bedfellow of British imperialism. But in any event, this idyll was a matter for the distant future. In the meantime Arab hostility was endangering lives and the Jews had to defend themselves, not try to hide as they had in Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter.” Brenner wrote: “We shall take to the streets to protect our lives as far as we are able. No matter. They will not destroy all of us. Tomorrow, perhaps, the Jewish hand writing these words will be stabbed, a ‘sheikh’ or ‘hajj’ will drive his dagger into it in full view of the English governor . . . and it, this Jewish hand, will be unable to do anything to the sheikh or hajj, for it does not know how to wield a sword.”157 Brenner’s statements in the spirit of international socialism were quickly forgotten, but his statement about the hand that would be stabbed by an Arab dagger was received as a prophecy. Brenner’s last article published in Kuntress contained an expression of his feelings about “the volcano,” but with new overtones. At the time he was living with the Yitzkar family, who rented a big house deep inside Arab-owned citrus groves. For the first time since he had come to Palestine, Brenner was living in a completely foreign environment. Up until then his Palestine experience had been stamped with Jewish reality: Jaffa, Ein Ganim, Jerusalem, and the Samaria moshavot. He was frightened of the Arabs. When David Shimonovich had wanted to tour the country on his own, Brenner feared for his safety. The road to Tel Aviv from the isolated house passed through an Arab village. Out of concern for their safety, Brenner would accompany his visitors as far as the railway track so that they would not take the wrong road to Tel Aviv.158 One of them described how Brenner returned to the house in the dark, hurrying through the Arab village: “It was how Jewish children in the Diaspora would hurry through the gentile neighborhoods in the evening.”159 In his last article, Brenner described this walk through the Arab village. The villagers he greeted did not return his greeting, out of contempt. Brenner wanted no contact with them. He described them as “the Poles of the East”—haughty, arro-

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gant, Jew-haters. “I have no other way, I have to pass them, whether they like it or not,” he wrote, leaving the reader to decide whether he meant traveling to and from the house in the grove or throughout Palestine in general. But then he met an Arab boy, a worker of about thirteen, and had a fragmentary conversation with him, for he spoke no Arabic. Like a mirror image of the Jewish hunchback’s encounter with the Arab robber in Here and There, he experienced the same muteness and inability to communicate, but on this occasion the encounter was friendly, and Brenner regretted that he had never learned Arabic. ­Unlike the arrogant, hostile Arabs who did not return his greeting, the boy sought friendship and Brenner’s heart went out to him. Rather than bringing the revolution to the Middle East, as the Comintern emissaries hoped to do, he envisioned “soul-to-soul contact . . . from today . . . and for generations . . . for many days . . . and with no objective . . . with no intention . . . except for the intention of a brother, a friend and comrade.” It seems that, more than anything, the change in Brenner’s attitude toward the Palestinian Arabs hints at his decision to strike roots in Palestine. Like the opponents of Zionism who ably defined its faults, the weaknesses of its logic, and the obstacles along the way to its realization, Brenner too was able to view “the hidden question” with a sober eye as long as he viewed Palestine as one option of many in the Jewish world. But once he decided to link his fate with this country, he sought a way of justifying his decision to himself and of painting a picture of reality that would provide hope for a future of peaceful relations between Jews and Arabs. In contrast to the hostility of adult Arabs, which expressed the present attitude of Arabs toward Jews, stood the friendliness of the boy worker, which symbolized the future, the possibility of communication, the desire to live side by side. A similar process led the Socialist Zionists to espouse the “defensive ethos,” with all its logical contradictions. In their view there was no possibility of communication because the Arabs were incited by a backward leader­ ship, but understanding would eventually be reached, and it would be with the Arab laborers. Until then, we must grit our teeth, protect life and dignity, and build the country. This perception of reality ignored the national character of the clash between Jews and Arabs, the potential of the conflict inherent in the situation, and the lack of dif-

Under British Rule, 1918–1921

ference between the simple Arabs and their leadership in their attitude toward Zionism. But it gave the Jews time in which they could build the country believing in the justness of their cause and in a future of peace. An example of this sense of being the righteous victim appears at the end of Brenner’s article, which speaks of the guilt of imperialism. As far as Brenner was concerned, the British rulers played the hypocritical role of Pontius Pilate. The Jews were the ultimate victim, a Jesus among the nations: “This is our privilege: to know the truth and be crucified. God of Truth, Thy kingdom come!”160 When he attended the Haifa conference and from there went to the Gedud Ha’avoda camp in Migdal, Brenner broke the fetters binding him to civilization and “decent” society that Chaya had forced on him since their marriage. “His features are not all that bad,” Binyamin Brenner described him to their sister Ahuva (Lyuba), “but there has been a great change in his outward appearance. Yosef Haim Brenner of many years ago! Torn and shabby!”161 He went back to wearing his long, black woolen coat as a sort of envoy of Hasidic legend. His light-colored beard went untrimmed and his hair grew wildly. Yehuda ­Shertok described him in a letter to his brother: “He is presently wearing a dirty old garment with a miserable waistcoat and a pitiful tie around his neck, hanging beneath his beard like a mark of time, but he is so pure.”162 He gave the last remaining furniture from the Tel Aviv apartment to the Lichtenboim family, which had immigrated to Palestine and needed it.163 In September 1920, “the Crimeans,” as the Hechalutz people organized by Trumpeldor in Crimea were known, founded the Gedud Ha’avoda and named it after their deceased leader. After the Hanukkah 1920 Histadrut conference, Brenner went to settle at the Gedud camp at Migdal. On behalf of Akhdut Ha’avoda, he was appointed to serve as a Hebrew teacher for the young people, most of whom knew no Hebrew or Yiddish. Initially, a separate tent was placed at his disposal so that he could teach Hebrew for half a day and spend the other half writing, but he was quickly joined by a member of the Gedud he liked and shared the tent with him. In the camp Brenner witnessed a new way of life, which he would not have believed existed: “Diligent and enthusiastic workers who did not know what tiredness is. After a long day’s work in the burning sun, quarrying the hard black basalt, they

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return to the camp enthusiastically singing Russian songs. They all wear shorts and no shirt, their bronze torsos gleam and their muscles ripple, their hammers on their shoulders, all of them suffused with gaiety and energy.” In the evening they would go down to the Sea of Galilee for a swim and afterward sit for hours singing before dispersing into the Migdal citrus groves to make love until daybreak. Brenner was stunned by the scene. Instead of the endemic depression of the Second Aliya veterans, there was infectious excitement, a natural approach to life, to physical labor, to love. One day, as he stood observing the scene, one of the young men came over to him, gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder, and said (in Russian, of course): “Why are you thinking so much, Brenner. Can’t you see? Palestina nasha! [Palestine is ours!].”164 Despite Brenner’s efforts, the youngsters found it hard to learn Hebrew. Abrasha Hassin, who shared his tent, suggested that he write a naughty song in Hebrew, and the boys would use it to help them learn the language. The sacrifices one makes for Hebrew! According to the testimonies of Gedud members, Brenner indeed wrote such a lyric, the boys set it to a Russian tune, they all sang it with great verve, and thus the youngsters picked up a few dozen words of Hebrew. Numerous weddings were solemnized in the Gedud, a testimony of belief in the future. Brenner was influenced by the optimistic atmosphere. In the evenings he would sit for hours in the mess tent, where everyone would sing in Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew. There were several songs he particularly liked, like Avrom Reisen’s old song about the Jewish peddler who dreams of a Jewish kingdom.165 Poznansky wrote to Chaya about Brenner’s condition: “He is in good spirits, he is working, involved with the pioneers, gives and takes, mixes a little, and so forth. We here [in Jaffa], Zhukhovitsky [Zakkai], Mordechai Kushnir, Remez, myself, and so on, are very glad and pray that it may continue this way.”166 A month later, he wrote her again: “It is good for him there in the Gedud Ha’avoda. He is father to three hundred young people. A fine place.”167 Geula Shertok, Brenner’s former student at the Herzliya Gymnasium, who was in love with him and was now eighteen, came to visit him at the camp. “He slakes his thirst with his work,” she wrote. “He is starting to live anew [probably after his separation from Chaya]. He told me that the young forces of a large community encourage and invigorate him.” The following day,

Under British Rule, 1918–1921

Brenner accompanied Geula from Migdal to Tiberias, and from there she continued to Kinneret on her own. She sought his advice about her future way in life, and in her letters she recounts that they spoke “at length and briefly.” In a later testimony, she revealed that as they walked, Brenner said: “I would like to kiss you.” The girl, who was head over heels in love with the older man, remarked “I was actually prepared to,” but he backed off, saying, “but my lips are unclean,” and offered his blessing: “You will be a happy wife and the mother of sons.”168 Although Brenner was attracted to young girls, he also feared a new relationship. The difference in their ages, twenty-two years, was so large. He preferred to keep his distance, and Geula’s love was unrequited. A short time after Brenner reached the Gedud, the local cultural committee decided to publish an anthology, Hayyei Trumpeldor (Trumpeldor’s life), which would include his Gallipoli diary and his essays and letters. The committee gave Brenner, who helped with editing the road workers’ newspaper, Hasolel (The road builder), the job of editing it.169 Poznansky was to translate letters from Russian into Hebrew. Brenner gave detailed instructions to his trusted friend-­ disciple and permitted him to make deletions wherever he thought it appropriate: “I trust your taste and your tact.”170 Yet he still feared that Poznansky would try to embellish Trumpeldor’s figure and instructed him not to exaggerate when translating the “watery” sections. “Even the ‘watery’ sections should remain in commemoration. The publishers of the letters should not render the dear departed wiser and more profound than he was.”171 Before the Purim festival in March 1921, Brenner returned to Jaffa to finish editing the anthology, with the intention of either returning to the Galilee afterward or going to teach at the Gedud’s new camp in Rosh Ha’ayin.172 Meanwhile, Chaya and Uri were doing very well in Berlin. Chaya received 10,000 marks from Stiebel, which considering the rate of inflation in Germany was not a huge sum, but it enabled her to live quite comfortably.173 Between visiting museums, theaters, attending concerts, and even spending happy hours in cafés with visitors from Palestine or future residents there, she also audited a course on the Montessori method of education.174 Agnon bought Uri “a blue suit.” For her part, Chaya gave Agnon Breakdown and Bereavement as a gift.175 She also sent presents to friends in Palestine and bought clothes

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for Uri and herself: “When I feel good, I also want to be well dressed,” she explained to Manya and Menachem Poznansky.176 Brenner was reconciled yet unreconciled with the separation from his son. So long as Chaya and Uri were in Berlin he had no complaints. But each time Chaya planned to go someplace new with Uri, he was alarmed. Their separation had become harder for Brenner since his return from the Gedud to Tel Aviv, where he met all his acquaintances and their children, who had been Uri’s friends. A letter he wrote in March 1920 opens with the words, “My dear son, light of my eyes, Uri Nissan,” and he goes on to tell him that all the children in Tel Aviv were asking him when Uri would be coming back and that he replied, “in another six months.” In a deleted but legible sentence he adds, “I hold back my tears, for I am a hero and do not cry in front of others.” He ended the letter with the words: “Shalom, my dear one, and remember and do not forget your papa, who wants only one thing: that you should be well and be close to him.”177 In early April, Chaya wrote to Brenner that on their way back to Palestine she intended to stop off in Rome and visit educational institutions there. A fresh crisis loomed. Brenner was unable to accept this side trip: “Do not forget,” he wrote to his ex-wife, “that Uri is six. How can you think about moving him through four countries in the space of six months? (The very idea kills me!)” He even promised that he would allow her to go to Italy for a few months the following year, on the condition that she stop moving the child around.178 He did not leave it at that and asked Poznansky to bring his influence to bear on Chaya. Poznansky reminded her of his soothing letter a few months earlier, when she informed him of her intention of returning to Palestine quickly, and advised her to accede to Brenner’s request. He explained that the news of her trip to Italy had caused Brenner great agitation, adding, “You must agree that these concerns are not without foundation. But of course Brenner’s imagination exaggerates.” He therefore asked Chaya not to go to Italy. “Believe me, I take no pleasure in writing these words, but it is my duty to write them. First and foremost, for Brenner’s sake (and considering your relationship during the years before your journey, and in recent months).” He also described Brenner’s situation: “He has a kind of special, mental calm bordering on seclusion, kindness, combined with physical and spiritual

Under British Rule, 1918–1921

weakness.”179 In other words, his mental equilibrium was shaky. Chaya received the letter belatedly, in early May, and responded harshly to it: “I was prepared for the journey, and you can easily imagine how much agony this letter caused me.” She did not understand the cause of Brenner’s concern: the side trip was, after all, on the way back to Palestine. “What will be will be. I am not my own woman and cannot decide anything. Time will do what I am unable to. Let it decide for me. It was the Devil that drove me to write to Brenner about Italy.”180 At the end of the letter, she added that she had already written to Brenner that she would not be going to Italy. In the margin she added another remark: “The day before yesterday, one of the German newspapers had a report that on the first of May there was a terrible clash in Jaffa. One’s imagination works and we are agitated. Please write immediately.”181 As Chaya was writing this letter, Brenner was no longer among the living.

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On the morning of the first of May 1921, two workers’ rallies were held, one in Tel Aviv, organized by the Histadrut; the other on the city’s “seam line” (border) with Jaffa, organized by MOPS, the Socialist Workers Party (precursor of the Palestine Communist Party). According to the British version of events, the MOPS rally, which was held with red flags flying in Neveh Shalom on the seam line separating Jews and Arabs, was what sparked the Arab riots. The Jews viewed this solely as a pretext. In any event, on that fatal day and in the days that followed scores of Jews were killed in Jaffa and its environs. The Mantura house, rented by the Yitzkar family, stood alone in the heart of an Arab neighborhood on the road between Mikve Yisrael and Sarona.1 The family had built a cowshed there and sold milk to the residents of Tel Aviv. The daughter, Rivka, was married to Zvi Schatz, and it was probably through him that Brenner heard that there were rooms for rent at affordable rates in the big house. He rented a room on the second floor, with a balcony and a fine view of the citrus groves and as far as Jaffa and its mosques and churches. The odd young author Joseph Louisdor, who hoped to write a historical novel, lived in the Yitzkar house, where Brenner provided for his needs.2 Another young man, Zvi Gugig, also found inexpensive lodging there. The house was spacious and had numerous rooms, so casual visitors were welcome for a night or more. Later, there were those who sought hidden meanings in Brenner’s lodging in that isolated place with its splendid view; the house was magnificent, but it had known better days, and now it radiated danger. These, however, are interpretations based on hindsight. The death of Brenner and his friends endowed the place with an aura of mystery

Days in May, 1921

and a sense of the hand of fate that it probably did not have previously. Brenner had gone to live there temporarily and had been at the house since the Purim festival—in other words, for about a month. His room was furnished with monkish modesty: a folding bed, a small table, and two crates that served as chairs. There is no way of knowing what he would have done had his life not been cut short. It may be assumed that he would have gone to teach at one of Gedud Ha’avoda camps while he awaited Uri’s return in the summer, and then he would have looked for accommodation close to his son, not at the edge of the city. The Yitzkar house was to be a brief episode in his life, as was the ­Pasilov house in Ein Ganim, but chance turned that brief episode into a finale. In retrospect, the gathering at the Yitzkar house of three writers (Brenner, Schatz, and Louisdor), two members of the Yitzkar family (the father, Yehuda, and his son, Avrahamchik), and one worker (Gugig) seems like an appointment with fate. At Passover the whole Yitzkar family, the permanent lodgers, and also some guests gathered there. On Saturday, the day after Passover week, Brenner went to lunch with David Zakkai’s family in Tel Aviv. Zakkai’s daughter innocently inquired of him, “Uncle Brenner, do you always eat not at home?” A grimace of pain fleetingly crossed his face as he replied with great seriousness, “Anna Davidovna” (the child still spoke Russian), “not at all, I do eat at home, but when your mother invites me, I sometimes eat with you.”3 The pain of his separation from Uri was sharp, and his longing real. This was not the mental state of a man closing his account with life, but of a man planning the next chapter. On that Saturday, an Arab woman looking for a lost child knocked on the door of the Mantura house, and she was followed by an Arab man who asked to search the house for the child.4 The smell of a blood libel hung in the air. When Brenner returned from Tel Aviv and was told about this, he was nervous and apprehensive. That night, the occupants of the house stood guard. When morning came, they went their different ways. Passover had ended and everyone left. Some went to the First of May procession in Tel Aviv, while others went back to work. Brenner remained alone in the house. At noon, when the procession ended, he was visited by Mordechai Kushnir and Shmuel Yavne’eli. They sat on the second-floor balcony, and Brenner served

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them a glass of milk. Firing was heard from the direction of Jaffa, but nobody asked what it might mean. After a short while, the two took their leave because Kushnir had to meet his brother, who had come to Tel Aviv for medical advice. Kushnir and Yavne’eli walked back to Tel Aviv along the railway track. Tension was in the air, but until they reached the city at about 2 p.m., they knew nothing about the outburst of violence.5 Brenner remained on his own. Meanwhile, panic reigned in Tel Aviv: everyone was in a state of shock, helplessness, and confusion. The seam line separating Tel Aviv and Jaffa posed dangers. Neveh Shalom and its adjoining Arab neighborhood, al-Manshiye, were a battlefield, but Jaffa was the most dangerous place. There was news of a massacre at the reception house for Jewish immigrants. The lives of Jews who lived or worked in Jaffa were in peril. Jewish shops were looted. The police were mainly Arabs, who in some cases joined the rioters, while the Jewish Legion soldiers were forbidden to enter Tel Aviv with their weapons. The British police would not allow people to enter the danger area without a police escort but did not provide an escort for those searching for their loved ones. Refugees flocked to Tel Aviv from Jaffa and the other areas of conflict. The Haganah (defense militia) was weak and inexperienced. Nobody knew how to deal with a mob of hundreds bent on a campaign of murder and pillage. Confusion reigned among leaders and ordinary people alike. Scores of Jews were killed. Zvi Schatz decided to go back to the Yitzkar house to rescue Brenner, who had remained there alone. Meanwhile, Yehuda and Avrahamchik Yitzkar, Gugig, and Louisdor had made their way back to the house. When Schatz finally managed to obtain a rescue vehicle in the late afternoon—and then only by using Brenner’s name—he drove to the house with a policeman. The drive in the car provided by the Haganah took only a few minutes. That morning, three Jewish beekeepers from Ness Ziona, members of the Lehrer family, had placed hives in citrus groves near the ­Yitzkar house. They spoke Arabic and had Arab friends who told them about what was happening. They abandoned hundreds of hives, cans of honey, and donkeys, and hurried to the house, either to warn the occupants about the riots or to find refuge there.6 When Schatz’s car reached the house with its Jewish driver and an Arab policeman, they

Days in May, 1921

found Brenner, Louisdor, Gugig, Yehuda and Avrahamchik Yitzkar, and the three beekeepers there. From this point on, the story is built on supposition and secondhand testimony. The Lehrers later claimed that the Yitzkar father and son refused to leave their farm and possessions unguarded, and Brenner refused to leave without them. The upshot was that all of them stayed except for the beekeepers, who quickly got into the car. Many years later, the driver recounted that Brenner refused to leave because he apparently did not think he was in any danger.7 The six men who stayed in the house had one pistol and one rifle between them. They appear to have believed that they could survive the emergency fortified inside the house and felt no sense of urgency or threat to their lives.8 If they had, they would not have given a second thought to the cowshed and the animals and would have found a way of crowding into the car; at times of danger, one does not hesitate. But despite the rumors of rioting and massacre in Jaffa, they apparently believed that the peril would not reach them. According to Kuntress, the vehicle sent to evacuate them could not have taken all of them, so the Lehrers went and Zvi Schatz stayed behind and thus became a victim.9 Rivka Schatz, who had seen the car, claimed that although it was relatively big, it could not have taken all eleven people.10 It is, however, worthy of note that Rivka Schatz was not there, whereas the driver, a new immigrant who knew no Hebrew and did not comprehend the importance of evacuating Brenner, continued with other rescue work and did not report to his superiors that Brenner had refused to leave. Meanwhile, the chaos in Tel Aviv continued. The Herzliya Gymnasium was turned into Haganah headquarters, a focal point for information, and a temporary hospital to which the dead were brought. Rivka Yitzkar-Schatz waited tensely for the car to return, but the Arab policeman vanished. The driver, whose name nobody knew, did not report. The beekeepers went on their way. Until the next morning, no one was aware that Brenner had not been evacuated from the Mantura house. A Yitzkar family relative, Eliezer Braun, arrived from Haifa and raised the alarm among the workers’ leaders to extricate Brenner and the Yitzkars. Efforts to obtain an armored car and an armed escort continued for hours. It was only at three in the afternoon that Ya’akov After received from Hoofien a request for the British governor to allocate a

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truck and an armed escort to rescue the people at the Yitzkar house. By the time they got the car and escort, it was sometime between four and five o’clock in the afternoon. The deputy governor allocated two trucks with a machine gun and an eight-man escort. Ya’akov After, Mordechai Kushnir, Eliezer Braun, and Ya’akov Goldman went with them. Because of a missed turn, the journey took about half an hour. They eventually found the house, which could be seen from a distance because its upper floor was painted red. The house was closed and appeared to be abandoned. Calls to the occupants went unanswered. And then, on the path about a hundred meters from the house, they saw the bodies of Brenner and his friends. Brenner had been shot in the abdomen, stabbed, and struck on the head. His right hand was clenched into a fist. The medical report determined: “Death from internal hemorrhage caused by a gunshot wound to the intestine.”11 All the others had been killed by spade and pickaxe blows. Young Avrahamchik Yitzkar had been badly beaten and his corpse mutilated. All the bodies had been stripped, with only a vest left to cover them. The soldiers refused to evacuate the bodies, claiming that they had been sent to rescue living people. The vehicles returned to Jaffa. On the road, some thirty meters from the five bodies, they saw a sixth whose head was black from blows and whose hands were tied behind its back. When they reached Government House in Jaffa and reported their findings, the deputy governor gave them a truck with officers and men, and they returned to collect the bodies. The sixth body, apparently that of Louisdor, was not there.12 In those turbulent days, the Jews did not possess the means to conduct a proper inquiry, and it is doubtful that they even had a mind to do so. What happened on that Monday, 2 May 1921, in a grove close to the Mantura house, remains shrouded in mystery. On that day, an Arab woman in Jewish employ told her employers that a group of Arabs were on their way to bury a young boy—killed earlier by police gunfire—in the cemetery opposite the house (she had attended the funeral and witnessed what occurred). Because of the rioting, the funeral cortege was escorted by an Arab policeman. They saw six Jews with some cows in the grove. The Jews were apparently frightened by the Arabs, and one of them shot and killed one of the Arabs. The policeman then shot the six Jews, killing all of them, and promptly

Days in May, 1921

fled to Government House. The Arabs took the cows.13 This account contains several elements that make sense: the house was closed and locked, as were the shutters and doors, and it seemed that its occupants had decided to leave. Brenner took his manuscript bag with him, leaving only copies in the house, which suggests an organized evacuation. We cannot know why the six decided to leave their relatively safe refuge in the house, but it was a fateful decision. In view of Avrahamchik Yitzkar’s determination to defend the farm and not leave it, the Arab woman’s testimony that they took the cows with them seems plausible. It is also possible that one of the six indeed fired at the Arabs because he thought that they were about to attack them. But the story that it was the policeman who shot the six is not corroborated by the wounds on the bodies. It seems that the Arabs charged the six in a collective lynching in which many people took part. The abused bodies show that a struggle took place and that there were apparently wounded on the other side too. The Arab woman, who continued to work in the Jews’ house, was not interrogated, and the authorities were satisfied with the written testimony of her employer, who reported that the incident had taken place at 10:30 a.m. and that he had told several people about it, but they had not believed him. Toward evening, he went to “Katznelson the Hamashbir official” (evidently Berl Katznelson), and he “got angry saying that Brenner was there too.”14 No one found the driver of the vehicle that had come back from the house, and consequently he did not give evidence, even though there were only a small number of vehicles in Tel Aviv. The Lehrer brothers, too, were not questioned. Ya’akov Lehrer’s short testimony, which appeared in Kuntress, was apparently the source of the accusations against the Lehrers. Because there was no other information about their evacuation, they were blamed for the tragedy of the murder of Brenner and his friends. Toward evening, Yehuda Shertok saw Katznelson walking slowly, his hands on his head. “Then I knew everything,” he wrote to his brother, “I started to run away from him. I was frightened. I finally confronted him: He’s dead? ‘He’s dead,’ he answered in a choked voice, the words dying on his lips. And his hands on his head.” Shertok’s sister Geula was inconsolable, shouting and stamping her feet.15 “I loved him with all my might, so much so that I forgot about myself,” she wrote more

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than six months later. “The moment I heard he had been killed, I should have done something, but I didn’t do it and I won’t, and so I became accustomed to living.” And she went on: “I think about him incessantly (and without any meaning), when I lie down and when I get up, when I talk and when I laugh, he does not leave me.”16 “The tragedy of Brenner’s death caused profound grief throughout Tel Aviv and all over Palestine when the news reached it,” Ha’aretz reported the following day. “Great crowds watched as the body was borne along.”17 The body lay in repose in one of the gymnasium’s halls and hundreds of people walked past it. Brenner’s mutilated face was etched on their memories. The next day’s Ha’aretz published two eulogies, one signed K. and the other by L. A. Arieli (Orloff), who was one of Brenner’s protégés. As with everything that happened at the time, the funeral, too, was held hastily the following day, without waiting for the arrival of relatives or close friends. It was a mass burial of the thirty-two victims of the rioting in the Tel Aviv area. At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, the third of May, the cortege left the gymnasium yard. Stretchers bearing the bodies shrouded in prayer shawls were carried to the new cemetery to the north of Tel Aviv, with a British army mounted escort. It was the first big public funeral to take place in the city and was the start of a tradition of collective mourning and shared destiny expressed by mass participation. On a desolate sandy hill that would become Tel Aviv’s Trumpeldor Street, the “long and gaping” mass grave was dug, “ready to accept the scores of our martyrs.”18 The cortege—in which the habitually stoic members of the Second Aliya were mixed with simple people, accustomed to outward grieving—expressed the varied character of the victims. The mourners’ “weeping and keening aroused awe,” according to a Hapoel Hatzair reporter, breaking through the restraint and avoidance of pathos typical of the pioneering culture. According to Jewish law, the dead are not eulogized in the month of Nissan, so the bodies were interred in the sand without speeches. The burials continued for several hours. When the last grave was filled in, the influence of the Second Aliya people came to the fore, and a few minutes’ silence was announced. The entire congregation sat on the burial ground in silence.19 “By the big grave of our brothers—we sat in silence,” wrote Yitzhak Lufban. “Sitting in silent mourning, the few moments of si-

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lence were the truest expression of the feeling of deep and collective pain.” As if responding to the open and vociferous emotion that preceded the silence, he commented reproachfully that “at a moment like this, words are profaning.” The absence of speeches had its advantage: “We took our leave of them in silence. We did not eulogize them. We did not say the prayer of justification [acknowledging the rightness of divine judgment]. We made no vows to them and swore no oaths to them.”20 The communion with the dead did not last long. The authorities declared a state of emergency in Jaffa and Tel Aviv and its environs. A general curfew came into effect at seven in the evening, and the mourners hurriedly dispersed to return to their homes. A long wooden board bearing the names of the victims was planted on the grave as a last gesture of respect. Binyamin Brenner, who at the time was teaching in Tiberias, heard the news only after the funeral. He traveled to Tel Aviv and, stunned, heard the story of the events. Batya was told that Brenner had been hurt, but when she arrived in Haifa from Kinneret, she saw a news­ paper and learned the truth. Lyuba, who was a kindergarten teacher in Safed, also came to visit the grave. Meir was abroad and only returned to Palestine some weeks later.21 The entire Yishuv was stunned by Brenner’s murder, the Yitzkar family’s tragedy, the death of the young writers, the riots, the conduct of the Arab police, and the indifference of the British. Everyone felt guilt over Brenner’s not being saved, particularly his close friends. What had taken place could not be undone, but at least an investigation could be conducted to find the guilty and bring them to justice. The riddle of Louisdor’s bound body, which had vanished, continued to prey on people’s minds. It was also hoped that what remained of Brenner’s unpublished writings could be saved. On Friday that week, 6 May 1921, Berl Katznelson was given government permission to conduct “a methodical investigation” on the matters of Louisdor’s body and Brenner’s writings. The British did not make the investigation easy. When Kushnir and Katznelson requested an armed escort that would question the inhabitants of the Arab village close to the murder site, they sent a young British officer and four Arab policemen. Katznelson and Kushnir requested the inclusion of a Jewish policeman so that at least one member of the party would understand Hebrew. It was only after an angry exchange that the officer

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Brenner, 1919. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research.

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agreed to replace one of the Arab policemen with a Jewish one. Rivka Schatz, who had lost her father, her brother, and her husband, joined the expedition. When they reached the house, two Arabs sitting at the edge of the grove took to their heels and vanished into a nearby house. The Yitzkar house had been thoroughly looted and almost nothing remained. They laboriously collected every scrap of paper belonging to Brenner and the others.22 The British officer made amateurish attempts to question Arabs from the nearby houses about Louisdor’s body, but it was all done hastily, simply going through the motions. Louisdor’s body was never found. Among the manuscripts that were found were From the Beginning (about the Herzliya Gymnasium) almost in its entirety and fragments of short stories that were apparently intended to be part of eleven cameos of Yishuv life that Brenner had planned to write. The story “Hageula vehatmura” (Deliverance and recompense) was found in its entirety. Brenner’s manuscript bag, which went everywhere with him, was not found. Katznelson, who wrote a report of the expedition, summarized it as follows: “According to the writings we discovered, it is clear that the murderers have [taken] not only all the possessions of the occupants of the house but also the bag containing Brenner’s last writings.”23 “Yesterday I had a day as harsh as death,” Shalom Streit wrote to Poznansky from Berlin. “Chaya heard the news unexpectedly—and it pierced her like an arrow. She almost went mad.” Uri bore the pain “in silence and calmly,” and “his tears do not flow in front of his mother. In her presence he appears unconcerned about it to comfort her.” But “this sickness will also pass. Only Brenner’s death is something that will not pass.” Streit grieved bitterly: “Oh, Poznansky my brother, you and I were Brenner’s closest friends. I felt this for a long time, and it was borne out by fact over the past year. Our grief is as deep as the ocean!”24 Poznansky’s letter to Chaya, describing what had happened, was not preserved. He apparently did not write much to her at the time but later wrote, “for what and how shall I write? Only now are we feeling what has happened to us. When I wrote to you I was still, like in the first days, stupefied.”25 Katznelson neither wrote about Brenner nor eulogized him. But in a personal letter to his wife, Leah Meron, he mentioned that Sarah

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Shmuckler and Brenner, his two dead beloved, visited him in his dreams.26 In his notebook, he wrote: I saw Brenner last night. As I saw father before. The scene was different: We were mourning because we had been led to believe he was dead. And there he was. There. He was there and came back. Came back different . . . weeping bitterly. What can he work on now? His mind was not at ease. Chaya and Uri were also in the house. He was not consoled. This distress continued for a long time. And I did not know how to ease it. And it was only when I recalled the wooden board planted there in the sand that I woke up. —And the pain on awakening is as it was the day it happened. —It is completely impossible to calm oneself, to get used to it. And we must not get used to it. —He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. That is for me the essence of how I perceive Brenner. God laid the tragedy of all of us upon him.27

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Brenner’s death sent shock waves through the small Yishuv in Palestine and the community of Hebrew and Yiddish writers throughout the world. The news filtered through slowly as a result of the censorship the British imposed on news items coming out of the country. The information reached the United States on 5 May 1921: “A few minutes ago, I heard about the tragedy of dear Brenner, that purest of men, and I am simply going out of my mind,” wrote the dismayed Abraham Stiebel from Philadelphia to David Shimonovich, expressing the wish, “I hope the news is nothing but the usual American sensationalism.”1 Lachover, who was in Kudowa, a Polish holiday resort, received the news in a postcard from Palestine only on 11 May. “Since then I have been pacing back and forth and can find no peace either in the house or outside,” he wrote to Shalom Streit. Berdyczewski did not yet know about the murder, and Lachover did not wish to be the bearer of the bad news.2 The network of Hebrew literature loyalists was in turmoil. Schoffman, who was living in the village of Wetzelsdorf near Graz in Austria, mourned Brenner inconsolably: “The soul of our literature has been taken away, and since then there has been no desire to write,” he wrote to Devorah Baron. For him Brenner was “the central link,” which endangers the entire structure when it breaks. The manner of Brenner’s death gave Schoffman nightmares: “Most of the pain is not caused by his death per se, but from its fashion. His final moments haunt me!”3 After a meeting with the grief-stricken Schoffman, Streit wrote to Devorah Baron: “This wound of ours will never heal.”4 Hillel Kruglyakov wrote to Asher Beilin from Jaffa: “Since the day of the tragedy of losing our Brenner, my life is not completely life.” He continued: “We have lost the one and only man of truth, and life goes on as if nothing happened.”5

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Brenner’s Yiddishist friends—Nomberg in Berlin and Reisen in the United States—published eulogies without delay. Reisen’s, which appeared in June 1921 in Zukunft, was especially touching. This personal, intimate piece, which reviewed their various encounters, gave expression to their old friendship.6 Dozens of commemorative articles appeared throughout the Jewish world. The Vienna Hebrew and Yiddish Writers’ Club held a memorial meeting for Brenner that was attended by Zvi Diesendruck, Alexander Heshin, and Zalman Rubashov. Wellknown literati, such as Melech Ravitch, read from Brenner’s works.7 The republic of Jewish letters clung to his figure, united for a moment in their grief, which both Hebrew and Yiddish writers shared. Immediately after the murder, Poznansky assumed responsibility for securing Uri’s inheritance and ensuring that Brenner’s writings would be published in an appropriate manner. Fortunately, in Brenner’s old room in the Remez home, there remained two old suitcases containing copies of all his published works. All were assigned to the estate, with the exception of several pieces on current affairs that Kuntress was given permission to publish. Among the papers found were Brenner’s detailed instructions to the publisher of his works, including amendments, division of the material into separate volumes, and so forth.8 Stiebel, who had published Breakdown and Bereavement and was about to publish Brenner’s translation of Crime and Punishment, was the natural choice for publishing the works and, in fact, the only publishing house capable of taking on the financial burden of the enterprise. In summer 1921, Stiebel consented and agreed that Poznansky would be responsible for the printing.9 This was the first act in a protracted and convoluted affair that after numerous ups and downs came to an end only in the 1930s. Chaya Broide did not interfere and left the entire matter in the hands of Poznansky and the appointed public trustees (Poznansky, Katznelson, Jacob Rabinowitz, Yeshayahu Streit, and Rabbi Benjamin).10 The trustees published announcements in the Jewish press throughout the world prohibiting the publication of Brenner’s works, in either the original or translation, without permission.11 Stiebel wanted to print them in Europe, on the assumption that this would cut costs. In the end the Histadrut Cultural Committee agreed to subsidize the project, which made printing the works in Palestine feasible for Stiebel.12 Publication

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of the volumes was completed by the end of the 1920s. On Katznelson’s initiative the Davar publishing house purchased a special edition of the works from Stiebel in 1936. The newspaper Davar carried an announcement in January 1937 of “a new literary gift for Davar subscribers,” the nine volumes of Brenner’s works in a fine cloth binding. Within a week about one thousand sets of Brenner’s works were distributed to Davar readers, and the edition was sold out.13 In the 1940s the Am Oved publishing house put out a new edition of the works. After Katznelson’s death in 1944, Am Oved did not undertake to republish the works, claiming financial difficulties, and in the early 1950s, when ­Poznansky asked Am Oved for another edition, his request was denied. The Hakibbutz Hameuhad house, however, enthusiastically accepted the assignment.14 The two central figures in publishing the new edition were M. Z. Wolfovsky and Moshe Breslavsky, both Brenner admirers.15 Hakibbutz Hameuhad has been the publisher of Brenner’s works ever since. In New York in 1941, Shlomo Grodzensky published a volume of selected Brenner works in Yiddish as a tribute to Brenner’s bilingualism and his perception of Hebrew and Yiddish as cultural assets of the Jewish people and also as an expression of the Yiddish writers’ embrace of Brenner, which is voiced in scores of essays about Brenner that are housed in the YIVO Archive in New York.16 Along with editing the works, and even more so after the completion of the project, Poznansky invested great efforts in collecting and publishing Brenner’s correspondence. He wrote to anyone who might possess a scrap of paper written by Brenner or a fragment of information about him. He also met and interviewed numerous people to garner information that might shed light on the letters.17 The first stage of the collection began as early as the 1920s. When Ben-Gurion visited Moscow in 1923 as an official Histadrut representative, he received from Shimon Bichovsky a large packet of Brenner’s letters. Ben-­Gurion brought the letters to Palestine without any trouble and handed them over to Poznansky.18 After Chaya Broide’s return to Palestine, she was preoccupied with bringing Brenner’s murderers to trial. The amateurish attempts at questioning the local Arabs to find both the perpetrators and Louis­ dor’s body had not produced any specific evidence. Rivka YitzkarSchatz unceasingly demanded that the guilty parties be found and

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brought to trial. Chaya was incapable of acting on this score, either on formal grounds, because she was divorced from Brenner, or for psychological reasons. This caused her great mental anguish. It was Rivka Yitzkar-Schatz who turned the wheels of justice, and it was on her initiative that an affidavit was sent to British Mandate officials. The government, perhaps influenced by a motion proposed in Parliament, had already decided to hold a trial, but the affidavit was thought suitable “to affect the English psychology.”19 Chaya wanted to see the perpetrators punished, whereas Rabbi Benjamin—who authored the affidavit and was to present it in court— wanted “to disperse the fog shrouding the last chapter.” In his eyes, vengeance—the essence of the punishment demanded—was wrong. He was convinced that had Brenner been asked, he would have opposed the idea. “I am sure that this was also Yosef Haim’s feeling. In matters of this kind we would intuitively have the same feelings,” he explained to Poznansky.20 Chaya insisted, so to dissuade her, he employed Tolstoy as an analogy: Assume that Tolstoy’s dearest daughter had been murdered, that he knew the identity of the murderers and even had witnesses to the crime, would he have gone before a tsarist judge? Of course he wouldn’t. First, murdering the murderer does not atone for the tragedy, and second, there is no way of ensuring a fair trial, so an innocent man might be convicted and sentenced to death. Under the prevailing conditions in Palestine, the trial would be a political one; it would strive to create a balance between Jewish and Arab offenders, and there was no guarantee that justice would be done. Rabbi Benjamin summed up: “The message got through. She understood the difference between Yosef Haim and just anybody.”21 It is doubtful that Chaya was indeed placated. Bitter and angry, she accused anyone and everyone, in particular the leaders of Akhdut Ha’avoda, of indifference.22 An inquiry several weeks later did not produce enough evidence for an indictment, and the murderers escaped punishment. Creation of the Brenner myth began once news of the murder became known. In the issue of Hapoel Hatzair that appeared after the funeral, Rabbi Benjamin wrote as if Brenner’s death had been ordained by divine providence even before he came into the world: “Then came the final, concluding event, as if it were preordained, as if it were marked and decided in heaven thousands of years ago.” In the same mystic-­

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fatalistic tone, Rabbi Benjamin cried: “What a harmonious ending! What a beautiful death! What martyrdom, what an existential sacrifice! What purity.” In the face of Brenner’s mutilated corpse, he momentarily espoused his friend’s perception of existential anxiety: “Brennerke! The volcano still smolders, spewing out its dark and wrathful heart!” He went on: “The spears are still drawn, the knives are still being sharpened, a massacre is still being planned.” The menacing situation served Rabbi Benjamin as a backdrop to illuminate the death of his friend: “Your death is a symbol for us. You did not rush to take flight, to escape. Beyond protecting life, you guarded the moral way. You always feared death, and when it came, you knew no fear.” Rabinowitz continued in the same vein: “When they came to tell us, Brenner has been found dead, the heart barely fluttered: it was understandable, it had to happen, like death itself. Why should we weep and tremble? Tolstoy fled, and Brenner stood fast, . . . the flight of the one is like the steadfastness of the other; they are a character that became a fate,” he declared. In the same issue, Yitzhak Wilkansky wrote: “He walked among us like a monk from ancient times, abstaining from enjoyment of life and its pleasures.” Brenner, he added, “was not just a philosopher of the downtrodden, he did not just struggle with his anguish. He sought the truth of life, justice, compassion.” Asher Barash concluded the issue with a short article that addressed the shining example of Brenner’s life and death and determined that in the end he had sacrificed his life for strangers. “Is that not a legend?” he asked rhetorically.23 The newspapers marking the thirtieth day of mourning continued in the same spirit. Moshe Glickson eulogized Brenner in Hapoel Hatzair: “A great man has left us, the sanctity of whose death concluded the sanctity of his life.”24 In the 15 June 1921 issue of K ­ untress, Mordechai Kushnir, one of the men who found the bodies, described Brenner’s corpse: “His right arm was outstretched and his fist was clenched. His body lay tense, as if after an unvanquished struggle.” There were elements in Brenner’s lifestyle and behavior that for many gave him the image of a man of mystical, somewhat enigmatic qualities. Some months before Brenner’s death, Poznansky asked him to write a few consoling words to Chana Chisik, whose sister Sarah was killed at Tel Hai, telling him that “in her eyes (in her heart) you are the most profound and dear of all human beings.”25 At the time, B ­ inyamin

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Brenner thought that his shabby, neglected brother, who did not display sensitivity toward him, was a prophet. The constant struggle against any injustice that he waged against powerful men, on the one hand, and against his own psychosomatic maladies and depressions, on the other, were in Binyamin’s view all “very clear symptoms of a prophet!” He even went on to explain that “his pains were similar to those of the prophet who cried ‘My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart’” [Jeremiah 4:19].26 After the murder, Reisen in faraway Philadelphia suggested that Brenner was a twentieth-century prophet who devoted his life to his people and humankind and bore their ills like the prophets of old. Such perceptions were fed and reinforced by his ascetic lifestyle, his concern for the downtrodden and the wretched, the love of humankind that he radiated, and his ability to be the voice of both great and small. However, Brenner’s canonization as the secular martyr of labor Palestine did not take place spontaneously. There were guiding hands that nurtured the Brenner legend. For example, Aharonowitz wished to dedicate the first issue of Hasifria Ha’amamit (The popular library) to Brenner. The issue would include Brenner’s story “Hamotza” and an article on him by Shimonovich, who suggested that Poznansky might add a few biographical notes to the article. Aharonowitz followed through, writing that “in Shimonovich’s opinion the notes should emphasize that Brenner stayed [at the Mantura house] because he did not want to save himself and abandon others,” and asking Poznansky to write to that effect.27 One way or another, the murder created an apotheosis that influenced everything written about Brenner after his death. There was no one left alive who could say why Brenner refused to leave the Mantura house. Although some contended that he had a death wish and that this was his way of committing suicide, there is little to substantiate this idea. Through the many years that Brenner lived with bouts of depression and his death wish, he never attempted suicide. He did not choose to take Sander Baum’s way out. He channeled his death wish into his literary characters, who moved between suicide and madness, but in most cases they chose life. And thus it was with Brenner. Brenner’s friends quoted him as declaring, “from the day Uri was born I made a covenant with life.”28 This declaration accords with the extraordinary relationship he had with the child. Friends who visited him

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at the Mantura house described signs that seemingly heralded his expected death: the tranquility that had descended on him, the peace of mind, a sort of acceptance of fate, as if his heart had foretold his imminent end,29 but this is the reasoning of retrospect. According to all the testimony, Brenner had planned to move to the Gedud Ha’avoda camp at Rosh Ha’ayin after Passover week.30 He did not have a sense of foreboding that rioting was about to break out or that the house he was living in would become a death trap. Another explanation for Brenner’s staying in that isolated house was that he did not sense any danger. When Avrahamchik Yitzkar refused to leave, Brenner, too, saw no reason to do so. After all, they were six men with a rifle and a pistol. In the conditions prevailing in Palestine at the time, this was considered a significant force. A third possibility is that Brenner did sense danger, but because it was impossible to evacuate everyone from the house, he preferred to link his fate with the others rather than try to save himself. This last explanation is neither more nor less credible than the others. It may be assumed, however, that had the occupants of the house felt that their lives were in danger, they would have insisted that Brenner leave, even under duress. The Brenner myth combined disparate elements, from Brenner’s choosing to stay for the sake of others, with its emphasis on the element of self-sacrifice, to Mordechai Kushnir’s description of Brenner’s corpse, emphasizing struggle and nonacceptance of fate. Similarly, Trumpeldor’s utterance, “it is good to die for our country,” was vital for the mythicization of his death at Tel Hai because it endowed it with a meaning beyond the merely random and local. Hence, the element of self-sacrifice attributed to Brenner’s actions was important for nurturing the myth of Brenner as a man for whom a shared fate with his brothers was more precious than his own life. This version was swiftly disseminated. Thus, when Schoffman was mourning the death of his friend at the end of May, he assumed that because there was no room in the car for all the house’s occupants, Brenner chose to stay behind with the others. The preferred explanation for Brenner’s remaining in the Mantura house voluntarily also derived from guilt feelings. His close friends had not rescued him from danger.31 Placing the blame on the Lehrers, who took the seats in the car, had an element of transferring the blame

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to people not members of the camp, in contrast to the unintentional abandonment by Katznelson, Kushnir, and their other friends, who on that terrible day were occupied with pressing matters and did not remember Brenner or recognize the danger he was in. The claim that Brenner chose to stay in the house for reasons of lofty morality was another way of contending with the guilt feelings. One of the first lengthy essays to appear after Brenner’s death was written by Hillel Zeitlin. Brenner and Zeitlin had been out of contact with each other for nearly a decade. Their opposing positions—­ Zeitlin’s religious repentance and Brenner’s extreme secularism and merciless criticism of Judaism and the Jews—had distanced the two friends. Zeitlin’s essay was designed to perpetuate the Homel days, when both of them underwent the same experiences and shared the same ideas. But more than that, Zeitlin sought to embrace Brenner anew by turning him into a Jewish martyr. To this end he had to surmount the obstacle of Brenner’s atheism and militant heresy as they were expressed in his writing, especially in such articles as “Ba’itonut ubasifrut: Al hizayon hashmad” and “Ha’arakhat atzmenu bishloshet hakrakhim” and in expressions such as “the rancid [Western] Wall.” His biting descriptions of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jews heightened that obstacle even more. Zeitlin overcame all this by claiming that Brenner’s way of life and death were evidence of his sanctity. Even though in his writing he was critical of the Divinity, his life was that of a righteous, exemplary man. Brenner was a man “who never availed himself of pleasure, who never pursued his desires, who never sought wealth or pride or greatness or special attention, who was constantly concerned about the fate of both his people and all humankind.”32 Brenner’s ascetic lifestyle and his constant torment over the anguish of others, Zeitlin said, were an expression of self-sacrifice for the sake of the collective worthy of a righteous man and a martyr. He was “the most moral personality, in the spirit of Tolstoy, augmented and sanctified by a special degree of Jewish compassion.”33 Zeitlin contended that Brenner’s life was the strongest protest against the views he voiced, which thoroughly contradicted his true nature. He lived in accordance with the morality of the Prophets, even when he castigated it. “Among the Jewish writers (and not only the writers) there was not one who yearned for the Divine Presence as

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he did,” he declared.34 Brenner’s way of life was proof that he carried God in his heart. His attacks on God were similar to those of Job, whom God preferred over his self-righteous fellows. His martyrdom was further evidence of his sanctity. Indeed, he did not repent or make a confession, but when he could have been saved he chose to stay in the face of grave danger. “He knew . . . with a clear knowledge that he was going to his death, that death was coming to him, and he stayed.” From the time the vehicle that had been sent to evacuate him left until his death, Zeitlin posited, several hours elapsed during which Brenner conducted his moral stocktaking and foresaw the moment of his death, “and in his final hours he surely heard the call of eternity.”35 Zeitlin believed that these thoughts were the equivalent of a spoken confession. His distinction between the opinions Brenner expressed aloud or in writing and the messages he conveyed through his lifestyle and death reflect Zeitlin’s need to reclaim “his” Brenner. His reasoning contains tones and undertones from both the world of Hasidism and Kabbalah. Zeitlin created two domains, the overt and the hidden, the spoken and the gestured, the conscious and the subconscious. Despite himself, Brenner is the righteous man and martyr in the hidden, unconscious domain by virtue of the world of deeds, as opposed to the world of words. Poznansky was unhappy with Zeitlin’s portrayal of Brenner. He said that the facts presented in the articles were important, but the “tone” was not.36 Canonizing Brenner as a Jewish martyr was at odds with his close friend’s sober, down-to-earth impressions of him. The adulation of Brenner by pious Jews was not restricted to his friend from Homel. A short time after Brenner’s death, Ya’akov Malachov, an observant Jew who owned a seafront hotel in Neveh Shalom, published a booklet titled Akhar mitato shel Brenner (After Brenner’s cortege). Its cover page bore the legend: “A Torah scholar who has committed a sin by day, do not quibble over him by night, for perhaps he has repented.” Malachov and Brenner had met in Jaffa. According to Malachov, Brenner “was even-tempered, generous, soft-spoken, and I can wholeheartedly define him as ‘the other one’ in our generation.” Like the historical “Other One,” Elisha Ben Abuya, who avoided making others sin, so Brenner “never tried to bring others under the wing of heresy.” Brenner had come to rent a room from Malachov after Chaya and Uri went overseas. Their conversation moved to matters

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of “Jewish hopes” in the wake of the San Remo conference. Brenner informed him, “calmly, as was his way, that he did not believe in all that noise and the tolling of the bell. And in general he did not believe that the Jewish people would get back their country in due course and would become a living people on their own land.” This angered Malachov, and at the end of their argument he offered Brenner a wager: If, after ten years, the Jewish people indeed became a free nation in their own country, would Brenner be prepared to become a fully repentant Jew? “With extraordinary swiftness, for him, he held out his hand and said: ‘So be it. On my word of honor, if we live to see it, I shall fully repent and be a Jew faithful to his religion.’” Thus, Malachov contended that because orthodox Jews fully believe in the redemption of the people of Israel, and because he himself was convinced that the time would not be long in coming, the man who died was not Brenner the heretic but the repentant Brenner. He sought to attribute repentance to Brenner, which Malachov believed would have come about had he not been murdered. His words evoke admiration of and affection for the modest, gentle Brenner, who, despite casting doubt on the realization of Zionism, hoped for it with all his heart. Malachov viewed his heresy as an expression of a noble soul enslaved by the Devil, but his death atoned for his transgressions.37 Malachov did not soar to Zeitlin’s mystical heights, but he too sought a way of ensuring that Brenner entered heaven. There are several indirect connections between Brenner and Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, who, at the time of the Second Aliya, was chief rabbi of Jaffa. As early as 1907, when Brenner was living in London and publishing Hameorer, the rabbi’s seventeen-yearold son, Zvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook, sent Brenner a letter in which he explained his father’s greatness and his efforts to bring Jews closer to Zionism and the building of Palestine; one of the rabbi’s books accompanied the letter.38 Brenner’s reply has not been found, and Hameorer did not publish a review of the book. As far as we know, this correspondence was not continued.39 Brenner was not inclined to connect with the rabbi and did not show great interest in him. The attempt to create a connection between Brenner and Rabbi Kook was made after Brenner’s death as part of the myth of sanctity, which both modern secular and Zionist religious Jews have adopted. The dead Brenner

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was intended to serve as one of the bridges between Labor Zionism and religious Zionism, a role that probably would have surprised him in his lifetime. In an article published in Warsaw, Zeitlin describes his meeting with Rabbi Kook in Palestine in 1925: When I visited the late Rabbi Kook, I told him that I do not see the wonders in the [Jezreel] Valley that he sees there, and that the pioneers’ attitude toward religion is most insulting, and so I do not understand why he, the rabbi, heaps so much praise on those builders to the extent he wrote in his Ha’orot [The lights] that what the righteous do in their communion [with God], the young Zionists are doing with their plow. “I read what you wrote after Brenner’s death,” was his reply. “Is that a reply to my question?” “Yes, I read what you wrote about Brenner, and Brenner wrote many things that hurt every religious Jew . . .” “Brenner, he was special . . .” “And among those at [Ein] Harod and others like it, there are many Brenners, great and small.”40

The example of Brenner’s life and death became a symbol of the historic role played by the pioneers in building Palestine, which endowed them, like Brenner, with an unsought sanctity. After Brenner’s death there were those who placed great emphasis on the mystical element of his personality. Eva Tabenkin described how Brenner suddenly came into her house at the end of her son’s circumcision ceremony, went straight to the baby’s pram, gazed at him for a long time, and left as he had come in. “I was dumbstruck. A primeval emotion filled me. I looked at the baby’s face as if a cryptic blessing rested on his forehead. My heart filled with joy. I—and my son—had been given Brenner’s blessing.”41 Chaya Rotberg recounted how, one evening, she was passing the old market in Tel Aviv behind the Herzliya Gymnasium. By a wooden hut that served as a synagogue for the Jews of Neveh Shalom, she saw “a black mass of [religious] Jews.” As she drew closer, she saw Brenner standing in the crowd addressing them about Herzl. There was not one woman among them. “There was nothing in Brenner’s appearance that set him apart from the crowd,” she said. “I left quickly with a sense of Brenner’s mysticism in my heart.”42 The next time she met Brenner, she again had the same

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feeling. In his black “Jewish” coat, his green—perhaps black—hat, his wild beard, and his gleaming eyes, “at that moment he seemed to me to be one of the Lamed Vav [the thirty-six hidden righteous persons in the world, a notion rooted in Jewish mysticism].”43 In a diary published by D. K. (who remains anonymous), the author describes Brenner’s appearance: “The face, the beard, and the main thing—the black suit shiny with wear,” a heavy black suit in the heat of the summer, “how much of the Brenner symbol was in it!” When he spoke to Brenner, he was afraid to look at him directly: “Was this not the voice of one of the ancients, was I not speaking directly with Rabbi Zadok or his son Ishmael?”44 Haim Friedman, who saw him at the Haifa conference and later in the Gedud Ha’avoda, described him as “a solid man with a weighty appearance, elemental and positive.” He reminded him of the Russian author Gleb Uspensky, who had described the life of the Russian peasantry realistically. Friedman was struck by his simple manner, his humility, “not the somber humility of a monk or a yurodiv, but a humility that embodied illuminating simplicity. . . . It was the humility of a righteous Jew, of a man who fights and overcomes his desires. We felt that a man of God was walking among us.”45 In similar words Y. D. Bercovich described Sholem Aleichem’s impression of Brenner when the two met in London: “In his poor manner, his neglectful life, his contempt for outward appearances, and his devotion to Hebrew literature, Brenner was first revealed to him as an otherworldly man, a sort of Jewish yurodivi, one of the hidden Lamed Vav.”46 Yurodivi is a Russian term meaning “holy fool,” but unlike the holy fool in Western tradition, in Russian tradition it is always a reverential appellation. The yurodivy in old Russia were regarded as divinely inspired personalities representing a mystical tradition. The yurodivy were homeless wanderers whose lifestyle was ascetic, making do with little out of choice. Their behavior was often inexplicably strange. They dared to tell the powerful the truth to their faces and emerged unharmed. Russians of all classes believed in their magical power of foretelling the future and feared their curse. The scholar Ewa M. Thompson writes that “the massive acceptance of holy foolishness in Russian social life left an indelible imprint on Russian conceptions of social priorities, of morality and immorality, saintliness and sin, wisdom and foolishness, patriotism and indifference to the common good.”47

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Respect for the yurodiv created a tradition that celebrated the irrational aspects of personality and society. The yurodiv could be simultaneously a saint and a sinner. A sinner who publicly repented and atoned for his sins while abasing himself was considered purer than a man who had never committed a sin. In other words, outward uncleanliness can indicate inner purity. Over the years, the perception of the great, tortured, suffering Russian soul—a sinner who is essentially pure—­ became an inseparable part of how Russians perceive themselves. In the nineteenth century, the yurodivi became a literary model that found its place in the culture as a person whose innocence is preserved, even if his or her conduct is contrary to morality, even in circumstances in which it is hard to believe how it is possible to preserve purity. Thus, Sonya Marmeladova, the saintlike prostitute in Crime and Punishment, maintains her purity even after years of working on the streets of St. Petersburg. In War and Peace, Pierre Bezukhov goes through a stage of depravity and corruption but remains as pure as a child. Berl Katznelson referred to the murderer Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment as “pure as childhood.” Purity is not a quality that is acquired or lost but an integral part of the personality. As a social phenomenon, the yurodivi was odd, exceptional, and frequently mentally ill, with his sickness perceived as an expression of his being a man of God, as is the case with Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The yurodivi was homeless, unconnected to material property, a wanderer, and usually had no family. His features expressed melancholy, and his smile—when he did smile—was often foolish. His clothes were tattered. He was considered to be simplicity, truth, and authenticity incarnate. The opposites of uncleanliness and purity, sin and atonement, humility and aggressiveness were considered complementary and appropriate to a deeper insight of morality and truth. When Russian novels first appeared in the West in the nineteenth century, they were received with skeptical criticism. But from the early twentieth century, with the increasing centrality of the irrational and the subconscious in European thought, this literature was perceived as revealing new truths about the nature of man, denying the bourgeois order, and speaking in the voice of authenticity that was absent from the formal constructions of Balzac or Henry James. Ewa Thompson says that when the insights and hypotheses of Nietzsche, Marx, and

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Freud became accepted in the West, they were followed by acceptance of the insights of Russian literature.48 For contemporaries who were familiar with the figure of the yurodivi, Brenner’s personality fit the type: the depressions, the gloomy expression, the modesty, the habit of making do with little in dress, food, and lodging; the compulsion to always speak the whole truth without making allowances for position or rank; the inability to maintain family life, to settle in one place; the torment of sicknesses, real or imagined; the identification with the downtrodden and wretched. Brenner also employed the literary model of the yurodivi in several of his works, in characters such as Eliahu Hizkuni and Yochanan Maharshak in ­Beyond Boundaries, Abraham Menuhin in Out of the Depths, and Yehezkel and Hanoch Hefetz in Breakdown and Bereavement. Unlike the Jewish righteous man, the yurodivi is not innocent of sin; on the contrary, his transgression is his salvation; his sin, his atonement. He is both pure and filled with sin. But unlike the Russian yurodivi, whose refuge is in atonement, Brenner did not provide his protagonists with the catharsis of redemption. With Brenner, God is longed-for but unattainable, and so his world is one without atonement and hope, except through living. Current criticism has a tendency to deepen the analysis of Brenner’s Jewish origins and deemphasize his Russian intellectual origins. This is not how his contemporaries viewed him. Russian literature played a leading role in shaping the psychological world and imagination of the people of the Second and Third Aliyas, at least those of them who came from the world of Russian culture. It was the first non-Jewish culture to which they were exposed, and Russian was the non-Jewish language they understood well. In the view of Katznelson, Tabenkin, and even David Ben-Gurion, Russian literature was the greatest of all the world’s literatures.49 This perception was also shared by many literati. Brenner admired Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Schoffman testified that, although Brenner read a lot, “they and only they remained the most important.”50 He admired Tolstoy—the greatest yurodivi of all—not only as a writer but also as a moral figure. In Tolstoy’s Childhood, a yurodivi plays a leading role. In Brenner’s “One Year,” Tolstoy’s Resurrection was a moral guidebook for the soldier Hanina Mintz. The weaknesses of Tolstoy, who became a righteous man only in his old age, did not damage his lofty moral status among the Russian people, because a repentant

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sinner is worthier of respect than someone who has never sinned at all. This is how Brenner felt. It was not by chance that Rabinowitz chose to compare the example set by Brenner’s life with that of Tolstoy; these were the images with which that generation was familiar. Chaya Broide imagined herself as Sonya Marmeladova, for whom Brenner, the pure sinner, would bring salvation. When Brenner sought to criticize the Jews’ belief in religion by rote, he compared it with the depth of faith of Dostoevsky’s protagonists in The Brothers Karamazov and projected it onto all Russians.51 Although Brenner distinguished between the Russians in literature and those of flesh and blood, he chose to regard the literary figures as if they expressed the authentic Russian soul. Although some viewed Brenner as a Lamed Vavnik, a hidden righteous Jew, it seems that the yurodivi model was more appropriate for him. Brenner was not hidden; he was active in the world, did not conceal his criticism from his contemporaries, exposed every wound and blow, cried out and cautioned. His contemporaries referred to him not as a righteous Jew but as the man “who bore our ills,” a description replete with the Christian image of an individual who bears the transgressions of all and with his suffering and torment brings redemption to many. On the face of it, the image of a prophet is more fitting for Brenner than that of a Lamed Vavnik. As mentioned earlier, Binyamin Brenner saw him this way while his brother was still living. Referring to Brenner, Schoffman wrote: “The Jewish tragedy, which is only now being revealed throughout the world in all its horror, he carried in his heart from his early youth, carried it on his own.”52 But the image of a prophet, whose power lies in his words, does not ultimately fit Brenner. His power, like that of the hidden righteous man, is not in his words, but in his deeds. Brenner attained canonization for the example set by his life and death rather than for what he preached. Brenner’s sometimes odd behavior is in keeping with the yurodivi image. The outbursts of weeping, banging his head on the floor, the self-flagellation, all phenomena originating in his mental state, are characteristic of the yurodivi, who sometimes lives on the border between sanity and madness. Brenner was not psychotic but suffered from depression beginning in his youth, perhaps as a consequence of his complex relationship with his father, but this is pure conjecture. The cyclic character of the bouts of depression and their side

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effects—the melancholy expression, neglected outward appearance, reclusiveness, the torment and psychosomatic pains that Brenner and his circle described—their meaning is not in doubt. A depressive tends to see himself as worthless. “‘Despised and rejected of men’ [Isaiah 53:3] is how he referred to himself. He despised himself,” Asher Beilin wrote.53 “Suddenly . . . he began condemning himself, casting every bad quality upon himself ” is David Zakkai’s description of a conversation with Brenner.54 His thinking of himself as ugly, as emitting a bad odor and strange sounds, was part of his low self-esteem, the result of his depression. He was aware of his condition and feared madness. But despite his flirtations with death, especially in his earlier works, he loved life and held onto it with all his might. His love of life connects with another phenomenon that is quite extraordinary for a man in his condition: even during bouts of depression, he usually did not stop working. His ability to work shows self-discipline and self-regulation, which are unusual with bouts of depression. This may mean that his depression was not deep, or perhaps it was his way of dealing with it. It seems that he had some control over the attacks; for instance, when he was in the army, he does not appear to have suffered from them. In London, however, the attacks were an inseparable part of his everyday life; in Palestine, they became a bothersome routine with which he learned to cope. Personal misery, such as death (Chaya Wolfson) or parting (Uri Brenner), caused outbreaks of depression. But Brenner was saved by writing. Ever since his youth, he had thought of himself as a man with a mission: he saw writing Hebrew literature and working for it as his mission. Writing was the engine that drove his willpower. From the time of Hameorer, his efforts to create a focal point of Hebrew culture provided him with both the justification and the strength to fight the dark force of the depression that threatened to dominate him. Each time he succeeded in what he viewed as his vocation— writing something that came out well, publishing a literary anthology or a journal, or discovering a new writer—he would come out of his depression; or, when he failed, as he did with the closure of Hameorer and Ha’adama, or when Bialik wrote “A Pleasant Mistake,” his lethal critique of Hameorer and Brenner himself, he would be engulfed by a new wave of depression.

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His depression colored his worldview. His discovery in Homel of the radical pessimistic perceptions of the turn of the nineteenth century provided a philosophical framework for inner and intimate feelings. Since then “that which is crooked cannot be made straight” [Ecclesiastes 1:15] became his view of the world. Through his dark glasses, he saw the bad and only rarely the rainbow, the hope of “never­theless.” In the twisted world, there was a distortion within a distortion: the Jewish people. Brenner loved his people with every fiber of his being, as his extended family, flesh of his flesh, his mirror image—and a man cannot deny himself. But just as he saw himself as “despised and rejected of men,” so he saw his people. What could renew the life of the people, what could restore the vitality so necessary for its existence? He agonized over the doubts that gave him no peace: Is there a remedy for the Jewish people? Is there still hope? Brenner was a patriot of the Jewish people, a national Jew. The criticism he leveled at the life of the Jews in the Diaspora was total, in the spirit of radical pessimism. His “negation of the Diaspora” did not derive from a Zionistic viewpoint or recognition but from the ideational and intuitive foundations of his worldview. From this came his search for a path that led him first to territorialism and, in retrospect, to Zionism, although with hesitation, questions, and uncertainty. Zionism was for him one creative option of many in the life of the Jewish people. To the end of his life, he was reluctant to acknowledge his latent Zionism. He held that the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine was no better than other Jewish diaspora and not the prime hope for something different and new. Jews also live in exile in Palestine, he claimed. He refused to accept the core optimism of the Zionist concept and claimed that he was an old-school lover of Zion—that is, a man who believed in practical labor in Palestine but without political expectations, without messianic ideas. But he rejected outright, as futile, Ahad Ha’am’s notion of “cultivating hearts” before building Palestine. He fiercely objected to the concept of “the chosen people” that lay at the basis of Ahad Ha’am’s worldview. It would be enough if the Jewish people were as all the nations, a normal people with no pretensions of spiritual or moral superiority standing in stark contrast to the wretchedness of its existence. His characteristic demand to behave modestly, to refrain from raising the roof about every minor event in Palestine, stemmed from his innate lack of confidence that

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eventually something good would be born there. In his view the pioneering enterprise was the redeeming act on the national level, just as writing was his redeeming act on the personal level. At the end of his life, he lived in constant cognitive dissonance: on the conscious level he did not back down from his pessimistic perceptions, which were part of the structure of his personality, but on the subconscious level he linked his destiny to Palestine. Therefore, as he continued to cast doubt on the possibility that Zionism would be realized, he did not even consider leaving Palestine and wanted his son to play in the streets of Tel Aviv and not wander through European countries. We find a fine description of the contrasts in both Brenner’s character and writing in Joshua Ovsay’s reflections: It seems that in Brenner’s complicated disposition and complex character, two main streams of consciousness can be discerned: primary and secondary. In the primary stream, there is a soul torn and split to its very depths. . . . It is devoured by doubts and misgivings and sealed with the flame of uprising and revolt; it abounds with love and emits poison; it is hewn from the world of art and refuses to accept its authority; it is filled with abysmal despair and blessed with a will to work that is second to none; it is filled with the best of tradition and wages war on sacred and accepted values; . . . it spouts chunks of lava and is as submissive and debased as an eternal penitent. . . . But it seems that, along with the surging, tempestuous, and turbulent primary stream . . . there is a lucid, clear, quiet, moderate, and translucent stream. Thanks to this stream, the contrasts raging in Brenner’s soul are not mutually exclusive, and they also do not constitute a mixture of unbridled forces . . . but uniquely replenish one another; they merge together . . . and evoke for us the complete figure with its ruptures and incompleteness, the figure of Yosef Haim Brenner.55

This description of contrast and harmony fits the unique Brenneresque range from the bitter outcry in most of his writings to the “still, small voice” in those of his works that amaze in their harmony and serenity and in the sense of illumination, beyond overt reality, that inspires them. This applies to the concluding paragraphs of Here and There and Breakdown and Bereavement and to his essay on Gnessin in the Hatzida anthology, which reads like a penitent’s atonement.

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Most depressives are incapable of forming deep human relationships. Although he was always the center of attention in Palestine, and members of his circle were very attached to him, Brenner was a loner, detached from his human surroundings. In his wonderful portrait of Brenner in London, Asher Beilin testifies to his inability to come out of himself and understand the suffering of others.56 Brenner was definitely capable of acts of generosity, of helping people he hardly knew. His altruistic relationships with some people masked the lack of depth in his interpersonal relationships. He did not allow people to get close to him and form genuine intimacy with him. His insensitivity to Uri Nissan Gnessin’s suffering in London is one example of this psychological introversion, in which his focus was solely on his own suffering. Poznansky was aware of this quality in Brenner, which allowed people to come no closer to him than his outer shell. He saw the flesh-andblood Brenner with his human weaknesses and followed the ups and downs in the Brenner-Chaya relationship. He was therefore filled with admiration for Asher Beilin’s candid articles. “Very important articles,” he wrote to Wolfovsky; others writing “about Brenner have not yet given us articles like these.”57 Ten years later, in a letter Poznansky wrote to Beilin, he again emphasized the uniqueness and depth of Beilin’s view of Brenner, saying: “Your eyes and heart looked deep into him and did not deceive you.”58 Yet Brenner was in constant need of human warmth, demonstrations of love and admiration that would counterbalance his tendency to see himself as worthless and strengthen his sense of mission. But he was unable to reciprocate, despite needing love and warmth to keep from sinking into depression. Brenner’s relationships with women are a manifestation of his difficulty in forming deep relationships. From Chaya Wolfson, through Sarah-Shifra Marmor, Tinka Lampert, and even Hassia Feinsod, Brenner connected with women who were clearly not destined for him, with whom a relationship would not threaten his isolation. It appears that Brenner was aware of his difficulty in forming a real relationship with a woman. This, perhaps, is the meaning of Poznansky’s hint to him in his letter written after he heard about Brenner’s ­marriage. It is the source of his candor with Chaya Broide before their marriage, when he revealed to her all the vagaries of his mental state. It is also the reason for his hesitancy before the wedding: a man in

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his condition does not usually marry. His attempt to be “like everyone else,” as Rabbi Benjamin wrote, was unsuccessful. In the end he needed the shell of loneliness to be able to write. Chaya’s attempts to create seclusion for him—his own private space in either the monkish room she prepared for him or when she let him go to Ein Ganim so he could write there—ended in failure. His mental problems did not allow her to get close to him, to break down the barrier of his isolation. Perhaps Brenner intentionally chose a wife unsuited to the role of “mother and sister” as part of a strategy to safeguard an inner, autonomous, and untouchable core. His early works contain intimations of sexual ambiguity, of deliberation between a heterosexual and homosexual identity, manifested in descriptions of the relationship between Ya’akov Abramson and Uriel Davidovsky in Around the Point and even between Oved Etzot and Diasporin in Here and There. Poznansky was possibly referring to this uncertainty in his letter to Brenner after his marriage. M. Z. Wolfovsky described their last meeting: Brenner “treated me with a somewhat paternal familiarity (he suddenly put his arm around me as if embracing [me]),” to which Wolfovsky reacted: “I admit that his touch was both pleasing and slightly embarrassing.”59 Wolfovsky’s recoiling from Brenner’s touch, like Poznansky’s reservations about him until he heard that he had married, intimate that his contemporaries were not sure whether Brenner had homoerotic tendencies, but there is no real evidence that he did. He did not allow any man to get closer to him than he allowed women to do. Yet except for his wife, those closest to him—“to the extent that the word ‘close’ is suitable here with regard to Brenner in general,” as Poznansky put it60—were all men. On more than one occasion, his contemporaries comment on Brenner’s attitude toward his son, Uri. His excessive concern about the child’s welfare, his tendency to panic whenever the boy contracted a childhood illness, and his anxiety that the boy might have inherited his tendency to depression are described again and again. Before Uri’s birth, Brenner displayed anxiety over the health of his friends’ children. In his works a special place is reserved for children, sick or healthy, as symbols of withering or renewal. Between Amram, the “new Jew,” and his brother, Herzl, the baby who died, there is a broad spectrum of characters expressing Brenner’s longing for a child. Through ­Abraham

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Menuhin in Out of the Depths, Brenner expresses his desire “to be a father to all the orphans of the world”—that is, to be a father but not a husband. Brenner’s obsessive relationship with his child suggests his concern with continuation of the generations. Through the child Brenner revisited his relationship with his own father. This time Brenner is the father and builds the kind of relationship of love and concern that he felt his father had denied him. The child is part of him, his flesh and blood, an extension of his personality. Thus, when Chaya took Uri to Europe, Brenner sank into a deep depression, as if a limb had been severed from his body. The emotional blackmail and manipulations—with a half-concealed, half-explicit threat of suicide— that he exerted on Chaya after their divorce were a means of ensuring his control over her. Although he was more exposed than many of his Second Aliya friends to the non-Jewish world, especially in Russia, Brenner remained firmly planted in the Jewish experience of the time. The pain of disengagement from religious faith, the anguish of the externs who were seeking a path to the modern world but lacked the tools to integrate into it, the Jewish migration at the turn of the century and its consequent uprooting, the stormy debates in the Jewish ideological arena among the supporters of territorialism, autonomy, Zionism, Hebrew and Yiddish, the encounter with the world of socialist thought and the Bolshevik Revolution—all these issues provided material for his writing. His stories were always written in the present continuous tense. His writing contained neither nostalgia, lament, nor yearning for a reality that was no more. It drew a great deal from his life experiences, which he processed and shaped according to the needs of his books. But the older he grew, the more the human issues he dealt with became universal, transcending time and place. His greatest work, Break­ down and Bereavement, is the least autobiographical of all. Although its plot unfolds in Jerusalem and deals with the life of the city’s orthodox Jewish society, emerging from the novel are issues of human suffering not exclusive to either Jews or Palestine. Brenner was well aware of what was happening in the public arena, but he made sure he did not become involved in activities outside the cultural sphere. Ever since his youth, he had intuitively identified with the socialist idea in its simplest and most fundamental form: justice and

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equality for all humankind. This was the great belief of the young radicals who grew up in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century. Except for his involvement with the Bund in Homel, however, and later with Poalei Zion in London, he consistently avoided identifying himself with any party or political movement. As he did in his personal life, he protected his personal space in public life as well and refused to commit himself to any political body or idea. His skeptical pessimism did not allow him to hope that the objectives of either socialism or Zion­ism might be realized in his lifetime. During the Ha’adama period, he moved closer to identifying with Akhdut Ha’avoda but not so far as total identification. He remained above party strife and demanded the independence to say what his conscience bound him to say. Brenner came to be identified as the conscientious mentor of the emerging community in Palestine. He wore the mantle of the saint, not because he wanted it for himself, but because his contemporaries needed him to wear it. There was a clearly Russian influence at work here. More than anywhere else, in Russia the author was considered to be the voice of the nation’s conscience. The young Zionist movement sought not only national justification but also moral justification on the universal level. The immigrant pioneers sought a moral authority. As a figure who challenged the bourgeois mode of life and thought, cast doubt on all accepted conventions, lashed out at the rules of proper behavior, demanded that the truth must be exposed however bitter it might be, and yet was modest and benevolent, Brenner was the epitome of what they wanted to be. The quality of his writing turned Brenner from just another odd, unassuming man into a shining example who determined norms of behavior, distinguished between good and evil, and had access to upper worlds beyond quotidian reality. For them, the traditional image of the Jewish righteous man they had learned from their fathers connected with the image of the yurodivi. The two images are both from the world of religion. But these young people were seeking a secular sanctity that would suffuse the enterprise of building the country and daily experience and endow it with meaning. At the time, neo-Romanticism was flourishing in Europe. Martin Buber had published his Tales of the Hasidim and revealed the “light” inherent in Eastern European Jewry. Brenner’s figure seemed as if it had emerged from the stories of the righteous,

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yet it was firmly rooted in the Palestine experience. His death gave his “nevertheless”—which people remembered as a thrilling slogan from the Hameorer period—the context of self-sacrifice on the nation’s altar. Forty years after Brenner’s death, Dov Sadan, who had not known him, described him as “the saint of our modernism.”61 The 1920s were characterized by attempts in the Palestinian arena to mythicize physical and spiritual heroes. On Brenner’s grave, an artist named Rivkin painted an art deco headstone, which, apart from the deceased’s name and the date and description of his death, shows an angel prostrating itself before the stone, and a scroll bearing the legend: “Pure and Holy.”62 Brenner’s violent death turned his figure, which in life was the subject of controversy, into a consensual one, accepted by all strata of the Yishuv as a symbol of sanctity. Anyone could choose and highlight an element of his image to fit the needs of his own circle. Even then, however, Brenner had disciples who claimed him as their own and others who did not view him as their guide and mentor. Berl Katznelson and Yitzhak Tabenkin, together with others from Akhdut Ha’avoda, saw in Brenner the leading moral personality of the Second Aliya. They made Brenner the educational focal point of Hanoar Ha’oved and Hamahanot Haolim, youth movements affiliated with their party. In response, Hapoel Hatzair adopted A. D. Gordon as their exemplary figure. Gordon’s animosity toward anything associated with the term “socialism” and his fierce opposition to the establishment of Akhdut Ha’avoda and its collaboration with the Marxist Poalei Zion party made him a countersymbol to Brenner. The education of the young people of Palestine in Hakibbutz Hameuhad, which inculcated the Brenner legacy, focused on the example of his life by adopting the motto “nevertheless” and on the model provided by two of his works, “He Told Her” and “Our SelfEvaluation in Three Volumes.” Katznelson named Around the Point as the book through which he discovered Brenner and Here and There as the definitive work of the Second Aliya.63 But Brenner’s literary language and style were obstacles for the young people of Palestine, and they made do with “He Told Her” and “Our Self-Evaluation.” Such is the fate of a man who becomes a symbol: flattening and reductive interpretations. As long as these works were studied in the Diaspora against a backdrop and intimate knowledge of Jewish life, Brenner’s

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criticism of his brethren connected with shared points of reference that mitigated it. But once the works were shifted to the Palestinian arena and brought before boys and girls unfamiliar with the diasporic life, they were read as a lethal criticism of the Jewish people there. The tragic situation of a weak minority in the midst of a majority people was lost on these readers, the lofty call to revolt of the young Jew going to join a self-defense group was blurred, and even the love and compassion with which Brenner softened his castigation of the Jews in “Our Self-Evaluation” was eroded. All that remained were stereotypes of weakness, idleness, wretchedness, and loss of human dignity. Thus, the man who feared for the fate of the Diaspora, who loved Yiddish, who at the gymnasium had criticized Canaanite trends and demanded that the historical continuity should be preserved between the Jewish people in their own land and those in the Diaspora, who rejected claims of the Yishuv’s superiority over other Jewish communities (although he also said the opposite)—was also the Brenner whose works distanced the young people of Palestine from love of their people. Brenner continued to exist in the consciousness of the republic of Hebrew letters. Six months after the murder, Schoffman was shocked to receive a letter from Brenner. It was written in September 1920 and had taken sixteen months to reach him. “In retrospect, however, I had one wonderful second. I simply forgot everything—a letter from Brenner!”64 On a visit to Vienna in 1923, Rabbi Benjamin met the poet Avraham Ben-Yitzhak. Ben-Yitzhak talked to him for a whole hour about Brenner. “He was reading Breakdown and Bereavement at the time and was full of it,” Rabbi Benjamin reported. “The beauty of Brenner is that he is so artless . . . like a piece of nature,” said BenYitzhak.65 In the novella From the Beginning, which appeared in 1922 in Hatekufa in Warsaw, Brenner sought to give literary expression to the vernacular Hebrew that was emerging in Palestine. When he completed it and gave it to Poznansky, his friend advised him to shelve it for the time being, apparently because of the simplistic and shallow image of the gymnasium students that emerged in the story and because it was still possible to identify the young people described in it. Even after Brenner’s death, when From the Beginning was the only novella that remained unpublished. Poznansky preferred to postpone publication for fear of negative responses.66 But now he was on the

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alert in case the printer dared to insert pronunciation corrections into the manuscript, because Brenner had endeavored to maintain the students’ language as an example of living, vital Hebrew created in Palestine by its speakers, as opposed to the correct, petrified language. 67 In the play Beyond Boundaries, Brenner had invented dialogue in Hebrew, which he had not yet heard, while in From the Beginning he tried to transfer the gymnasium students’ native-speaker Hebrew stammerings into literary language. Schoffman was full of admiration: “Brenner’s From the Beginning made a great impression on me,” he wrote to ­Shalom Streit, adding with a sigh: “Oy, Brenner, oy.”68 When Brenner died, he was unaware that his father and his brother Shmuel and his family had all perished in the pogroms in Ukraine that took place during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. Meir Brenner traveled to Europe in an attempt to find out what had become of them and only returned to Palestine with the sad news several weeks after the murder.69 Thus, Brenner was saved the heartbreak of his family’s tragedy. Chaya Broide lived to a ripe old age, first in Tel Aviv and then at Maoz Haim, Uri’s kibbutz. After her retirement she had difficulty in finding substance in her life. She never remarried. Throughout her life she wrote a diary and memoirs and also numerous letters. But in her old age, a bitter and gloomy woman, she burned all her writings. Fortunately, Uri kept the correspondence between her and Brenner.70 Uri Nissan Brenner grew up and was educated in Tel Aviv. He joined Hamahanot Ha’olim and was a founding member of Kibbutz Maoz Haim, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was deputy commander of the Palmach, the striking force of the budding Israeli army, which made its mark in the War of Independence and was dismantled after the war. Uri Nissan Brenner was one of three children to be named after Uri Nissan Gnessin. Uri Nissan, the son of the poet Zilla Drapkin, grew up in New York. Drapkin was Gnessin’s lover, who perpetuated the love of her youth in the name of her son, who was born many years after the writer’s death. In Soviet Moscow the writer M. Hayug also named his son Uri Nissan.71 Asher Beilin and his family immigrated to Palestine in the mid1930s. He was followed shortly after by Chaim Itzkovitz from Lvov. Kalman Marmor lived in New York, where he edited a Yiddish jour-

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nal and was a loyal communist to his dying day. After the establishment of the State of Israel he adhered to his non-Zionist positions, even though he described the Jewish state as the most precious of his dreams. Sarah-Shifra Marmor died young, when they were visiting Kiev in the early 1930s. Their son, Shmuelik, died of an illness in the prime of life. Tinka (Estherkeh) Lampert married a doctor and lived in the Ukrainian city of Stanislav. During World War II, Moshe Hayug, who was a Red Army officer and was passing through the city, tried unsuccessfully to find traces of her. “It is almost certain that she shared the same fate as hundreds of thousands of other Jews during the Nazi occupation.”72 In the early 1940s, Ya’akov Yosef Hoz, a relative of Hillel Zeitlin, desperately tried to obtain an immigration certificate for Zeitlin, but in vain. The Mandatory government did not allow the issue of certificates to citizens of enemy states (which was how occupied Poland was defined).73 Zeitlin perished in Warsaw together with his brethren. Schoffman and his family lived in the Austrian village of Wetzelsdorf. In the second half of the 1930s, when even Schoffman felt the earth shaking beneath his feet, he was still unable to make up his mind and immigrate to Palestine. He was afraid of the country. Is it safe there? Are the Arabs not threatening? These questions troubled him greatly.74 It is also possible that he was haunted by Brenner’s death, which he perhaps saw as an omen. In early 1937 he was visited by Shalom Streit, who wrote to Poznansky: “Schoffman has not aged . . . not in the least. He is as bright and clownish as he always was.” Streit then notes that Schoffman “advocates the partition of Palestine on condition that Wetzelsdorf is annexed to it.”75 But only a few months elapsed before Austria was annexed to Germany. Schoffman and his family barely escaped from Wetzelsdorf and immigrated to Palestine thanks to a certificate obtained for them through Berl Katznelson’s intercession.76 Schoffman visited the Mantura house, the scene of his friend’s murder, the place that gave him nightmares. “So this is the place! Open, clear-cut, with none of the dense woods and wild nature that go with an act of murder. Actually, not such a terrible place,” he stated, as if seeing the place laid the demons that haunted him—and even Brenner’s ghost—to rest. Against the backdrop of the Mediterranean landscape with its tall date palms and thickly foliaged fig trees,

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“the Russian church with its tolling bells” towered behind the building. Schoffman commented: “It is symbolic of Brenner that wherever he went, his distant past went with him.”77 In April 1924, Kuntress published a special issue in his memory. The special editions of his writings maintained Brenner’s presence in the audience of Hebrew readers; over the years, however, the image of Brenner the martyr overshadowed that of Brenner the writer. Less than a year after his death, Azar was asked to write “something about Brenner” for the youth, but with the caveat: “Not about his books, their plusses and minuses, but about Brenner, his personality, the fire of his martyred soul, his love, his great compassion, his contempt for every lie and every deceit, and all cant and hypocrisy, his seclusion, his work on the roads—in short: the Brenner legend.”78 Greater educational importance was attributed to the Brenner symbol than to his writings. Two years after Brenner’s death, Rabinowitz complained that the Palestinian reader admired him for his early works and his articles, “but Brenner the Palestinian novelist remains foreign and unloved by a large section of readers here.” He contended that more copies of Break­ down and Bereavement had been sold in Vienna than in all of Palestine. Educated people in the West who had only recently learned Hebrew were reading and enjoying the book, whereas in Palestine intellectuals “from official intelligentsia circles”—that is, teachers and journalists— were not. Rabinowitz attributed this fact to Brenner’s harsh criticism of the realities of life in Palestine.79 In the 1930s, Dov Kimchi published an appreciation of Brenner’s moral-monkish personality, “the most complete Jewish personality of the last generation,” and at the same time cast a shadow of doubt over his literary greatness, mentioning his “artistic incapacity.”80 Even harsher words came from Zalman Schneur, who did not appreciate either Brenner’s storytelling or his artistic style. “I am, of course, not discussing Brenner the truth seeker,” he wrote, drawing a distinction between personality and writing.81 Dov Sadan followed suit, taking a risk by forecasting that “what will remain will be a scintilla of his personality, which is greater than his work.”82 At a memorial ceremony held by writers in 1951, thirty years after the murder, Yitzhak Lamdan complained that Brenner was being forgotten, either as a result of the Zeitgeist—by which he probably meant the momentous events of the War of Independence and the estab-

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lishment of the State of Israel—or because “there are some who seek to put him out of mind.” Asher Barash spoke about him at length and concluded by asserting that Brenner “was a great Jew and a great human being,” saying nothing about his worth as a writer. A 1960 survey conducted by a veteran educator showed that Brenner was one of the authors gradually being forgotten among Israeli youth.83 At a gathering of Histadrut activists, Moshe Sharett voiced the heretical opinion that Brenner should not be used as a subject for teaching the history and ideology of the labor movement in the country because immigrants from Yemen and Morocco would not understand him: the reality he describes is far removed from their experience. In Sharett’s view, this also applied to the youth of Israel for whom Brenner was incomprehensible for exactly the same reason.84 In 1958, Shlomo Grodzensky, a Brenner admirer, described him with painful irony as “a sanctified figure and an unread author.”85 But this was not the whole story. Beginning in the 1960s, the voice of a new generation of writers began to be heard, the writers of the “state generation,” and with it came Brenner’s period of resurrection. The Hechalutz and Hamachanot Ha’olim generation saw Brenner as the man who educated them for choosing a meaningful life in which there was harmony between word and deed, as opposed to the sham radicalism of high-flown utterances behind which there was no true commitment. The state generation of writers, however, found in Brenner the existentialist individualist, the fighter for his truth who did not accept society’s authority; a man who challenged convention in language that was not “proper”; a man who unraveled all the strands of Hebrew literature. Scholars of literary criticism discovered fascinating constructions and hidden layers in his writing that the critics of the previous generation had not noted. The seekers of God in the kibbutz movement, the Shdemot circle, found in Brenner the heretic who challenged accepted beliefs but yearned for a higher truth, a mystic of Israeli reality. Post-Zionists found evidence in his writings of the weakness of Zionism at the time of the Second Aliya and made him the flag bearer of criticism of Israeli society, the roots of whose decay were, in their view, there from the very start. Although Brenner’s journalistic writing was losing its import, as any writing on current affairs does, his belles lettres began to gain

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weight in the overall appreciation of his work. Yet Brenner the symbol, Brenner the martyr who sparked the imagination as a man who touched upper worlds, did not disappear either. The irrational call for loyalty to the Hebrew language in the small pages of Hameorer at a time of despair on the Hebrew culture front was interpreted in the broadest and most comprehensive fashion. It educated generations of young people to challenge a reality that conspired against dreams. The image of Brenner as Beilin described him, striding through the streets of chilly, foggy London to the post office with a sack of copies of Hameorer on his back, became fixed in the memory of Hebrew culture as a mysterious figure carrying the future of literature on its shoulders. In the pantheon of the pure challengers of God and man, in which we can find Job, Jesus, and Enoch, Brenner’s heavy, earthbound figure can be seen as the man who, as Katznelson wrote, “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” on whom “God laid the tragedy of all of us.”86 In 1940, Yehuda Shertok, Brenner’s disciple and admirer, lost his wife and his sister and her family in a traffic accident. He sank into a deep depression, neglected himself, grew a beard, and shut himself off from people. One of the members of Kibbutz Yagur brought his condition to the attention of Berl Katznelson, and he asked to meet with Shertok. A few days after Shertok’s meeting with Katznelson, the same kibbutz member saw him coming out of the communal dining hall clean-shaven, in a clean white shirt, with a friendly look on his face. When he asked him, What did you and Berl do? Shertok replied: “We sat together and read Brenner.”87

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Chapter One 1. Ahuva Brenner-Hurvitz, “Mishpakhat Shlomo Brenner” [The Shlomo Brenner family], in Al Y. H. Brenner: Od zikhronot, ed. Uri Brenner and Yitzhak Kafkafi (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1991), 15; hereafter cited as More Memoirs. See also Uri Brenner, “Mishpahat Lubanov Baaretz” [The Lubanov family in Palestine], in ibid, 26–27. 2.  Brenner, “Shana ahat,” in Writings, 2:881–1018; hereafter cited as “One Year.” 3.  Yekutiel Leites, “Be’ayarato shel Brenner” [In Brenner’s town], in ibid., 17. 4.  Binyamin Brenner, “Al nof ha’ayara” [Town scenes], in ibid., 24. 5.  This description is according to Leites, “Be’ayarato shel Brenner,” 17. 6.  Brenner to Ginsburg, Jerusalem, end of July 1909, in Igrot Y. H. Brenner, ed. Menachem Poznansky (Tel Aviv, 1941), 346–347; hereafter cited as Letters. 7.  Brenner-Hurvitz, “Mishpakhat Shlomo Brenner,” 15. 8.  Brenner to Yosef Aharonovich, Jerusalem, May 1914, in Letters, 404; also in More Memoirs, 23. 9.  Bahoref, in Yosef Haim Brenner Ktavim (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Sifriat Hapoalim, 1978–1985), 1:256. Bahoref hereafter cited as In Winter ; Yosef Haim Brenner Ktavim hereafter cited as Writings. 10.  Leites, “Be’ayarato shel Brenner,” 17. 11.  In two of his stories, “Pa’amayyim” [Twice] and “Hendil,” Brenner tells of an infant whose circumcision accelerates his death. In the case of “Pa’amayyim,” the story is told from the point of view of a young child, who gains his freedom from the heder on the birth and death of his brother. “Pa’amayyim,” in Writings, 1:289–302; “Hendil,” in ibid., 342. 12.  M. Slutzker, “Bayeshiva” [At the yeshiva], in Yosef Haim Brenner: Mivkhar divrei zikhronot, ed. Mordechai Kushnir (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1944), 7; hereafter cited as Selected Memoirs, 7. 13.  In Winter, 137. 14.  Brenner to Uri Gnessin, Bialistok, winter 1898, in Letters, 209. 15. Ibid. 16.  In the memoirs dealing with Konotop, there is no mention of the head of

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Notes to Chapter One the yeshiva’s being Brenner’s uncle. In one of his letters, however, written from Bialystok to his friends Gnessin and Gershon Ginsburg, Brenner mentions “letters conveyed” from his uncle in Konotop (Bialystok, winter 1898, in ibid., 204). 17.  Brenner to Shimon Bichovsky, Pochep, fall 1898, in ibid., 216–217. See also Leites, “Be’ayarato shel Brenner,” 27. 18.  Slutzker, “Bayeshiva,” 7–9. 19.  Leites, “Be’ayarato shel Brenner,” 27; Slutzker, “Bayeshiva,” 8–9. 20.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Pochep, fall 1898, in Letters, 216–217. 21.  Brenner to Gnessin and Ginsburg, Bialystok, winter 1898, in ibid., 202. 22. Ibid. 23. This description is based on Menachem Gnessin’s memoir, “Beshakhar yamav” [His early life], in Selected Memoirs, 10–18. 24.  Brenner to Gnessin and Ginsburg, Bialystok, winter 1898, in Letters, 202. 25. Ibid., 203. 26.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, early Monday, 23 March 1897, in Letters, 199. 27.  Brenner to Gnessin and Ginsburg, Bialystok, winter 1898, in ibid., 204. 28. Ibid., 204. 29. Ibid. 30.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, winter 1898, in Letters, 208. 31. Ibid. 32.  Ibid. Unless stated otherwise, throughout the book all emphases in quotations are in the original. 33.  Brenner to Gnessin and Ginsburg, Bialystok, winter 1898, in Letters, 205. 34.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, winter 1898, in ibid., 209. 35. This is how, years later, in the memorial volume for Uri Nissan Gnessin that Brenner edited, he reconstructed his friend’s words in the essay “Uri Nissan.” ­Hatzida [Sideways] (Jerusalem, 1914), 141–142. Brenner mentions the letter and “the hot, holy, pure tear” (Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, winter 1898, in Letters, 208). 36. In Hatzida, Brenner explains that Gnessin wrote the letter in response to his plea that he abandon life in his father’s house in Pochep and join him in Bialystok. But on reading contemporaneous letters (especially Letters, 208), it is clear that the letter was written by Gnessin as part of his fight for the soul of Brenner, who had rediscovered religion. It is interesting that memory deceived Brenner, obscuring the event— which is not to his credit—so that he appears to hold an advantage over his friend Gnessin because he, the younger of the two, had taken the daring step of going to the big city. 37.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, February 1898, in Letters, 212. 38. Ibid. 39.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, 11 March 1898, in Letters, 214. 40.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, March 1898, in ibid., 212–213. 41.  Brenner to Gnessin, Bialystok, 11 March 1898, in ibid. 42.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Pochep, 1 May 1898, in ibid., 214–215. 43.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Pochep, fall 1898, in ibid., 216–217.

Notes to Chapter One 44.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Pochep, 6 July 898, in ibid., 216. 45.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Pochep, fall 1898, in ibid., 216–217. 46.  Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM edition, s.v. “Gomel,” Yehuda Slutsky. 47.  Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen, “BeHomel uve’Eretz Yisrael” [In Homel and Palestine], in Selected Memoirs, 50–52. 48. Hillel Zeitlin, “Y. H. Brenner: Arakhim vezikhronot” [Y. H. Brenner: Values and memories], in Selected Memoirs, 19; originally published in Hatekufah (Warsaw), February–June 1922; hereafter cited as “Values and Memories.” 49.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Homel, 8 May 1899, in Letters, 218. 50.  See, for example, Letters, 218–223. 51.  Brenner to Ginsburg, late July 1909, in ibid., 346–347. 52.  See, for example, Brenner to Bichovsky, Homel, 6 January 1899, in ibid., 218. 53.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 19. 54. Ibid. 55.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Homel, 20 June 1899, in Letters, 219. 56. See Uri Nissan Gnessin’s letter to A. S. Nibilov, Warsaw, 16 July 1900, Igrot Uri Nissan Gnessin, vol. 3 of Kitve Uri Nissan Gnessin (Merhavia: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1946), 17–18; hereafter cited as Gnessin Letters, 17–18. 57.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 20. 58.  In the summer of 1900, Baum traveled to Pochep to organize a series of neshafim (gatherings), study evenings on Russian literature. Their content was not particularly innovative. Baum’s organization of these neshafim and their uninspiring content, with doubtful relevance to Pochep, disappointed Uri Nissan Gnessin, who had received a much loftier impression of Baum from Brenner. Gnessin to Bichovasky, Warsaw, summer 1900, in Gnessin Letters, 15; see also Gnessin to Bicho­vasky, Warsaw, summer 1900, in ibid., 21. 59.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 20–21. 60. Ibid., 37. 61.  In Winter, 199. 62.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 23–24. 63. Ibid., 27–28. 64. Ibid., 24. 65.  Haim Dan, “The Evidence of Virgili Cohen,” in Selected Memoirs, 29–30. 66.  Brenner researcher Yitzhak Bakon mentions additional witnesses, people who worked with Virgili Cohen in the Bund during this period. See Haktavim hayidiim shel Yosef Haim Brenner [Yiddish writings of Yosef Haim Brenner], ed. Yitzhak Bakon (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University, 1985), 57. See also Bakon, Brenner hatza’ir [The young Brenner] (Tel Aviv, 1975), 58–91. 67.  A copy of the paper is in the Bund archive at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Yitzhak Bakon translated and published the story; it appears in Brenner, Haktavim hayidiim, 57–73. 68.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 30–34. 69. Y. L. Kahanovich, “Homel,” in Y. L. Hacohen Fishman, Arim veimahot

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Notes to Chapter One b­ eYisrael [Jewish cities] (Jerusalem, 1948), 2:195–199; Y. L. Kahanovich, MeHomel ad Tel Aviv: Zikhronot udemuyot [From Homel to Tel Aviv: Memories and people] (Tel Aviv: The Committee for Publishing the Essays of Y. L. Kahanovich, 1951), 109–111. 70.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 43; Kahanovich, “Homel,” 198. 71. Brenner, In Winter, 193. 72. Berl Katznelson, “Lelo hitgalut” [Without revelation], in Kitvei Berl Katznelson [Writings of Berl Katznelson] (Tel Aviv: Mapai, 1946–1950), 4:246. 73. Ibid., 246. 74.  Kahanovich describes Brenner’s attire in MeHomel ad Tel Aviv, as does Brenner himself in his letter to Bichovsky, Homel, 20 June 1899, in Letters, 220. 75. Brenner, In Winter, 177. 76.  Gnessin to A. S. Nibilyov, Warsaw, 16 July 1900, in Gnessin Letters, 17–19. 77.  Gnessin to Bichovsky, Warsaw, summer 1900, in ibid., 16. 78.  Brenner to Meir Zinberov and Gnessin, Homel, 3 December 1899, in ibid., 221. 79.  Brenner to Ginsburg and Gnessin, Homel, 12 January 1900, in ibid., 222. 80.  Katznelson, “Lelo hitgalut,” 246–247. 81.  Shmaryahu Levin, Mizikhronot chayay [Memories of my life] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1937), 2:154–155. 82.  Brenner to Ginsburg, Warsaw, 25 August 1900, in Letters, 222; Gnessin to Ginsburg, 25 August 1900, in Gnessin Letters, 23–25. 83.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Homel, 20 June 1899, in Letters, 220. 84. Ibid., 219–222. 85. Ibid., 220. 86.  Brenner, “A Piece of Bread,” in Writings, 1:3–12; originally published in Hamelitz, nos. 35 and 39 (February 1900). 87.  Zeitlin (citing Frishman), “Values and Memories,” 25, 30. 88.  Yosef Klausner, Hashiloah 7 (February 1901), 157–163. I have used ­Bakon’s summary from Yosef Haim Brenner: Mivkhar ma’amarei bikoret al yetzirato hasifrutit [Y. H. Brenner: Selected critical articles on his literary writing], ed. Yitzhak Bakon (Tel Aviv, 1972), 7–9; hereafter cited as Selected Articles. 89.  M. Y. Berdyczewski, “Me’emek akhor,” in Sefer shana [Yearbook] (1902), 3:268–271. Cited in Selected Articles, 37–41. 90.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 25. 91.  Gnessin to Bichovsky, Warsaw, 16 July 1900, in Gnessin Letters, 20. 92.  According to Avrom Reisen, he lived in Nowolipki Street, but according to Brenner (“Uri Nissan,” in Hatzida, 141–142), he lived in Dzielna Street. 93.  There is apparently an error in the insertion of Gnessin’s letter 7 to Bichov­ sky before letter 8. Letter 8, to Ginsburg, is dated 25 August 1900, and there is a parallel letter bearing the same date, from Brenner to Ginsburg, on the same subject (Letters, 222). In his letter, Brenner states specifically that he will come to Warsaw for a few months to deal with the publication of his book. In letter 7 Gnessin refers to the book after its publication. There can therefore be no doubt that

Notes to Chapters One and Two letter 8 precedes letter 7. In addition, it seems to me that Gnessin’s letter 6 should come after letter 8, because in it he writes about Brenner’s author’s fee for Out of a Gloomy Valley. Although the letter is dated July 1900, this appears to be an error. 94.  Brenner, “Uri Nissan,” Hatzida, 141–142. 95.  The last of Brenner’s letters we have for 1900 is dated October, from Homel, where he went from Warsaw. After this, there are no letters from him that have been preserved until early 1902, when he was already in the army. No letters from Gnessin from between August 1900 and March 1902 have been preserved. Therefore, the dating of Brenner’s movements in 1901 is estimated and fragmentary. 96.  Gnessin to Bichovsky, Warsaw, 16 July 1900, in Gnessin Letters, 20. 97.  Avrom Reisen, “Y. H. Brenner: Der heiliger martirer unserer” [Brenner: Our holy martyr], Zukunft (June 1921), 375–376. 98. Ibid., 375–376. 99. Ibid. 100.  Brenner to Ginsburg, Jerusalem, late July 1909, in Letters, 347–348. 101. Brenner, In Winter, 95. 102. Ibid., 205. 103. Ibid., 100. 104. Ibid., 127. 105. Ibid., 211. 106. Ibid., 260. 107. Ibid., 257. 108. Ibid., 104. 109. Ibid., 119. 110. Ibid., 209. 111. Ibid., 250. 112. Ibid., 261. 113.  Brenner, “One Year,” in Writings, 2:892–893. 114.  To a certain extent this claim is substantiated by Yirmiah’s definitions of the story: on one occasion he says, “in any event an interesting novel did not come out of it”; on another, however, he asserts that “here there was a typical event, but a passing one that adds nothing to the understanding of my ‘self,’ an event of stuff and nonsense” (In Winter, 124, 208–209).

Chapter Two 1.  Gershon Schoffman, “Y. H. Brenner vehehavay hakesarkati” [Y. H. Brenner and barracks life], in Kol kitvei Gershon Schoffman [Collected works] (Tel Aviv, 1960), 5:191; hereafter cited as Schoffman Works. 2.  Brenner, “One Year,” in Writings, 2:940. 3. Ibid., 972–978. 4.  Quoted in Haim Orlan, “Nekuda afela behayyav shel sofer” [A dark point in a writer’s life], Haolam (Tel Aviv) 14 (9 January 1941). 5. Ibid.

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Notes to Chapter Two 6. Ibid. 7.  Brenner to Anochi, Oriyol, 28 April 1902, in Letters, 225. 8.  Gnessin to Anochi, Borisoglebsky, 1 May 1902, in Gnessin Letters, 27. 9.  See Bichovsky’s remarks in Orlan, “Nekuda afela afela behayyav shel sofer.” 10.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 3 August 1902, in Letters, 225. 11.  Brenner to Anochi, 14 August 1902, in ibid., 225–226. 12.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, end of 1902–early 1903, in ibid., 226. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 20 May 1903, in Letters, 227. 16.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 10 August 1903, in ibid., 228. 17.  Brenner to Joseph Klausner, Oryol, 24 December 1903, in ibid., 229. 18.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 10 August 1903, in ibid., 228. 19.  Jacob Ya’ari-Poleskin, Mehayei Yosef Haim Brenner [Life of Yosef Haim Brenner] (Tel Aviv, 1922), 64. 20.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 27 April 1903, in Letters, 227. 21.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, end of 1902–early 1903, in ibid., 226. 22.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 8 July 1903, in ibid., 228. 23.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 10 August 1903, in ibid., 228. 24.  H. Y. Katznelson, “Mizikhronotay al Y. H. Brenner” [Brenner memoir], Hatzfira 99 (29 April 1927). 25.  See ibid. 26.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, 3 August 1902, in Letters, 225; Brenner to ­Anochi, 14 August 1902 (“On my return from guard duty, sitting barefoot in the tent”), in ibid., 225–226. Berdyczewski’s story, “Urva parakh” [Stuff and nonsense] was published in 1902 by the Tushiya house. It may be assumed that Brenner read the story and echoed its title. 27.  Katznelson, “Mizikhronotay al Y. H. Brenner,” Haolam 14 (7 April 1932). 28.  Orlan, “Nekuda afela afela behayyav shel sofer.” 29.  Asher Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer” [In the Hameorer period], in Selected Memoirs, 99. 30.  Brenner to Bialik, Oryol, 6 January 1904, in Letters, 229. 31.  Brenner to Bialik, Eydtkuhnen, on the Prussian border, 28 March 1904, in ibid., 230. 32.  In a letter to his parents from Port Arthur, dated 1 February 1904, Yosef Trumpeldor writes that the war had broken out a few days earlier, on 27 January 1904. See Mihayyei Yosef Trumpeldor [The life of Yosef Trumpeldor], ed. Menachem Poznansky (Tel Aviv, 1953), 21. 33.  Brenner to Klausner, Oryol, 24 December 1903, in Letters, 229. 34. See Mihayyei Yosef Trumpeldor, 7–9. 35.  Brenner to Anochi, Oryol, end of 1902–early 1903, in Letters, 226. 36.  See the description of the pogrom and the Jewish soldiers’ dilemma in Kahanovich, “Homel,” 200–208.

Notes to Chapters Two and Three 37. Kahanovich, MeHomel ad Tel Aviv, 28. 38.  Brenner, “Min hamishol,” in Writings, 3:432; originally published in under the pseudonym H. B. Zalel in Hapoel Hatzair (1911). 39. On Schoffman’s military experiences, see his stories “Beyn hahomot” [­Between the walls], in Schoffman Works, 1:68–88; “Siut” [Nightmare], in ibid., 155–170; “Hapalit” [The refugee], in ibid., 276–294. 40.  See Hacohen, “BeHomel uve’Eretz Yisrael,” 52. 41.  Brenner, “One Year,” in Writings, 2:882. 42.  Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer,” 99. 43.  The reconstruction of these events follows the accounts given in Katznelson, “Mizikhronotay al Y. H. Brenner” and Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer.” Hacohen presents a slightly different version, claiming that Brenner was captured in B ­ ryansk, not far from Oryol (“BeHomel uve’Eretz Yisrael,” 53). 44.  Lassia Galili provided this information. 45. In 1935 Boaz Wolfson visited Palestine, where Menachem Poznansky had three talks with him about Brenner and Chaya Wolfson. Poznansky’s papers are housed in the Labor Archives (LA), the Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research, Tel Aviv, LA IV-104-106a. 46.  Poznansky papers, LA IV-104-106a. 47. This description is based on Bichovsky’s account, Reshumot (Tel Aviv, 1932), 520–521. 48.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” in Selected Memoirs, 35. 49. Bichovsky, Reshumot, 521. 50.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 35–36. 51. Ibid., 48. 52.  Poznansky papers, LA IV-104-106a. 53.  The description is from Hacohen, “BeHomel uve’Eretz Yisrael,” 52–55. For Zeitlin’s account, see “Values and Memories,” 45–49. See also Poznansky’s interview with Ya’akov Cohen, January 1936, Tel Aviv, LA IV-104-106. 54.  Zeitlin, “Values and Memories,” 49. 55. Ibid., 36. 56.  Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer,” 101. 57. Bichovsky, Reshumot, 521. 58.  Brenner to Bialik, Eydtkuhnen, on the Prussian border, 28 March 1904, in Letters, 230. 59. Brenner, “Rishmei derekh,” in Writings, 1:545–563; Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer,” 101.

Chapter Three 1.  Brenner to Bialik, Eydtkuhnen, on the Prussian border, 28 March 1904, in Letters, 230. 2.  The information on London’s East End is based largely on Lloyd P. Gartner’s classic, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870–1914 (London, 2001), 283.

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Notes to Chapter Three 3.  See David Englander, “Booth’s Jews: The Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Life and Labour of the People in London,” Victorian Studies 32:4 (Summer 1989), 551. 4. Ibid., 566. 5.  Another description of the East End can be found in William J. Fishman, Jewish Radicals: From Czarist Stetl to London Ghetto (New York, 1974), 31–60. 6.  Englander, “Booth’s Jews,” 554. 7. Ibid., 565. 8. Ibid. 9.  See Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant, 278–279. 10.  Brenner to Bialik, 4 April 1904, in Letters, 230. 11.  Even before his arrival in London, Brenner had informed Gnessin of his intentions of going there. Gnessin hastened to find acquaintances for him in the city. In his letter dated 31 March 1904, he mentions Pelzer, who was in London. In Gnessin’s subsequent letters to Brenner, he devotes part of them to Pelzer, meaning that they were together. See Gnessin Letters, 43, 46, 51, 52, 55, 56. 12.  Brenner to Bialik, Eydtkuhnen, on the Prussian border, 28 March 1904, in Letters, 230. 13.  Haim Be’er, Gam ahavatam, gam sin’atam [Their love and their hate] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992). 14.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 23 April 1904, in Letters, 230. 15.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 13 May 1904, in ibid., 231. 16.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 4 June 1904 and 9 June 1904, in ibid., 232. 17.  See Reisen, “Y. H. Brenner: Der heiliger martirer unserer,” and Kalman Marmor, “Hadayar sheli Y. H. Brenner” [My lodger Y. H. Brenner], in More Memoirs, 32; hereafter cited as Marmor, “My Lodger.” 18.  In the Brenner collection at the Labor Archives, there are four letters to Brenner from the Bund center in Geneva, the first dated 15 April 1904 and the last 30 August 1904, that deal with the question of Brenner’s employment as a Russian-Yiddish translator by the Bund’s newspaper, Arbeiter Stimme, and by the organization itself. In each of them, the writer apologizes for the long delay in replying. But what clearly emerges is that Brenner saw nothing wrong in editing and translating for the Bund in Yiddish. See LA IV-104-37-88. 19.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 8 May 1904, in Letters, 231. 20.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 13 May 1904 and 4 June 1904, in ibid., 231–232. 21.  See Kalman Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Archive of the Hebrew Writers Association [Genazim], Tel Aviv, 75/15400/1. See also Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Institute for Yiddish Research) [YIVO], RG205/280, letter dated 22 April 1932, no. 22429. 22.  Bialik to Sholem Aleichem, Warsaw, 14 January 1904, in Igrot Haim Nach­ man Bialik, 5 vols., ed. F. Lachover (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1935–1939), 1:203; hereafter cited as Bialik Letters. 23.  See Brenner to Bialik, London, 8 May 1904, in Letters, 231.

Notes to Chapter Three 24.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 9 June 1904, in ibid., 232; Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, 10 June 1904 [there is a synchronization problem with these dates], in Bialik Letters 1:203. 25.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 1 August 1904, in Letters, 234. 26.  Brenner to Zeitlin, London, July 1904, in ibid., 233. 27.  Lamed Shapiro, “Der schatten Yosef Haim Brenner” [The shadow Yosef Haim Brenner], in Der schreiber gayt in cheder [The writer goes to school] (Los Angeles, 1945), 94; hereafter cited as Shapiro, “Shadow.” My thanks to Anita Norich for her assistance in translating this excerpt. 28.  Brenner to Zeitlin, London, July 1904, in Letters, 233. 29.  Gnessin to Brenner, Ekaterinoslav, 24 August or September 1904 [in my opinion, the letter was sent in July], in Gnessin Letters, 53–54. 30.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 14 August 1904, in Letters, 234. 31. Brenner, Around the Point, in Writings, 1:518. 32. Ibid., 514. 33. Ibid., 518. 34.  Bialik to Berdyczewski, Warsaw, 30 January 1904, in Bialik Letters, 1:211, and 23 December 1904, in ibid., 1:277. 35.  Bialik to Klausner, 20 November 1903, in ibid., 1:182. 36.  Gnessin to Brenner, end of May 1904, in Gnessin Letters, 50–51. 37.  Bialik to Y. D. Bercovich, Warsaw, 5 August 1904, in Bialik Letters, 1:263. 38.  Bialik to S. Ben-Zion, Warsaw, 21 January 1904, in ibid., 1:205. 39.  Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, end of April 1904, in ibid., 1:231. 40.  Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, 22 August 1904, in ibid., 1:268. 41.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 6 September 1904, in Letters, 234. 42.  Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, undated, in Bialik Letters, 1:268–270. 43.  Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, 12 August 1904 [the date is apparently incorrect], in ibid., 1:266. 44.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 12 November 1904, in Letters, 235. 45.  Bialik to Brenner, Warsaw, 6 November 1904, in Bialik Letters, 1:276. 46.  “I do not have Hashiloah before me to peruse and see to what extent I was mistaken with my revisions, as you comment. I shall study it and see” (Bialik to Brenner, 24 January 1905, in ibid., 1:283). Brenner’s letter has not been found. Bialik did not revisit the matter. 47.  Bialik to Klausner, Odessa, 20 January 1905, in ibid., 1:270; see also 27 January 1905, in ibid., 1:275–276. 48.  Bialik to Brenner, 24 January 1905, in ibid., 1:272–273 [the year should be 1905, not 1906 as it appears in Bialik Letters]. 49.  Ben-Avigdor to Brenner, 4 January 1904, LA IV-104-37-88. See also Gnessin’s letter to Brenner from the end of 1904 (Gnessin Letters, 56) concerning the rumor that Brenner had signed an agreement with Hazman. 50. A. Elyashuv to Brenner, 31 January 1905 [written on 17 January 1905], Genazim 18144/20.

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Notes to Chapter Three 51.  Brenner subsequently filched a copy of Hazman from the Mission Library that contained a serious, in-depth critique by Zeitlin of Rabbi Benjamin’s article, “Megilat shigayon” [A scroll of imagination], which had appeared in Hameorer, and sent it to the author. Rabbi Benjamin never forgot that Brenner risked arrest to please his friend. See Jonah Spivak, “Be-London” (In London), Selected Memoirs, 61–73; Rabbi Benjamin, “Hillel Zeitlin,” Mishpakhot sofrim [Writers’ families], Jerusalem, 1948, 323–324. See also Rabbi Benjamin’s letter to Menachem Poznansky, Jerusalem, 26 April 1937, Genazim A-51771/75. 52.  See Fishman, Jewish Radicals, 262–266. 53.  Information on Brenner’s working as a librarian in the socialist club is contained in Asher Beilin’s letter to Brenner (who was already in Lvov), in which he tells him about meeting a young woman who was angered by Brenner the librarian who would not give her the books she requested and paid her scant attention. Beilin to Brenner, 12 February 1908, Genazim A-20-1816. 54.  Biographical information on Spivak in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher litera­ tur [Biographical dictionary of new Yiddish literature] (New York, 1965), 6:515–516. 55.  See Brenner to Bialik, London, 24 October 1904, in Letters, 235. 56.  I presume the friend was Pelzer, who is mentioned in many of Gnessin’s letters to Brenner during this period. From October 1904 onward, Pelzer is no longer mentioned in the correspondence. 57.  This description is based on Marmor’s depiction of himself for Who’s Who in American Jewry, YIVO, RG 205/826, and in his memoir in More Memoirs, 31–38. 58.  See Berl Katznelson, “Darki la’aretz” [My road to Palestine], in Kitvei Berl Katznelson, 5:310–311. 59.  Brenner, “Ma’asim” [Acts], Hazman, March 1905, in Writings, 3:34. 60.  Ibid. 61.  See Shapiro, “Shadow,” 95. 62.  The letters are housed in the Marmor archive, YIVO, New York. One is dated 19 April 1905, with the address 48 Mile End Road (which is also given as the address of the director of Die Jüdische Freiheit); the second is dated 6 July 1905, with Marmor’s address, 67 Sidney Street. 63.  For further details, see A. N. Schtenzl, A yiddisher farleger [A Jewish publisher] (London: Whitechapel, 15 December 1943), and Marion Aptroot, “Israel Narodiczky and His Whitechapel Press,” in Jewish Books in Whitechapel, ed. Moshe Sanders and Marion Aptroot (London, 1991), 1–9. 64.  See Shapiro, “Shadow,” 97–100, and Marmor, “My Lodger,” 32. See also Bogadin to Marmor, undated [apparently October 1906], YIVO, RG205/108, letter no. 8788. 65.  Brenner, “Rishmei sha’a” [Current impressions], in Writings, 3:40; originally published in Hatzofeh, 20 June 1905. 66.  See Marmor, “My Lodger,” 37. 67. Ibid., 39.

Notes to Chapter Three 68.  See L. S. Creditor, “Der hebraischer creis Arum Y. Naroditsky” [The Hebrew circle around Naroditsky], in Schtenzl, A yiddisher farleger, 12–15, and also Y. Perlmut, “Israel Naroditsky alav hashalom” [Israel Naroditsky, may he rest in peace], Die Zeit, 23 November 1943. 69.  Brenner to [no name], London, summer 1905, in Letters, 235. 70.  Marmor to Brenner, 28 April 1905, Genazim A-20/18583 and YIVO, RG 205/262. 71. Ibid. 72.  Aptroot, “Israel Narodiczky and His Whitechapel Press,” 6–7. 73.  Asher Beilin, “Y. H. Brenner be-London,” Hatekufa (January–June 1922), 647; hereafter cited as “Brenner in London.” 74.  See Creditor, “Der hebraischer creis Arum Y. Naroditsky,” 14, 17–18; Shapiro, “Shadow,” 93. 75.  Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Genazim 6, 75/15400; 22 April 1932, YIVO, RG 205/280, and Marmor, “My Lodger,” 33–34. 76.  Brenner to S. An-sky, early November 1905, in Letters, 237. 77.  Bichovsky to Brenner, 10 October 1905, in ibid., 237. See also Genazim 20/18200-A. 78.  See Brenner’s letter to Bichovsky, early September 1905, in Letters, 236. 79.  See Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Genazim 6, 75/15400, and 22 April 1932, YIVO, RG 205/280; Shapiro, “Shadow,” 93–94. 80.  See Marmor, “My Lodger,” 33. 81.  “Hu amar la,” in Writings, 1:596–604; hereafter cited as “He Told Her.” 82.  A reconstruction based on Linn (Joseph Lian), “Partzufim vezikhronot” [Portraits and memoirs]. Niv hatzioni havatik [The veteran Zionist idiom] (April 1941), 10. See also Linn to Brenner, Holland, 24 July 1905, LA IV-104-37-99. 83.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 8 August 1905, in Letters, 236. 84.  Linn to Brenner, 17 August 1905, LA IV-104-37-99; Brenner to Bichovsky, early September 1905, in Letters, 236. 85.  It is inconceivable that there were two different journals, Ha’avuka and Hameorer, as Yitzhak Bakon thinks. The timeframe would not have enabled it. 86.  Brenner to Marmor, undated, YIVO, RG 205/108, no. 8783 [unpublished letter]. 87.  The information is drawn from the article by Leonid Smilovsky, “The Rechista Pogrom (October 1905),” http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/newsletter/ rechitsa_pogrom.htm; originally published in Shvut 21, no. 5 (1997), 65–80. 88.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 8 August 1905, in Letters, 236. 89.  In his letter to Bichovsky in early September 1905, Brenner mentions Simferopol as one of the cities where a book he was seeking might be found—probably because the city is mentioned in an earlier letter from Bichovsky. 90.  Brenner, “Hu siper leatzmo,” in Writings, 1:713–721; cited as “He Told Himself.” 91.  In a letter to Bichovsky, dated 25 January 1906, Brenner writes: “I have re-

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Notes to Chapter Three ceived everything from you, both the precious letters, and money from the twelve signatories” (Letters, 239). My interpretation of ‘the precious letters’ is the correspondence between Bichovsky and Chaya Wolfson, with whom he was in constant contact. 92.  Brenner, “He Told Himself,” 714. 93. Ibid., 716. 94. Ibid., 719. 95. See Yitzhak Bakon, Brenner beLondon [Brenner in London] (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev [1990]), 88. According to her brother, her father’s name was Baruch, not Dov, but she is the same Chaya. 96.  See Boaz Wolfson’s testimony to Poznansky, 15 July 1935, LA IV-104-37-106b. 97.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 23 November 1905, in Letters, 237. 98.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Shnatayyim” [Two years], in Selected Memoirs, 79. 99. Ibid. 100.  Schoffman to Beilin, undated [apparently fall 1906], Genazim A-19/43131. 101.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Shnatayyim,” 74–75. According to Rabbi Benjamin, the study evening was held during Hannukah, but according to the Hameorer minutes, it was clearly earlier; Hameorer was founded in early December. 102.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Shnatayyim,” 75–76. 103.  Hameorer minutes, 3 December 1905, LA IV-104-37-51. 104. Ibid., 29 February 1906. 105. Ibid., 23 December 1905; 29 February 1906. 106.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Shnatayyim,” 77–80. 107.  “El hakoreh” [To the reader], Hameorer 1 (January 1906). 108.  Hameorer 1 (January 1906), 11. 109.  Brenner, writing as H. B. Zalel, “Dapim mipinkaso shel sofer ivri” [Pages from the notebook of a Hebrew writer], Hameorer 1 (January 1906), 12–14. 110.  Brenner, “Mikhtav arokh shalakh li,” in Writings, 3:91–92. 111.  Brenner, writing as Bar-Yochai, “Mikhtavim leRussia,” Hameorer 1 (January 1906), 6–9. 112.  Hameorer minutes, 13 January 1906, LA IV-104-37-51. 113.  Brenner published parts of this letter as a letter to the editor in Hameorer 4 (April 1906). 114.  Marmor to Brenner, 10 February 1906, Genazim A-20/18584. 115.  Klausner to Brenner, 28 June 1906, Genazim A-20/18678. 116.  Klausner to Brenner, 25 August 1906, Genazim A-20/18675. 117.  There are two letters from M. M. Eirov, dated 17 July 1906 and the Ten Days of Penitence 1906 respectively, dealing with this subject. LA IV-104-37-87. 118.  Marmor to Poznansky, 1 October 1933, YIVO RG 205/280. 119.  See Shapiro, “Shadow,” 93; Beilin, “Brenner be-London” 652. 120.  Marmor describes Brenner’s study of English in his memoir, “My Lodger,” 34. I also found supporting evidence in the letter from Zelkind to Poznansky,

Notes to Chapter Three Haifa, 26 June 1935, Genazim A-75/32564, which mentions that for a time Brenner was close to the Arabist Benzion Halper. 121.  Daniel Persky, “Hovrot Hameorer begolat America” [Hameorer in the American diaspora], in Selected Memoirs, 47. 122.  Brenner to Gnessin and Bichovsky, 10 January 1906, in Letters, 238. 123.  Waldstein to Brenner, 23 July 1906, LA IV-104-37-93. 124.  Waldstein to Brenner, 10 March 1907, LA IV-104-37-93. 125.  Waldstein to Brenner, March 1907, LA IV-104-37-97. 126.  See Persky, “Hovrot Hameorer begolat America,” 49–51. 127.  Joseph Lian to Brenner and Redler, 31 January 1906, LA IV-104-37-99. 128.  See Joseph Lian to Brenner and Redler, 14 February 1906, LA IV-104-37-99. 129.  Gnessin to Anochi, 25 December 1905, in Gnessin Letters, 74. 130.  See Gnessin to Brenner and Rabbi Benjamin, 6 January 1906, in ibid., 78. 131.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Shnatayyim,” 75. 132.  Schoffman to Brenner, Yedioth Genazim 79 (September 1972), vol. 3, yr. 10, 176. 133.  Bercovich to Brenner, early 1906, Genazim A-20/65628. 134.  Anochi to Brenner, undated, Genazim A-20/18120. 135.  Yitzhak Katznelson to Brenner [apparently 1906], Yedioth Genazim 66, vol. 2, yr. 7 (June 1969). 136.  See Bichovsky’s letters to Brenner, Genazim. 137.  Shapiro, “Shadow,” 97. 138.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 2 May 1906, in Letters, 249. 139.  On Brenner’s depression, see ibid; Brenner to Bichovsky, 3 May 1906, in Letters, 250; Brenner to Gnessin and Zeitlin, 9 May 1906, in ibid., 250; Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 19 May 1906, in ibid., 252. 140.  Lo khlum, with the stories “He Told Himself” and “Beino leveino” [Between himself and himself] was published by Ivriah (Society for the Dissemination of Hebrew) in New York, with which Brenner was in contact. See Brenner to Marmor, 5 June 1906, in ibid., 254. 141.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 27 May 1906, in ibid., 253. 142.  Brenner to Benjamin, 29 May 1906, in ibid., 253–254. 143.  Gnessin to Brenner, 2 June 1906, in Gnessin Letters, 112. 144.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 22 June 1906, Shvadron collection, National Library of Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 145.  Shapiro to Brenner, 27 July 1906, Genazim A-20/18860. 146.  Bercovich to Brenner, 9 July 1906, Brenner archive, Genazim [no archive number]. 147.  Brenner to Yitzhak Wilkansky (A. Zioni), 5 June 1906, in Letters, 254–255. 148.  See Bar-Yochai, “Pinkas katan” [A small notebook], Hameorer (August 1906), 68–72. 149.  Publisher’s note, Hameorer (July–August 1906), 48.

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Notes to Chapters Three and Four 150.  Brenner, “Korrespondentzia” [Correspondence], Hameorer (December 1906), 36. 151.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 25 September 1906, in Letters, 272. 152.  See Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 2 October 1906 and 11 October 1906, in ibid., 272–273, 274. 153.  Brenner to Shmaryahu Levin, 23 February 1906, in ibid., 243. 154.  Brenner to T. Z. Weinberg, 4 October 1906, in ibid., 273. 155.  Brenner to Menachem Gnessin, 13 October 1906, in ibid., 275. 156. Ibid. 157.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 11 October 1906, in Letters, 274. 158. See Brenner to Bichovsky, 6 October 1906 and 27 October 1906, and Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 31 October 1906, in ibid., 276–277. 159. Bogadin to Marmor, undated [apparently October 1906], YIVO RG 205/108, letter no. 8788. 160.  For further details, see Rabbi Benjamin, “S. B. Maximov,” Mishpakhot sofrim [Writers’ families] (Jerusalem, 1948), 334–339. 161.  Rabinowitz to Brenner, Volkovysk, 1 October 1906, Genazim A-20/18702. 162.  See Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 31 October 1906, in Letters, 277. 163.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 6 November 1906, in ibid., 279. 164.  See Brenner to Wilkansky, 6 November 1906, in ibid., 278. 165. See Hameorer (November 1906), 36. 166.  This analysis is based on Brenner’s letter to Wilkansky, dated 6 November 1906, in Letters, 278.

Chapter Four 1.  I am grateful to Shmuel Verses for drawing my attention to this article of Brenner’s. 2.  See Brenner to Schoffman, 3 July 1906, in Letters, 265. 3. David Shimonovitz, “Im Brenner” [With Brenner], in Kovetz 40 shana, kovetz limliat 40 shana lehofa’at Hapoel Hatzair [40 years of Hapoel Hatzair] (Tel Aviv, 1947), 67; hereafter cited as Forty Years of Hapoel Hatzair. 4.  Brenner to Schoffman, 29 June 1906, in Letters, 259. 5.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 2 October 1906, in ibid., 273. 6.  Schoffman to Beilin, 25 August 1906, Genazim A-19/43131. 7.  Beilin to Schoffman, 12 September 1906, Genazim A-26/2885. 8.  Brenner to Schoffman, 3 July 1906, in Letters, 265. 9.  Beilin to Schoffman, 12 September 1906, Genazim A-26/2885. 10. Ibid. 11.  In his letter to Schoffman dated 1 January 1907, Beilin writes: “Relations between us are unchanged. Concerning ‘family happiness,’ it is, of course, unthinkable” (Genazim A-26/3585). 12.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 649–650. 13. Ibid., 653–654.

Notes to Chapter Four 14.  This entire description is based on Beilin’s description in ibid., 651. 15.  Beilin to Schoffman, 12 September 1906, Genazim A-26/2885. 16.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 650–651. 17.  Beilin to Schoffman, 10 October 1906, Genazim A-26/3584. 18.  Beilin to Schoffman, 19 November 1906, Genazim A-26/3587. 19.  See Schoffman to Rabbi Benjamin, 29 October 1908, Genazim 99/8066/72. 20.  See Schoffman to Brenner, 30 October 1906, Genazim A-20/65014. 21.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 20 November 1906, in Letters, 282; see also 21 November 1906, in ibid., 283. 22.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 26 November 1906, in ibid., 285. See also Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 25 November 1906, in ibid., 284. 23.  See Brenner to Schoffman, early December 1906, in ibid., 286. 24.  See Brenner to Zeitlin, 21 November 1906, in ibid., 283; Brenner to Bichov­ sky, 21 November 1906, in ibid., 283. 25.  See Zeitlin, “L. Shestov,” Hameorer 5 (May 1907). 26.  Bialik to Brenner, 19 November 1906, in Bialik Letters 2:27. 27.  Brenner to Bialik, London, 6 October 1906, in Letters, 274. 28.  See Brenner to Schoffman, 25 November 1906, in ibid., 264; Brenner to Bialik, 5 January 1907, in ibid., 293. 29.  Brenner to Zeitlin, 21 November 1906, in ibid., 283. 30.  Brenner to Schoffman, early December 1906, in ibid., 286. 31.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 26 November 1906, in ibid., 285; Brenner to Klausner, 10 December 1906, in ibid., 289. 32.  See Brenner to Schoffman, early December 1906, in ibid., 286. 33.  See Beilin to Schoffman, continuation to Brenner’s letter, early December 1906, in ibid., 286; LA IV-104-37-78. 34.  Brenner to Klausner, 10 December 1906, in Igrot, 289. 35.  Brenner to Wilkansky, 25 December 1906, in ibid., 291. 36.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 26 December 1906, in ibid., 291. 37.  The account appears in Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 650–651. 38.  See Beilin to Schoffman, 19 November 1906, Genazim A-26/3587. 39.  See Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 654–655. 40. Ibid., 655. 41.  See Fishman, Jewish Radicals, 265–266. 42. Brenner, Min hameitzar, in Writings, 2:1090. 43.  See Shapiro, Der schreiber gayt in cheder, 95. 44. Before Beyond Boundaries, he wrote Le’et ata, and after it, Erev uvoker, both of which are one-act plays. 45.  Me’ever ligvulin, in Writings, 1:821; cited as Beyond Boundaries. 46. Ibid., 823. 47. Ibid., 824. 48. Ibid., 826. 49. Ibid.

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Notes to Chapter Four 50. Ibid., 823. 51. Ibid. 52.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 26 December 1906, in Letters, 291. 53.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 4 January 1907, in ibid., 292. 54.  Beilin to Schoffman, 1 January 1907, Genazim, A-26/3585. 55.  Schoffman to Brenner, undated (April 1907), Genazim A-19/43139. 56.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 22 April 1907, Genazim A-20/18752. 57.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 7 January 1907, in Letters, 294. 58.  Brenner to Wilkansky, 11 January 1907, in ibid., 295. 59.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 23 January 1907, in ibid., 297. 60.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 653. 61.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 18 February 1907, in Igrot, 301. 62. Ibid. 63.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 12 November 1907, in Letters, 300; to Jacob Fichman, 18 November 1907, to Wilkansky, 23 February 1907, and to Klausner, 26 February 1907, in ibid., 303. 64.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 27 February 1907, in ibid., 303. 65.  Marmor to Brenner, 21 March 1907, Genazim A-20/18587. 66.  Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 14 May 1906, YIVO RG 205-54, no. 5495; Marmor to Brenner, 21 March 1907, Genazim A-20/18587. 67.  See Marmor to Brenner, 15 March 1907, YIVO RG 205/262, no. 20623. 68. See, for example, Brenner’s letter to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, April 1906, YIVO RG 205/108, no. 8787. The letter is unpublished. 69. See, for example, Brenner’s letter dated 5 June 1906, in Letters, 254, the original of which includes some words by Sarah-Shifra Marmor, YIVO RG 205/108, no. 8779. 70.  Brenner to Marmor, 5 April 1906, in Letters, 247. 71.  Marmor to Brenner, April 1906, YIVO RG 205/262, no. 20620. 72.  Brenner to Marmor, 1 May 1906, YIVO RG 205/108, no. 8780. The letter was published in part in Letters, 249, but without the section about Sarah-Shifra. 73.  Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 11 May 1906, YIVO RG 205-54, no. 5491. 74.  Marmor to Brenner, 21 March 1907, YIVO RG 205/262, no. 20624. 75.  Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Genazim 75/15400/1. 76.  In his confessional letter to Poznansky dated 29 April 1932, Marmor mentions the affair. See Genazim 75/15400/1. There is also a copy in YIVO, RG 205/280, no. 22429. 77.  Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 14 May 1906, YIVO RG 205-54, no. 5495. 78.  The correspondence is in YIVO RG 205-48 and in YIVO RG 205-54, nos. 205–55. 79.  Marmor to Brenner, 21 March 1907, Genazim A-20/18586; see also Marmor to Brenner, 15 March 1907, YIVO RG 205/262.

Notes to Chapter Four 80.  Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 29 March 1907, YIVO RG 205-55. 81.  See Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 12 April 1907, in ibid. 82.  Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Genazim 75/15400/1. 83.  See Kalman Marmor to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, 1 May 1907, 16 May 1907, and 7 August 1907, YIVO RG 205-55. In his memoirs, Mein lebens-gesichte, Marmor incidentally recounts the family meeting in The Hague. He mentions that family matters took up a lot of his time, and also that the boy, Shmuelik, was with him there (779–781). His letters to Sarah-Shifra from Palestine, where he went from The Hague, are filled with warmth and love. 84.  Marmor to Brenner, 21 March 1907, Genazim A-20/18586. 85.  See Marmor, Mein lebens-gesichte, 776. 86.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 651. 87. Ibid., 656. 88.  Brenner to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, undated, YIVO RG 205/108. 89.  Brenner to Sarah-Shifra Marmor, in ibid., nos. 8786 and 8789. 90. Marmor to Poznansky, 29 April 1932, Genazim 75/15400/1; see also 22 April 1932, YIVO RG 205/280. 91.  The letter is franked 27 January 1908. YIVO RG 205/108. 92. Brenner, Erev uvoker, in Writings, 1:833; hereafter cited as Evening and Morning. 93. Ibid., 835. 94.  Brenner to Beilin, Zhulkov, 19 May 1908, in Letters, 325. 95.  Gnessin to Brenner, 2 June 1906, in Gnessin Letters, 109–111. 96.  Brenner to Gnessin (appended to a letter to Bichovsky), 6 June 1906, in Letters, 552. 97.  Gnessin to Brenner, 2 July 1906, in Gnessin Letters, 115. 98.  See Brenner to Gnessin, in a letter to Bichovsky, 30 July 1906, in Letters, 264–265; Gnessin to Brenner [apparently 30 July 1906], in Gnessin Letters, 118. 99.  Brenner to Schoffman, 3 July 1906, in Letters, 265. 100.  See Gnessin to Schoffman, Kiev, 25 August 1906; Gnessin to Brenner, Kiev, 26 August 1906, Gnessin Letters 118–120. 101.  Gnessin to Bichovsky, 18 November 1906, in ibid., 124. 102.  Gnessin to Y. L. Sprintz, 27 November 1906, in ibid., 125. 103.  See Gnessin to Brenner, 29 November 1906, 14 December 1907, 3 January 1907, in ibid., 126, 127, 130; Brenner to Bichovsky, 17 December 1906, in Letters, 291. 104.  Gnessin to Brenner, 14 January 1907, in Gnessin Letters, 130–131. 105.  Brenner to Bichovsky, 31 January 1907, 2 February 1907, 4 February 1907, 12 February 1907, 18 February 1907, 14 March 1907, in Letters, 298–305; Gnessin to Bichovsky, 9 February 1907, 22 February 1907, in Gnessin Letters, 131–132. 106. See Gnessin to Brenner, 14 March 1907, in Gnessin Letters, 132–133; Brenner to Bichovsky, 4 April 1907, in Letters, 307. 107.  Beilin to Schoffman, 26 April 1907, Genazim A-26/3586. 108.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 13 May 1907, in Letters, 309.

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Notes to Chapter Four 109.  Beilin, Brenner, and Gnessin to Schoffman, 20 May 1907, LA IV-104-37-38. 110.  Schoffman to Brenner, Beilin, and Gnessin, undated (May 1907), Genazim A-19/43138. 111.  Hyman Z. Epstein to Brenner, 12 June 1907, LA IV-104-37-87. 112.  Epstein to Brenner, 24 July 1907, ibid. 113.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 1 July 1907, in Letters, 312. 114.  The date has been reconstructed based on Brenner’s 20 July 1907 letter to Berdyczewski, in which he explains that, because of an extraneous crisis in his life, he has been compelled to leave Naroditsky and go to work at another print shop, where he is working very hard, and he mentions that this has been the case for two weeks. See Letters, 313. 115.  Brenner, Beilin, and Gnessin to Schoffman, 16 July 1907, Genazim 2101/3; also in Letters, 313. 116.  See Brenner to Schoffman, undated (July 1907), in Letters, 313; Brenner to Berdyczewski, 20 July 1907, in ibid., 313; and to Rabbi Benjamin, 20 July 1907, in ibid., 314. 117.  Beilin to Schoffman, 17 September 1907, LA IV-104-37-78. 118.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 17 September 1907, in Letters, 315; see also Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 668. 119.  Beilin, “Lepirpurav shel Brenner” [On Brenner’s agony], Iyyim: Kvatzim leinyanei hechayyim, sifrut umada [Islands: An anthology on life, literature, and science], ed. A. Beilin, S. Goldberg, and S. Pinsky (London, 1928), 1:80. 120.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 666. 121.  The description follows Brenner, “Uri Nissan Gnessin,” Hatzida, edited by Brenner, 140–145, and also Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 665–669. 122.  Brenner, Beilin, and Gnessin, 20 July 1907, LA IV-104-37-67. Poznansky noted on the manuscripts: “Unsuited for publication.” 123.  Brenner, “Uri Nissan Gnessin,” 144. 124.  Brenner to Schoffman, undated (July 1907), in Letters, 313; Brenner to Schoffman, 16 July 1907, ibid. 125.  See Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 668. 126.  Brenner, “Uri Nissan Gnessin,” 140. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid., 144–145; see also Brenner to Schoffman, 30 September 1907, in ­Letters, 315. 129.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 13 January 1908, in Letters, 317. 130.  Brenner, “Uri Nissan Gnessin,” 145. 131.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Kinor ki yenupatz,” Al hagvulin, 140–142. 132.  The date is based on Beilin’s letter to Schoffman (an addition to Brenner’s letter to Schoffman, 30 September 1907, in Letters, 315), in which Beilin writes: “Gnessin is going to Palestine tomorrow.” 133.  Poznansky to Beilin, Tel Aviv, 1 May 1932, Genazim A-19/43100. 134.  See Brenner to Kleinman, 26 December 1907, in Letters, 316.

Notes to Chapters Four and Five 135.  S. B. Maximovsky to Brenner, 17 December 1907, Genazim A-20/18596. 136.  Maximovsky, “A Portrait of Ahad Ha’am,” Hameorer 12 (December 1906), 20–22. 137.  Beilin, “Brenner in London,” 660. 138.  See ibid., 660–661. 139. Ibid., 662. 140.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 21 June 1907, in Letters, 311. 141.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, 20 July 1907, in ibid., 314. 142.  Brenner to Kleinman, 26 December 1907, in ibid., 316. 143.  Brenner to Kleinman, ibid.

Chapter Five 1.  See Beilin, “Bitekufat hameorer,” 111. 2. Brenner to Moshe Kleinman, London, December 1907, in Letters, 316; Kleinman to Brenner and Beilin [Lvov 1908], undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 3.  See Rabbi Benjamin’s marginal comment, Breinin to Rabbi Benjamin, ­Vienna, 8 April 1907, Genazim A-14203/99, and Brenner to Persky, Jaffa, 24 March 1911, in Letters, 364. See also More Memoirs, 50. A different version appears in Brenner to Beilin, Lemberg, 4 February 1908, in Letters, 318. 4.  See Reuben Breinin, “Y. H. Brenner (Errinerungen)” [Y. H. Brenner (Remembrances], Die Yiddish Gazetten 10 (June 1921). 5.  Brenner to Beilin, Lemberg, 4 November 1908, in Letters, 319. 6.  See Breinin, “Breslau, April 1907,” in Boded bema’aravo: Micha Yosef Berdy­ czewski bezikhronam shel bnei zmano [Alone in the West: Micha Yosef ­Berdyczewski in the memory of his contemporaries], ed. Nurit Guvrin (Holon, 1998), 201. 7.  See Chaim Tchernowitz, “Ha’adam ba’ohel” [The man in the tent], in Boded bema’aravo, 173. 8. See Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, Yosef Haim Brenner: Halifat igrot (1906–1921) [Berdyczewski–Brenner correspondence, 1906–1921], ed. Shlomo Bartonov (Tel Aviv: Reshafim, 1984), 11–36; hereafter cited as Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters. 9.  “The Visit to M. Y. Berdyczewski,” in Selected Memoirs, 112. 10. Ibid., 112–113. See also Berdyczewski to Brenner, Breslau, 14 March 1908, in Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters, 43. 11.  See “The Visit to M. Y. Berdyczewski,” 114. 12.  See Berdyczewski to Brenner, Breslau, 3 February 1908, in Berdyczewski– Brenner Letters, 37–38. 13.  Brenner to Breinin, 4 January [should be February] 1908; see also Nurit Govrin, “Siakh sofrim,” Iton 77 (April–May 1984). 14.  Berdyczewski to Brenner, Breslau, 3 February 1908, in Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters, 37–38; Brenner to Berdyczewski, Lemberg, 6 February 1908, in Letters, 318. 15.  Berdyczewski also took it upon himself to give Brenner advice, although in most cases Brenner did not take it. See, for example, Berdyczewski to Brenner, Breslau, 20 February 1908, in Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters, 41.

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Notes to Chapter Five 16.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 21 April 1908, in Letters, 324. 17. See 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. “Lemberg,” http://www.studylight .org/enc/bri/view.cgi?n=19814. 18.  Schiller would teach Brenner German after Berdyczewski suggested during Brenner’s visit to Breslau that he learn the language. Brenner to Berdyczewski, Lvov, 30 September 1908, in Letters, 336. In turn, Brenner taught Schiller English. According to Hayug, the two would read heavy volumes of Emile Zola in German together and would joke about the author because of his arcane description of a woman dying that covered more than twenty pages. M. Hayug, “Y. H. Brenner: Pirkei zikhronot,” Moznayim 39, nos. 3–4 (August–September 1974), 190–192; hereafter cited as Hayug, “Memoirs.” 19.  The reconstruction of Galicia and Lvov derives from a series of articles by Moshe Kleinman, Moznayim 11:1–6 and 12: 1–2 (1940–1941). 20.  See Haim Nagler to Brenner, 16 January 1908, LA IV-104-37-101. 21.  Brenner to Kleinman, London, 26 December 1907, in Letters, 316. Nagler’s letter to Brenner, 16 January 1908, mentions the plan for the students’ union to publish Hameorer anew in Lvov. LA IV-104-37-101. 22.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, London, 13 January 1908, in Letters, 317. 23.  Gershon Schoffman, “Brenner in Lvov,” in Schoffman Works, 4:190; here­ after cited as “Brenner in Lvov.” 24.  See ibid., 189. 25.  Brenner to Beilin, Lemberg, 4 February 1908, in Letters, 318. 26.  See Schoffman, “Brenner in Lvov,” 189. 27.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 8 March 1908, in Letters, 320–321. 28. Ibid. 29.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, 16 March 1908, and Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, end of March 1908, in ibid., 321–322. 30.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, end of March 1908, in ibid., 322; Schoffman to Brenner, LA IV-104-37-73. 31.  When Brenner wrote Evening and Morning is unclear. In a letter to Berdyczewski dated 15 February 1908, he writes: “I have written something beautiful titled Evening and Morning” (Letters, 319); in other words, he speaks of the play as if he has just finished writing it. But on 8 March 1908, he writes to Beilin saying that he has sent ‘something old’ to Hashiloah (Letters, 321). It stands to reason that he wrote the play in Lvov because there is no sign that he wrote it earlier. From the standpoint of its content too—his relationship with the Marmors—it is difficult to assume that he would have been able to write before he left London. 32.  Klausner to Schoffman, 20 February 1908, Genazim 26/19750/50. 33.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Lvov, 7 April 1908, in Letters, 323. 34.  Beilin to Brenner, 12 February 1908, Genazim A-20/18161. 35.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 8 March 1908, in Letters, 321. 36.  See Brenner, “Dapim mipinkas sifruti [Pages from a literary notebook],” in Writings, 3:230; originally published in Hed Hazman (June 1908).

Notes to Chapter Five 37.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 19 April 1908, in Letters, 324. 38.  Brenner to Beilin, 19 May 1908, in Letters, 326. Schoffman’s addition is in Beilin, “Lepirpurav shel Brenner,” 84. 39.  Brenner to Isaac and Meir Wilkansky, Zhulkov, 15 June 1908, in Letters, 328. See also a letter from Joseph Tennenbaum to Brenner [apparently summer 1908], in which he writes about collecting money from gymnasium students for the anthology. LA IV-104-37-96. 40.  See, for example, Brenner to Schoffman, Tarnopol, 31 July 1908, in ­Letters, 331. See also Yirmiyahu Frankel to Poznansky, Lodz, summer 1932, Genazim 75/32590/1, which describes Itzkovitz and his contribution to Brenner’s publications. 41.  See Brenner to Fishel Lachover, 13 August 1908, in Letters, 332. 42.  Poznansky to Brenner, Lodz, 6 April 1908, Genazim 75/429/6; Brenner to Poznansky, Lvov, 10 April 1908, in Letters, 323. 43.  Poznansky to Brenner, Lvov, 8 August 1908, Genazim 75/429/6. 44.  In Schoffman’s letter to Brenner dated 8 September 1908, he urges Brenner to come and live with him in the countryside, in Zhulkov, where they are both known and the Poles in whose homes they lodge are friendly. He also urges Brenner not to return a promissory note (Brenner had evidently received royalties at that time) because they would be in dire straits until they found lessons. Genazim A-20/48094. In his memoirs too, Schoffman states that Brenner supported “everyone in his company” (Schoffman Works, 4:189). 45. Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Havatzelet Hasharon, 24 July 1939, Genazim 75/14816/1. 46.  See Zvi Scharfstein to Poznansky, Sukkot 1933, Genazim A-75/51795. 47.  Schoffman, “Brenner in Lvov,” 190–191. 48.  Baal Makhshavot [The thinker] (A. Elyashuv), “Mihutz lamahaneh” [Outside the camp], Haolam, 25 February 1908. The article had appeared earlier, in the first issue of Die Jüdische Zukunft, edited by Wertsman, New York. Another article, by Y. A. Lubetzsky, appeared in the same issue of Haolam. Lubetzky states that Brenner is a promising writer who has not met the expectations of him; his characters lack vitality, and he is incapable of connecting episodes into a complete picture. 49.  Brenner, “Dapim mipinkas sifruti,” in Writings, 3:178. 50. Ibid., 180. 51.  Because he considered Anochi’s work published in Monatschriften inferior, he limited his attack to the criticism of Schoffman and Nomberg. See Brenner, “Dapim mipinkas sifruti,” 184–185. 52.  Nomberg to Brenner, undated [apparently March–April 1908], in Genazim 75/15407/1. There are several letters from Nomberg to Brenner from this period that for some reason are in the Poznansky archive at Genazim. 53.  See ibid. 54. Ibid. 55.  Brenner, “Dapim mipinkas sifruti,” 210–212.

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Notes to Chapter Five 56. Ibid., 218. 57.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Lvov, 16 March 1908, in Letters, 321. 58.  Bialik to Brenner, Odessa, 17 February 1908, in Bialik Letters 2:64–65. 59.  Bialik to Brenner, Odessa, 29 February 1908, in ibid., 2:66–67. 60.  Bialik to Brenner, Odessa, 27 March 1908, 12 April 1908, 22 May 1908, 29 May 1908, in ibid., 2:67–70. 61.  There is discrepancy in the dates that appear in Brenner’s and Bialik’s letters. In one instance, Bialik received the manuscript at the end of May (Bialik Letters 2:70), whereas in Brenner’s correspondence the date mentioned is mid-July (Letters, 329). 62.  N. [Bialik], “Ta’ut ne’ima” [A pleasant mistake], Hashiloah 19 (July 1908– January 1909), 380–384. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 1 December 1930, Genazim 75/14811/1. 67.  Schoffman, “Be-Lvov” [In Lvov], in Selected Memoirs, 117. 68.  Conversation between Itzkovitz and Poznansky, 11 April 1936, Poznansky’s notes, page 26, LA IV-104-106b. 69.  Bialik to Brenner, Odessa, 26 May 1910, in Bialik Letters 2:106. 70.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 1 December 1930, Genazim 75/14811/1. 71.  Brenner, “Min hasifrut ha’ivrit (sikhot)” [From Hebrew literature (conversations)], in Writings, 3:189; published in Polish in Moriah (March 1908). 72.  Brenner, “Dapim mipinkas sifruti,” 193. 73. Ibid., 204. 74.  See Bialik to Brenner, Odessa, 27 March 1908, 12 April 1908, in Bialik Let­ ters 2:67–68. 75.  See Y. H. Brenner, “Bidvar sifrutenu” [Regarding our literature], Revivim (Lvov, 1908), 1:75–77. 76.  Hayug, “Memoirs,” 193. I have deduced the date of the visit, after Czer­ nowitz, from Schoffman’s letter to Brenner in which he inquires: “Have they already come from Czernowitz?” (Schoffman to Brenner, 8 September 1908 [est.], in Genazim A-20/48094). 77.  See Reisen’s letters to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-104. Additionally, Reisen published an obituary on Brenner in Zukunft (June 1921) and a long critical article, “Yosef Haim Brenner un zein leben” [Yosef Haim Brenner and his life], in Die Feder [The feathers] (New York, 1942), 54–59, marking the appearance of a volume of Brenner’s works in Yiddish, edited by Shlomo Grodzensky. 78.  See Dov Sadan (D. S.), “Gargerim” [Grains], Davar (supplement), 1 May 1931. 79.  Reisen to Brenner [apparently 1910], New York, LA IV-104-37-104. 80.  Moshe Kleinman, “Leshonotenu” [Our languages], Hashiloah 18 (­January– June 1908), 385–396, 498–506. 81.  Hashiloah 19 (July–December 1908), 374–379. Much has been written

Notes to Chapter Five about the Czernowitz conference. Notable publications include Israel Bartal, “Midu-leshoniut masoratit lehad-leshoniut leumit” [From traditional bilingualism to national monolingualism], Shvut, no. 15 (1992), 183–193; Getzel Kresel, “Ve’idat Czernowitz be’aspaklariat Scharfstein hatza’ir” [The Czernowitz conference in the view of the young Scharfstein], in The Zvi Scharfstein Jubilee Book, ed. Zevulun Ravid (Tel Aviv, 1970), 5–13; Matityahu Mintz, “Teuda she’ehara umisaviv la” [A late document and around it], Iyunim betekumat Yisrael [Studies in Zionism 2] (1992), 368–377, and “Tzionim ufoalei Zion be-‘Sprachkonferenz’ be-Czernowitz 1908” [Zionists and Poalei Zion at the 1908 Czernowitz language conference], Shvut, no. 15 (1992); Yechiel Sheintuch, “Ve’idat Czernowitz vetarbut Yiddish” [The Czernowitz conference and Yiddish culture], Huliot 6 (2000), 255–285; ­Shmuel Verses, “Veidat Czernowitz bire’I ha’itonut ha’ivrit” [The Czernowitz conference in the Hebrew Press], in Milashon el lashon [From language to language] (Jerusalem, 1996), 453–487. An interesting contemporary summary and historical appreciation can be found in Zvi Wislawski, “Esrim shana le-Czernowitz” [The twentieth anniversary of Czernowitz], Hatekufa 25 (1929), 613–620. 82.  Articles published by Brenner in the Yiddish paper Heint, titled “Shtille werter” [Calm words], in Y. H. Brenner: Haktavim hayidiim, 52–55. 83.  See The Thinker (A. Elyashuv), “Zwei sprachen—ein einzige literatur” [Two languages—one literature], in Geklibene Schriften (Warsaw, 1929), 2:57–65. 84.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 18 September 1908, in Letters, 334. 85.  Hayug, “Memoirs.” 86.  Schoffman, “Brenner in Lvov,” 191. 87.  Conversation between Itzkovitz and Poznansky, 11 April 1936, Poznansky’s notes, page 26, LA IV-104-106b. 88.  Hayug, “Memoirs,” 194. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., 196–197. 91.  See Dora Avrahamit, Hayyim [Life] (Tel Aviv, 1929), 96–101. 92. Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Havatzelet Hasharon, 24 July 1939, Genazim 75/14816/1. 93. Avrahamit, Hayyim, 101–106. 94.  See Hayug, “Memoirs,” 192–195. 95. Ibid., 192. 96.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Chojnice (Poland), 28 September 1930, Genazim 75/4295/6; Schoffman to Beilin [date undecipherable, but close to the events], Genazim A-19/43118; Dora Avrahamit, “Im Brenner” [With Brenner], Davar (supplement), 11 May 1931. 97.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Chojnice, 28 September 1930, Genazim 75/4295/6. 98.  Avrahamit, “Im Brenner.” 99.  Hayug, “Memoirs,” 196. 100.  Schoffman to Beilin, Genazim A-19/43118; Hayug, “Memoirs,” 195. 101.  Hayug, “Memoirs,” 195–196.

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Notes to Chapter Five 102. In Me-ofek el ofek: G. Schoffman, hayyav viyitzirato [From horizon to horizon: The life and work of G. Schoffman], 2 vol. (Tel Aviv, 1982), Schoffman scholar Nurit Govrin extensively analyzes Brenner’s influence on Schoffman’s work and suggests such an influence in “Me’idakh gisa,” “Glida,” and “Ahava.” The last two stories allude to the Tinka Lampert affair. “Glida” was published in Reshafim 1, no. 23 (1909) and reprinted in Schoffman Works, 1:195–204; “Ahava” was first published in Shalekhet (Lvov, 1911) and reprinted in Schoffman Works, 1:214–229. The references for the earlier publication of the stories are from Govrin, “Me’ora Brenner”: hama’avak al hofesh habitui (1910–1912) [“The Brenner affair”: The fight for freedom of expression, 1910–1912] (Jerusalem, 1985); hereafter cited as Brenner Affair. 103.  In a letter to Schoffman dated 7 November 1930, Poznansky refers to this affair, which he had heard about through Itzkovitz’s letters to Brenner and talks with Dora Avrahamit; he adds: “Afterward I read your story ‘Glida.’” Menahem Poznansky, Igrot, 1909–1956 (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1960), 140; hereafter cited as Poznansky Letters. 104.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 25 December 1908, in Letters, 340. 105.  Schoffman to Beilin [apparently 1908], Genazim A-19/43114. 106.  See Schoffman to Beilin, undated [apparently 1908], Genazim A-19/43118. 107.  Schoffman to Beilin [the letter is franked London], 26 September 1910, Genazim A-19/43128. Nurit Govrin transcribes this letter in Me-ofek el ofek, 507. 108.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky [apparently 1909–1910], Genazim 75/14826/1. 109.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Chojnice, 28 September 1930, Genazim 75/4295/6; see also Genazim 75/14809/1. 110.  Schoffman, “Glida,” 196. 111.  See Itzkovitz to Brenner, 24 February 1909, LA IV-104-37-87. 112.  Brenner to Esther Lampert, Jerusalem, 7 April 1909, Letters, 343. 113. See Itzkovitz to Poznansky, Chojnice, 28 September 1930, Genazim 75/4295/6; see also Genazim 75/14809/1; Hayug, “Memoirs,” 197–198. 114.  Kleinman advised Brenner to return to Russia and added this reason. See Kleinman to Beilin and Brenner [apparently early 1908], LA IV-104-37-103. 115.  See Brenner to Lachover, Lvov, 24 November 1908, in Letters, 338–339. 116.  Brenner to Fichman, Lvov, 8 December 1908, in ibid., 339. 117. Brenner, Out of the Depths, in Writings, 2:1072. 118. Ibid., 1064–1067. 119.  This was Yitzhak Bakon’s hypothesis, but I can see no evidence to support it. 120. Brenner, Out of the Depths, 1090. 121. Ibid., 1092–1094. 122.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 26 February 1908, in Letters, 319. 123.  Brenner to Beilin, 8 March 1908, in ibid., 320–321. 124.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Lvov, 16 March 1908, in ibid., 321. 125.  See Brenner to Bichovsky, Lvov, 7 April 1908, in ibid., 323. 126.  See Brenner to Yitzhak Wilkansky, 14 April 1908, in ibid., 323. 127.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Lvov, 30 April 1908, in ibid., 325.

Notes to Chapters Five and Six 128.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 23 June 1908, in ibid., 329. 129.  See Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 7 July 1908, in ibid., 329. 130.  See Brenner to Schoffman, 3 August 1908, in ibid., 331; Brenner to Beilin, 21 August 1908, in ibid., 333. 131.  Brenner to Beilin. Lvov, 18 September 1908, in ibid., 334. 132.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 25 December 1908, in ibid., 340. 133.  Brenner to Beilin, Lvov, 6 January 1909, in ibid., 341. 134.  Brenner to Devorah Baron, Lvov, 19 January 1909, in ibid., 341. 135.  Brenner to Lachover, 27 January 1909, in ibid., 341. 136.  Yehoshua Redler-Feldman [Rabbi Benjamin] to Poznansky, Jerusalem, 21 December 1929, Genazim A-75/51779; G. Ziegelbaum to Poznansky, Czernowitz, 17 November 1931, Genazim 75/15165/1.

Chapter Six 1. Reconstructed from Brenner, “Agav orkha,” in Writings, 2:110; Shlomo Zemach, Shana rishona [The first year] (Tel Aviv, 1952), 41–59; Mendel Singer, “On the Way to the Land,” in Selected Memoirs, 174–177; and Jakob Cohen, “On the Way and the First Days in the Land,” in Selected Memoirs, 178–181. 2.  Cohen, “On the Way and the First Days in the Land,” 179. 3.  Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Brenner kepoel hakla’i” [Brenner as an agricultural worker], in More Memoirs, 64. 4.  Itzkovitz to Brenner, 24 February 1909, LA IV-104-37-87 (responding to Brenner’s postcard). 5.  Itzkovitz to Brenner, 5 March 1909, LA IV-104-37-87. 6.  Ada Zemach, Tnua banekuda [Movement of the point] (Tel Aviv, 1984), 58–60. 7.  Brenner, “Beyn mayim lemayim,” in Writings, 2:1188; hereafter cited as “Between Waters.” 8.  An illuminating analysis of the motives of immigrants to Palestine at the time of the Second Aliya can be found in Gur Alroey, Imigrantim: Hahagirah haYehudit le’Eretz-Yisra’el breishit hame’ah haesrim [Immigrants: Jewish immigra­ tion to Palestine in the early twentieth century] (Jerusalem, 2004). 9.  See Yishay Geva, “Yosef Aharonowitz,” in Ha’aliya hashniya: Ishim [The Second Aliya: Personalities], ed. Ze’ev Tzachor (Jerusalem, 1997), 3–11. 10.  Yeshurun Keshet, Kedma veyama [East and west] (Tel Aviv, 1980), 10. 11.  Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, “Yerushalayim,” in Zikhronot vureshumot [Memories and notes] (Jerusalem, 1966), 93. 12.  Ben-Zvi to Marmor, Jerusalem, January 1909, YIVO RG 205/104, file 8489. 13.  Itzkovitz to Brenner, 24 February 1909, LA IV-104-37-87. 14.  Brenner to S. Z. Sirota, Jerusalem, 23 March 1909, in Letters, 343. 15.  Brenner to M. Ginsburg, Jerusalem, end of July 1909, in ibid., 346. 16.  Brenner to Esther Lampert, Jerusalem, 7 April 1909, in ibid., 343. 17.  Brenner to Sirota, Jerusalem, 23 March 1909, in ibid., 343.

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Notes to Chapter Six 18.  Brenner to Zvi Arm, Jerusalem, mid-June 1909, in ibid., 345. 19.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 21 March 1909, in ibid., 342. 20.  Beilin to Brenner, 27 April 1909, Genazim A-20/18168. 21.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 7 July 1909, in Letters, 346; Beilin to Brenner, 29 June 1909, Genazim A-20/18169. 22.  Brenner to Sirota, Jerusalem, 23 March 1909, in Letters, 342. 23.  Brenner to Yitzhak Kara, Jerusalem, 20 May 1909, in ibid., 344. 24.  Brenner to Arm, Jerusalem, mid-June 1909, in ibid., 345. 25.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 1 May 1909, in ibid., 343. 26.  See Shlomo Zemach, Sippur hayai [My life] (Jerusalem, 1983), 71–72, 90–99. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 74. Brenner also mentions lodging in the home of Nechama Katinsky [Katinka] in a letter to Daniel Persky, Jerusalem, 8 September 1909, in Letters, 348. 29.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 1 May 1909, in ibid., 343. 30.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 7 July 1909, in ibid., 346. 31.  Brenner to M. Ben-Eliezer, Jerusalem, 16 May 1909, in ibid., 344. 32.  Brenner, “Between Waters,” 1188. 33.  “The Jerusalem ghetto . . . full of the sick and poor and Haredim, whose value and power, despite their great numbers, is as nothing” (ibid., 1189). 34. Ibid., 1154. 35.  Ben-Zvi to Marmor, Jerusalem, 20 August 1909, YIVO RG 205/104. 36.  See Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 7 July 1909, in Letters, 346. 37.  Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, early August 1909, in ibid., 347. 38.  S. Y. Agnon, “Yosef Haim Brenner behayav uvemoto” [The life and death of Yosef Haim Brenner], in Selected Memoirs, 122; originally published in Molad 19, no. 156 (June 1961), 272; hereafter cited as Agnon, “On Brenner.” 39.  Bialik to his wife, Jerusalem, Passover Eve 1909, morning, in Bialik Letters 2:90. 40.  Bialik to his wife, Jaffa, 2–15 April 1909, in ibid., 2:91–93. 41.  Dov Kimchi, Masot ketanot [Short essays] (Jerusalem, 1938), 50. 42. Zemach, Sippur hayai, 74. 43.  Agnon’s letter to Brenner, Jaffa, 26 March 1909, “Igrot S. Y. Agnon el Y. H. Brenner” [Agnon’s letters to Brenner], in S. Y. Agnon: Mekhkarim ute’udot [S. Y. Agnon: Studies and documents], ed. Gershon Shaked and Raphael Weiser (Jerusalem, 1978), 42; hereafter cited as “Agnon–Brenner Letters.” 44.  Nachum Gutman recounts that Brenner and Agnon once visited his father’s home, where Brenner picked up a copy of Hashiloah in which he found editorial revisions to one of his articles made by Ben-Zion, his father. The insulted Brenner left the house. Ehud Ben-Ezer, “Nacham Gutman on Brenner,” in More Memoirs, 101–102; Kimchi recounts a similar experience, when he had difficulty in recognizing a chapter of his book that Ben-Zion published in the journal Haomer. See Kimchi, Masot ketanot, 51–53. 45.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 125.

Notes to Chapter Six 46. Ibid. 47.  Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, 2–21 May 1909, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 44. 48.  Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, 9 May 1909, in Letters, 344. 49. Klausner to Brenner, Rosh Hashana eve, 1909, Genazim A-20/18685; Brenner to Klausner, 3 April 1910, in Letters, 351; Klausner to Brenner [annotated enclosure], ‘El sofrei Hashiloah” [To the Hashiloah writers], in the photograph collection of the Central Zionist Archives, Genazim A-18687. 50.  Brenner, “Bapa’am hame’ah” [For the hundredth time], in Writings, 3:305; originally published in Reshafim (July 1909). 51. Ibid., 305–306. 52. Ibid., 306–318. 53.  Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, 3 July 1909, in Letters, 345–346. 54.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 1 October 1909, Genazim 75/14835/1. 55.  Memorandum, Brenner and Kruglyakov, 20 July 1909, LA IV-104-37-2. 56.  Brenner mentions the eight volumes in a letter to Daniel Persky, Jerusalem, 8 September 1909, in Letters, 348. The announcement on the appearance of the first volume was published in Hapoel Hatzair, 15 August 1909. 57.  “Hotza’at Ahim be-Yaffo” [The Ahim publishing house in Jaffa], a piece in Brenner’s handwriting, LA IV-104-37-3. 58.  Brenner to Lachover, early August 1909, in Letters, 347–348. 59. Ibid., 347. 60. Lachover to Brenner, 30 July 1909, in Genazim, ed. Baruch Karu and A. M. Haberman (Tel Aviv, 1971), 4:170. 61.  Brenner to Beilin, Jerusalem, 18 August 1909 [not sent], in Letters, 348. 62.  Kruglyakov to Brenner, 20 August 1909, LA IV-104-37-103. 63.  Hapoel Hatzair, editorial announcements, 27 August 1909, 14. See also the draft of the letter to the Hapoel Hatzair editorial board, 13 September 1909, in Letters, 348. 64.  Ben-Zvi to Marmor, Jerusalem, 20 August 1909, YIVO RG 205/104. 65.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 1 October 1909, Genazim 75/14835/1. 66.  Brenner to Maximovsky, Jaffa, 31 January 1910, in Letters, 351. 67.  Ben-Zvi to Marmor, Jerusalem, 20 August 1909, YIVO RG 205/104. 68.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 1 October 1909, Genazim 75/14835/1. 69.  David Shimoni, “Im Brenner ba’aretz” [With Brenner in Palestine], in More Memories, 70–71; hereafter cited as Shimoni, “In Palestine.” 70.  See Brenner’s letter to Beilin, Jerusalem, 7 July 1909, in Letters, 346. 71.  Joseph Fried, Yoman: Shana be-Eretz Israel, 1908–1909 [Diary: A year in Palestine, 1908–1909] (Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1985). 72.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 72. 73.  Berl Katznelson to Sarah Shmuckler and Leah Meron, Ein Ganim, Yom Kippur, 1910, in Igrot Berl Katznelson, 1900–1914, ed. Yehuda Sharett (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1961), 112; hereafter cited as Katznelson Letters, 1900–1914. 74. Ibid.

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Notes to Chapter Six 75. Ibid. 76.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 71. 77.  Katznelson to Shmuckler and Meron, in Katznelson Letters, 1900–1914, 112. 78. Ibid., 113. 79.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 73. 80. Ibid., 73–75. 81. Fried, Yoman, 128. 82. Ibid., 130. The reference is to an article by Klausner, “Rega gadol behayei umma” [A great moment in the life of a nation], Hashiloah 21:12–19, 108–114. 83.  On moshav life, see the articles by Eliahu Monchik and others in Hapoel Hatzair, 1 July 1909; 15 and 27 August 1909. 84.  Katznelson to Shmuckler and Meron, in Katznelson Letters, 1900–1914, 119. 85. Ibid. 86.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 75–76. 87.  Katznelson to Shmuckler and Meron, in Katznelson Letters, 1900–1914, 122. 88.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 76. 89.  David Zakkai, “Lidmuto” [On Brenner], Davar, 30 April 1953. 90.  Berl Katznelson, Ha’aliya hashniya: Hartza’ot bifnei habaharut hasotsialistit [The Second Aliya: Lectures to young socialists], ed. Anita Shapira and Naomi Abir (Tel Aviv, 1990), 86–87. 91.  Mordechai Reicher, Yosef Haim Brenner (Petach Tikva: Beit Notta Harpaz, 1970), 62–63. 92.  In “Lidmuto,” Zakkai writes: “Thenceforth to his last days he was at the center of any gathering, without any effort on his part to be at the center.” 93.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 77–78. 94. Ibid. 95.  Brenner to Ben-Eliezer, Jaffa, 22 November 1909, in Letters, 350. 96.  Brenner to H. S. Ben-Avram, Jaffa, end of March 1910, in ibid., 351. 97.  Brenner to Daniel Persky, 22 November 1909, in ibid., 350. 98.  Poznansky to Brenner, Lutzk, 4 February 1910, Genazim 75/429616. 99.  Brenner to Poznansky, Jaffa, February 1910, in Letters, 351. 100.  Brenner, “Min hamishol,” in Writings, 3: 431. 101.  Brenner, “Rishmei sha’a,” in ibid., 3:392–402; quotation from page 402; originally published in Reshafim, February 1910. See also Brenner’s letter to Lach­ over, 5 August 1910, in Letters, 355. 102.  “Yediot sifrutiot” [Literary news], Haolam, 21 April 1910, 23. 103.  Brenner addresses this issue in his letters to S. B. Maximovsky, 13 April 1910, in Letters, 352; to Daniel Persky, 30 May 1910, in ibid., 353; to Persky, 17 July 1910, in ibid., 354. See also the chronicle in Ha’akhdut, 3 October 1912, 26. 104.  Menachem Gnessin, “Tekhilato shel teatron ba’aretz” (Early theater in Palestine), in More Memoirs, 65–68. 105.  Brenner mentions this in his letter to Abba Goldberg in New York, Jaffa, 30 May 1910, in Letters, 353.

Notes to Chapter Six 106.  See, for example, “Ma’asim ume’ora’ot” [Acts and events], Hapoel H ­ atzair (October 1908), 17, and also Hatzvi, 12 February 1909, 1. 107.  Brenner to Abba Goldberg in New York, Jaffa, 30 May 1910, in Letters, 353. 108.  Brenner to Beilin, 2 August 1910, in ibid., 355; Beilin to Brenner, 16 August 1910, Genazim A-20-18172. 109.  Brenner referred to her departure in “Yankele hanapakh” [Yankele the blacksmith], in Writings, 3:458–465. 110.  See “Nitzkhon hajargon” [The triumph of jargon], Hatzvi, 17 December 1908, 1. 111.  Ha’or, 2 August 1910, 3; 4 August 1910, 1. 112.  Ha’or, 4 August 1910, 1. 113.  Ibid. See also “From Jargon-speaking Jaffa, letters to the editor,” in ibid., 8 August 1910; and Brenner, “Tsarat haleshonot” [The language problem] (August 1910 [unpublished]), in Writings, 3:449–457. 114.  Brenner, “Tsarat haleshonot,” 449–457. 115.  Quoting A. Even-Tov, Katznelson Letters, 1900–1914, 116n. 116.  A. M. Koller, “Shtei pegishot” [Two meetings], in More Memoirs, 190. 117.  Shimon Kushnir, “Befetakh Tikva” [In Petach Tikva], in ibid., 195. 118.  Talush (Isser Moselevich), “Y. H. Brenner (Errinerungen)” [Y. H. Brenner (Memories)], New Yorker Wochenblatt, 23 February 1951, 10. A portion of the article appears in Hebrew translation in Yochanan Arnon, “Seder Pesach im Brenner” [A Passover seder with Brenner], Yedioth Ahronoth, 13 April 1990. 119.  Zakkai, “Lidmuto.” 120.  Shimoni, “In Palestine,” 83. 121.  Brenner to Klausner, 17 June 1910, in Letters, 353–354. 122.  Bialik to Brenner, 26 May 1910, Bialik Letters, 106. 123.  S. B. Maximovsky published a two-part article in Haolam, nos. 41–42 and 43 (November 1910), evaluating a decade of Brenner’s literary work. In it he accused Brenner of “a degree of haste,” meaning that he was quick to publish for financial reasons and did not fully process his works or that he would submit a work that was not the finished article. Regarding “Between Waters,” he accused him of seeing phenomena in Palestine through a visitor’s eyes, not as a permanent resident, observing them only from the perspective of the public sphere, and also of being biased because of his preconceptions. 124.  Brenner to Ben-Eliezer, Jaffa, 22 November 1909, in Letters, 350. 125.  Lachover to Brenner, 10 August 1910, in Genazim 4:175. According to Nurit Govrin, the character of David Yaffe is modeled on Schoffman. 126.  “Yes, I have not replied to Bialik . . . and you will understand in what sense I say that. I am not claiming that this is a work of art. But [Bialik should show] some respect toward genuine suffering, the suffering of man un a meiseh mit a sof [and a tale with an ending]”—meaning, he does not wish to discuss it further. Brenner to Shimonovich, 28 August 1910, in Letters, 356. 127. Ibid.

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Notes to Chapter Six 128.  Brenner to Fichman, September 1910, in Letters, 357. 129.  Brenner to Leo Koenig, Jaffa, 14 November 1910, in ibid., 358–359; I have modified Poznansky’s translation from Yiddish. 130.  In a letter to B. Y. Glinik, dated 1 December 1910, Brenner wrote: “About my life I can tell you that I am bringing a sister and brother from my home in Russia to live with me in Jaffa” (Letters, 359). Binyamin Brenner quoted a letter from Brenner delivered to Novy Mlini in which he invited his parents to send Meir and Lyuba to him. In the end it was Lyuba and young Binyamin who went. Because Brenner’s letter has not been found, it may be assumed that Binyamin retrieved it from memory, and that the letter he quoted should not be viewed as authentic. See also Binyamin Brenner, Gedola hayta habedidut [Great was the loneliness] (Tel Aviv, 1978), 9–29; hereafter cited as Great Was the Loneliness. 131.  Ya’akov Leschinsky published a series of articles in Haolam from January to April 1911 on conversion that attempted to provide empirical data on the subject. He did not, however, provide data about Russia. The information was provided to him by Dr. Zulshin, whom he presents as an expert on the subject. See Haolam, 5 April 1911, 5. 132. The 22 September 1910 issue of Haolam published such a story under the headline, “The seduction of Jewish girls for conversion in Galicia has become a matter of course.” He says that the rabbis of Krakow recorded forty conversions in one month, not including the unrecorded ones. 133.  Brenner, “He Told Her,” in Writings, 1:597. 134. Brenner, Here and There, in ibid., 2:1297. 135.  Sholem Aleichem, “Tevye der milkhiker” [Tevye the milkman], in Kitvei Sholem Aleichem (Warsaw, 1911–1912), 1: 93–108. 136.  “Gedola haklima” [Great is the disgrace] (an anonymous article), ­Haolam, 12 April 1911, 3–4. 137. Ibid. 138.  Ben-Yisrael, “Tzror mikhtavim al ba’ayot hayahadut” [Letters on the Judaism problem], the ninth in a series of letters “Leshe’elat le’an?” [On the question where to?], Hashiloah 24 (1911), 120–128; Rav Tza’ir, “Lemedikhei Yisrael” [To the deniers of Judaism], Haolam, 23 and 29 March 1911. 139.  Brenner, “Ba’itonut ubasifrut: Al hizayon hashmad,” in Writings, 3: 476–487. 140.  Ahad Ha’am, “Avdut betokh herut,” in Al parashat derakhim [At the crossroads] (Berlin, 1929), 1:132. 141.  Ahad Ha’am, “Al shtei hase’ipim,” in ibid., 4:35–56; originally published in Hasiolah 23 (1910) . Ahad Ha’am tried to limit the damage in a letter he published, in which he attempted to explain that “my article is completely outside the question of Judaism in its new nationalist sense. It addresses those Jews whose spirit is still filled with the Jewish Torah, whether or not they are ‘nationalist’ (in the accepted sense),” 56. See also “Hosafa lema’amari hakodem” [Addendum to my previous article], in ibid., 56–58. 142.  Brenner, “Ba’itonut ubasifrut,” 487.

Notes to Chapter Six 143. Ibid., 479. On the connection with “Al shtei hase’ipim,” see also Ahad Ha’am, Mikhtavim beinyanei Eretz Yisrael (1891–1926) [Letters on the land of Israel (1891–1926)], ed. Shulamit Laskov (Jerusalem, 2000), 353–354n15; hereafter cited as Letters on Israel. 144.  Nurit Govrin has researched, documented, and published the material connected with the “Brenner affair,” and every scholar engaged with the subject has benefitted from her work. See Brenner Affair. 145.  Quoted from ibid., 23. 146.  Brenner, “She’ela” [A question], in Writings, 3:489; originally published in Hapoel Hatzair December 1910. 147. Ibid., 488. 148.  Brenner Affair, 26–27. 149.  Apart from Brenner’s article, there was also one by Jacob Rabinowitz eulogizing Levinsky, in which he cast aspersions both on the deceased and the luminaries of Hebrew and Yiddish literature. 150.  Ahad Ha’am to Baruch Ladizhansky, London, 14 December 1910, in Let­ ters on Israel, 351–354. 151. Ibid., 357. 152.  In a later letter to Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen, Ahad Ha’am wrote: “When I wrote that letter to Odessa, I was unaware of who ‘Yosef Haver’ is” (27 March 1911, in ibid., 371). 153.  Ahad Ha’am to Ladizhansky, London, 16–29 January 1911, in ibid., 358. 154.  Rabbi Benjamin to Shimonovich, 7 February 1911, Genazim 165/6257/1. 155. Minutes of the Odessa Hovevei Zion Committee (Russian), Brenner ­Affair, 145–148. Govrin notes the date of the minutes, 5 January 1911, which is according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar. According to the Gregorian calendar, the date is 18 January 1911. See Letters on Israel, 357. 156.  Ahad Ha’am to Ladizhansky, London, 16–29 January 1911, in Letters on Israel, 358. 157.  Aharonowitz to Brenner, 24 January 1911, Genazim 20/10561/7. 158. Shimonovich, “Mikhtav mi-Yaffo” [A letter from Jaffa], Hed Hazman [Echo of the times], 20–22 March 1911. 159.  Ibid. See also Rabbi Benjamin to Shimonovich, 7 February 1911, Genazim 165/6257/1. 160.  Shimonovich, “Mikhtav mi-Yaffo.” I chose to rely on this version of the report of the meeting because it seems more complete and objective than that of Rabbi Benjamin, which appears in its entirety in Brenner Affair, 160–165. Govrin emphasizes the superiority of Kalman Leib Silman’s report over that of Rabbi Benjamin, and she also names the writer of the Hed Hazman articles as K. L. Silman. 161.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 6 February 1911, in Genazim 4:124. 162.  Brenner to the Hed Hazman editorial board, Jaffa, 23 March 1911, in Let­ ters, 363. 163.  The quotation is from a letter from Ahad Ha’am to Klausner, 31 January

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Notes to Chapter Six 1911, in Letters on Israel, 360. Its theme recurs in additional letters to Ladizhansky, 14 December 1910, 352–354 (quoted earlier); 4 January 1911, 358–359; to Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen, 27 March 1911, 370–371; to Y. H. Ravnitzky, 16–29 March 1911, 373–375. 164.  Berdyczewski to Brenner, Barendorf, Fischbach-Reisenberg, 20 May 1911, in Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters, 80–81; Berdyczewski to Brenner, Friedenau-Berlin, 23 November 1911, in ibid., 83. The quotation is from the last footnote on page 83. 165.  The article was published on 10 February and 17 February 1911. I quote from the Hebrew translation from the Yiddish that appears in Govrin’s Brenner Affair, 153. 166. Ibid., 155. 167. Ibid., 157. 168.  Ish Ivri (Klausner), “Herut ve’epikorsut” [Freedom and heresy], H ­ ashiloah 24 (January/February 1911), 88–91. 169. Ibid. 170.  Brenner, “Leverur ha’inyan” [To clarify the matter], in Writings, 3:490– 507; originally published in Hapoel Hatzair (April 1911). 171.  Ahad Ha’am voiced his support of the decision in a letter to Ladizhansky, Odessa, 16–29 January 1911, whereas he expressed his partially negative opinion in a letter to Ravnitzky, Odessa, 16–29 March 1911, in Letters on Israel, 358, 374. 172.  Ahad Ha’am, “Torah mi-Zion,” Hashiloah 24 (January–June 1911), 361–366. 173. Ibid. 174.  Yosef Aharonowitz, “Makhol hastanim” [Dance of the devils], Hapoel Hatzair, 11 July 1911; quotation from Brenner Affair, 181. 175.  A. D. Gordon to Ahad Ha’am, undated [before 4 November 1911] on behalf of Ein Ganim-Petach Tikva workers; also published in Hapoel Hatzair, issues 8–9 (1938). Published in Gordon, Mikhtavim ureshimot [Correspondence and notes] (Tel Aviv, 1956), 44–50, and in Brenner Affair, 184–188. 176.  For Ahad Ha’am’s response see Letters on Israel, 389–391. On the continuing insult and pettiness in Ahad Ha’am’s attitude, see his letter to Yehoshua Eisenstadt-Barzilai, Jaffa, 17 December 1911, 391–393. 177.  Ahad Ha’am, “Sakh hakol” (1911), in Al parashat derakhim 4:159–181. 178. In 1922 Klausner published his Yeshu hanotzri [Jesus of Nazareth], in which he treats Jesus as a Jew with a sublime moral personality; the position is reminiscent of Brenner’s assertion about the religious exaltation that might possibly arise from the figure of Jesus in “Ba’itonut ubasifrut.” Ahad Ha’am wrote about Klausner’s book: “The book in its entirety is one of the best in our literature. But it contains some pages that perhaps should not have been written” (Ahad Ha’am to Leon Simon, Tel Aviv, 21 March 1923, in Letters on Israel, 591). 179.  Kruglyakov to Brenner, Jaffa, 22 February 1911, LA IV-104-37-103. 180. The description has been reconstructed from Letters, 361–362; Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 6 February 1911, Genazim (Tel Aviv, 1971), 4:124–125; Rabbi Benjamin to Shimonovich, Jaffa, 7 February 1911, Genazim 165/6257/1.

Notes to Chapter Six 181.  Brenner to Schoffman, Jaffa, 17 March 1911, in Letters, 362. 182.  “Be’eretz Yisrael” [In the land of Israel], Haolam 12 (23 June 1910), 14. 183.  “Be’eretz Yisrael,” Haolam 12 (31 May 1911), 30. 184.  Brenner to Persky, Jaffa, 24 May 1911, in Letters, 367. 185.  Brenner also translated Hauptmann’s stories “Lonely People” and “Drayman Henschel” (Rabbi Benjamin to Shimonovich, Jaffa, end of February 1911, Genazim 165/6258/1). 186.  “Hotza’at Ahim be-Yaffo.” 187.  Brenner to Fichman, early December 1910, in Letters, 359–360. 188.  Brenner to Lachover, 27 February 1911, in ibid., 361–362. 189.  Brenner to Fichman, early December 1910, in ibid., 359–360. 190.  Brenner to Lachover, 27 February 1911, in ibid., 361–362. 191.  Brenner to Lachover, 20 April 1911, in ibid., 365. 192.  Brenner to Lachover, Jaffa, late March 1911, in ibid., 364. 193.  Lachover to Brenner, 7 April 1911, Genazim A-20/18554. 194. Ibid. 195.  Brenner to Lachover, 20 April 1911, in Letters, 365; Brenner to Lachover, 16 May 1911, in ibid., 366. 196.  Brenner to Lachover, 27 February 1911, in ibid., 362. 197.  Berl Katznelson, Ha’aliya hashniya, 25. 198. Brenner, Here and There, in Writings, 2:1265. 199. Ibid., 1265–1267. 200. Ibid., 1267. 201.  An in-depth analysis of the book can be found in Menachem Brinker, Ad hasimta hatverianit [Up to the Tiberian alley] (Tel Aviv, 1990), 72–114, 229–262. 202. Brenner, Here and There, 1274. 203. Ibid., 1346. 204. Ibid., 1345. 205. Ibid., 1324–1325. 206. Ibid., 1268, 1316. 207. Ibid., 1271. 208. Ibid., 1278–1281. 209. Ibid., 1281–1282. 210. Ibid., 1381. 211. Ibid., 1429–1430. 212.  On the letter to Lapidot, see ibid., 1272. On Amram and his grandfather, see ibid., 1436–1440. 213. Ibid., 1274. 214. Ibid., 1366–1367. 215. Ibid., 1280. 216.  Agnon, “Al Berl Katznelson” [On Berl Katznelson], in Al Berl Katznelson, ed. Mordechai Snir (Tel Aviv, 1952), 150. 217. Brenner, Here and There, 1274.

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Notes to Chapter Six 218.  For the death and funeral of “the hunchback,” see ibid., 1422–1427. For the death of the infant Herzl, see ibid., 1413–1414. 219. Ibid., 1422, 1424. 220. Ibid.,1425. 221. Ibid., 1422. 222. Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Henich Pasilov and Rivka Chizik,” in Mehayei Yosef Haim Brenner, 128–233; quoted from More Memoirs, 103–105. 223. The Chizik family and its many children came to Palestine from the Ukraine. The father settled as an agricultural worker in one of the moshavot (­either Kinneret or Melhamiya). The life stories of Sarah Chizik, who fell defending Tel Hai in 1920, and Ephraim Chizik, who fell at Hulda during the 1929 riots, are perpetuated in the history of the labor movement. Chana Chizik left her mark on the history of the women’s workers’ movement and wrote several articles for The Book of the Second Aliya. 224.  Talush, “Y. H. Brenner (Errinerungen).” For Ya’ari-Poleskin’s version, see “Henich Pasilov and Rivka Chizik,” in More Memoirs, 105–106. 225.  Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Henich Pasilov and Rivka Chizik.” 226. Rabbi Benjamin to Shimonovich, end of February 1911, Genazim 165/6258/1. 227. In this regard I was influenced by Ada Zemach and her book Tnua banekuda, and did not accept Brinker’s approach in Ad hasimta hatverianit, which rejects the universal dimension of the novel. 228. Brenner, Here and There, 1361. 229. Ibid., 1362. 230. Ibid., 1411. 231. Ibid., 1432–1433. 232. Ibid., 1435. 233. Ibid., 1440. 234.  The preceding chapter in the novel contains a reference to a delegation to the rich neighbor, which sought a confidential donation for the Lapidot family and met with success. It is the only reference relying on information provided by Oved Etzot from the earlier chapters. It may be construed as an argument that the narrator is Oved Etzot, but it is tenuous. 235.  Brinker proposes this idea in Ad hasimta hatverianit. 236. Brenner, Here and There, 1361. 237.  Brinker analyzes this issue in depth and holds that Oved Etzot’s positions on Palestine and its lack of centrality in the Jewish milieu do not dovetail with Brenner’s positions, and that therefore he should not be perceived as Brenner’s alter ego. Maybe he is right. But maybe Oved Etzot says what Brenner thinks on the issue of centrality of Palestine but in an exaggerated form, thus heightening the drama in the contrast between himself and Gordon. He certainly represents Brenner’s positions and mood on other topics. See Brinker, Ad hasimta hatve­ rianit, 99–110. With regard to Brinker’s contention, it seems to me that until his

Notes to Chapters Six and Seven death Brenner continued to argue that Palestine was but one of many centers in the Jewish world and did not recognize (declaratively at least) its centrality. 238.  Rachel Katznelson-Shazar, “Nedudei lashon” [Wanderings of language], in Massot Ureshimot [Essays and sketches] (Tel Aviv, 1946), 17; originally published in Ba’avoda (Jaffa) in 1918. 239.  Berl Katznelson, “Lehaverai ba-Ohel” [To my friends in the Ohel Theater], in Kitvei Berl Katznelson (Tel Aviv, 1946), 2:202. 240. Brenner, Here and There, 2:1384. Epstein’s “She’ela ne’elama” appeared in Hashiloah 17 (1907–1908), 193. 241. Brenner, Here and There, 2:1388. The strange thing is that Ahad Ha’am’s “Sakh hakol” appeared after Here and There; he may, however, have possibly voiced his position in his lectures, which preceded the article, or the views might have been common among the farmers at the time. 242.  Aharonowitz to Shimonovich, 21 July 1911, Genazim 165/90638/1. 243. Congratulations on the occasion of the marriage appeared in Hapoel H ­ atzair, 22 October 1911. 244.  The quotations are according to the draft of Brenner’s letter to “My friends the editors of Hapoel Hatzair in Jaffa,” Jaffa, 6 July 1911, in Letters, 367–368. 245.  Brenner, “Hazhaner ha-Eretz-Yisraeli veavizareihu,” in Writings, 2:570. 246. Ibid., 574. 247.  Agnon, “On Brenner.” 248. Ibid. 249. Reisen to Brenner, undated [after Brenner’s arrival in Palestine], LA IV-104-37-104. 250.  Brenner to Reisen, Jaffa, 8 September 1911, in Letters, 369–370. 251.  Reisen to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-104. 252.  Beilin to Brenner, 8 November 1911, Genazim 20/18174. 253.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” in Selected Memoirs, 143. 254.  Brenner to Jacob Cahan in Paris, Jerusalem, 20 January 1912, Israel State Archives, N- 11/46. 255.  Brenner to Ya’ari-Poleskin, Jerusalem, 9 January 1912, in Letters, 371.

Chapter Seven 1.  Ben-Zvi to Poznansky, 17 October 1932, Genazim, A-75/51275. 2.  Ha’akhdut, editorial board meeting, 11 October 1911, Israel State Archives, G-14/88. The memorandum is written by Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi. It was also published in the Tel Aviv journal Asupot 7 (March 1961), 53–54. 3. Reuveni’s letters to Ben-Zvi from 1912–1913 are in the Central Zionist ­Archives, Jerusalem (CZA), A116/33/7/1. On the translation of Zerubavel’s articles, see, for example, his letter to Brenner, Ein Ganim, 23 October 1911, IV-104-37-94. 4.  Ben-Gurion to Zerubavel, 31 September 1912 [erroneously marked 1913], published in Asupot 7 (March 1961), 58. The quotation from Brenner appears in the Hashiloah jubilee issue of Ha’akhdut (January 1912); in Writings, 3:728.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 5.  Reuveni to Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem, 20 May 1912, CZA A116/33/7/1. 6.  Reuveni to Ben-Zvi, undated, CZA A116/33/7. 7.  Reuveni to Ben-Zvi, 24 October 1912, CZA A116/33/7. 8.  Reuveni to Ben-Zvi, undated [apparently 1913], CZA A116/33/7. 9.  Ibid., and also 18 August [apparently 1913]. 10.  Ha’akhdut, 23 April 1912. 11.  Ha’akhdut, 1 April 1912. 12.  Ha’akhdut, 28 June 1912. 13. Reuveni, Bereshit hamevukha [The beginning of confusion], Omanut (Tel Aviv, n.d.), 41. The other books in Reuveni’s trilogy are Ha’oniyot ha’aharonot [The last boats] (Warsaw, 1923), and Shamot [Devastation] (Warsaw, 1925). 14. On the date of the contacts with Aharonowitz, see Brenner’s letter to ­Beilin, Jerusalem, 20 April 1912, in Letters, 373. On Rabbi Benjamin’s reconciling Aharonowitz and Brenner, see Agnon, “On Brenner,” 142. 15.  See, for example, Ha’akhdut, 23 August 1912, announcements page. See also details of the journal’s plans in Hapoel Hatzair, 12 July 1912; Brenner’s name is included among the “permanent assistants,” even though he was still working for Ha’akhdut. 16.  A. Z. Rabinowitz, Yizkor: Matsevat zikaron lehalalei hapoalim ha’ivri’im be-Eretz Yisrael [Yizkor: In memory of the fallen Jewish workers in Palestine] (Jaffa, 1912). 17.  See Brenner, “Tsiunim” [Remarks], in Writings, 3:565. See also the important article by Jonathan Frankel, “Sefer hayizkor mishnat 1911: He’ara al mitosim leumi’im bitkufat ha’alia hashniya” [The Yizkor book of 1911: A note on national myths in the Second Aliya], Yahadut zmanenu 4 (1988), 67–96. 18.  See, for example, Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 20 January 1912, Genazim A-20/18772. 19.  Ya’akov Zerubavel, “Yizkor,” Ha’akhdut 12 and 13 (2 September 1912 and 9 January 1912). 20.  Brenner mentions the article only in “Pinkas Patuakh” [Open notebook], Haolam, 12 January 1912. 21.  Brenner, “Gam eleh ankhot sofer” [These too are a writer’s laments], in Writings, 3:817–820. 22.  A. Z. Rabinowitz, “Al hane’enakhim” [On the lamenters], Hapoel Hatzair, 12 July 1912; A. M. Koller, “Al ha’anakhot” [On the laments], Hapoel Hatzair, 1 August 1912. 23.  Brenner to Lachover, 22 October 1911; Brenner to Persky, 22 October 1911; Brenner to Lachover, 9 January 1911, in Letters, 370–371. 24.  Agnon, “On Brenner.” 25.  Agnon, “Al Berl Katznelson.” 26.  Reisen to Schoffman, undated, LA IV-104-37-104. 27. Fried, 15 July 1908, in Yoman shana be-Eretz Ysiarel, 1908–1909, 16. 28.  The story was published in Haomer 3 (October 1908). Fried comments on it in his diary, Yoman shana be-Eretz Ysiarel, 23 October 1908, 63.

Notes to Chapter Seven 29.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 132. 30. Shalom Streit to Yeshayahu Streit [est. late 1911–early 1912], Genazim 314/27594/14. 31.  Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, 29 October 1911, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 45. According to the Jewish calendar the date was 29 October 1911, which meant that Agnon had several weeks to complete the novel. 32.  Kimchi to Shalom Streit, Genazim 314/27426/9. According to the date of Brenner’s lecture on Tschernichovsky, the date falls between the end of November and early December 1912. 33.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 141. 34.  Kimchi also described Brenner’s reading of the book. Brenner reads only to Kimchi, line by line, “and he accentuated the musical notes as if reading from the Torah” (Masot ketsarot, 65). I prefer the version in Kimchi’s letter to Shalom Streit. 35.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 139. 36.  Shlomit Flaum, Bat Yisrael nodedet [A Jewish girl wanders] (Jerusalem, 1936), 52. 37. Agnon, Tmol shilshom (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1973), 412–413; cited as Agnon, Only Yesterday. See also Dan Laor, Hayei Agnon: Biografia [Agnon: A biography] (Jerusalem: 1998), 61–74. 38. Agnon, Only Yesterday, 382. 39.  Agnon “On Brenner,” 144. 40. Agnon, Only Yesterday, 403. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid, 131. 44. Ibid., 132. 45. Ibid., 146. 46. Ibid., 148. 47. Ibid., 140. 48.  Even Agnon’s description of Brenner’s meeting with Berdyczewski, ostensibly according to Brenner, is extremely questionable. See ibid., 126. 49.  The description is based on Uri Brenner’s account in “Ima: Chaya Broide” [My mother: Chaya Broide] and also on his letter to Gershon Gera, Maoz Haim, 27 October 1981, both in a private collection. 50. Chaya Broide, “Zikhronot al Agnon” [Memories of Agnon], in “Ima: Chaya Broide,” 9. 51.  Fried to Y. Finkelstein, Vienna, 15 October 1909, in Yoman shana ahat beEretz Yisrael, 151. 52.  Shmuel Shimoni, Eser shanim: Ahavat David ve-Dina [Ten years: The love of David and Dina] (Jerusalem, 2001), 12. The letter is dated 23 September 1910. 53.  Rabbi Benjamin to Shimoni, Jaffa, 7 February 1911, Genazim 165/6257/1. 54.  Kimchi to Shalom Streit, fall 1911, Genazim 314/27426/9. 55.  Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, winter 1911, in Misod hakhamim [The wisdom

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Notes to Chapter Seven of sages], ed. Avraham Kariv (Jerusalem 1976), 18n7. Also appears in “Agnon– Brenner Letters,” 45. 56.  Brenner’s article is “Reshimot bibliografiot” [Bibliographical notes], in Writings, 3:654–659; originally published in Ha’akhdut (November 1911), signed H. B. Zalel. See also Lachover’s letters to Brenner, Warsaw, 13 July 1911, 23 October 1911, in Genazim 4:178–179; Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, early October 1911, in Letters, 370; Shalom Streit to Yeshayahu Streit, early 1911, Genazim 314/27594/14. 57.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 14 February 1912, Genazim 314/27489/11. 58.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 10 March 1912, Genazim 314/27489/13. 59.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 15 April 1912, Genazim 314/27489/14. 60. Ibid. 61.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 25 April 1912, in Genazim 4:130. (I believe that the date should be 22 April 1912 because on 24 April 1912 Brenner was already aware of Agnon’s situation). 62.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 24 April 1912, Genazim 314/27489/15. 63.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 10 May 1912, in Genazim 4:131. 64.  Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, 8 May 1912, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 46–47. 65.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 2 May 1912, Genazim 314/27489/16. 66.  Chaya Broide, “Zikhronot al Agnon,” 9. 67. Genazim 20/10091/29. 68.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, 3 September 1912, in Writings, 375. 69.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 10 March 1912, Genazim 314/27489/13. 70. Kimchi to Shalom Streit [apparently November or December 1911], Genazim 314/27426/9. 71.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 138–139. 72.  Brenner, “Rishmei sifrut” [Literary notes], in Writings, 3:746–747; originally published in Ha’akhdut (January 1912). 73.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 154. 74.  In his letter dated 28 January 1912, Rabbi Benjamin writes to Brenner: “Agnon: I am prepared to cover half the expense of the special publication of his book, on condition that all the exemplars are guaranteed for me for the money” (Genazim A-20/18772). Regarding distribution by Kruglyakov, see Rabbi Benjamin’s letter to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 75.  For example, Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, winter 1912: “I saw your sister yesterday. Dacht zich nit shlecht. But who knows. Binyamin is a decent young man” (“Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 45); Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 19 August 1912: “I saw Lyuba at the library yesterday, and she has delicate features and a [good] soul. It is both good and bad that there are also girls like that in the world. Binyamin arrived safely” (Genazim 4:136). See also Kruglyakov’s letters to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 76.  Kruglyakov’s letters to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 77.  Lachover to Brenner, Warsaw, 16 March 1912, Genazim 4:180–183; Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 20 March 1912, in ibid., 129–130; Rabbi Benjamin to

Notes to Chapter Seven Lachover et al., Jaffa, 6 May 1912, in ibid., 131–133; Brenner to Lachover, 7 April 1912, in Letters, 372. 78. Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, October 1912, in Genazim 4:135. See also Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, 31 July 1912; Brenner to Berdyczewski, 17 July 1912; Brenner to Ephraim Lisitzky, Jerusalem, 29 August 1912, in Letters, 374–375. 79.  See Brenner, “Mitokh pinkasi” [From my notebook], in Writings, 4:1027; originally published in Revivim 3/4 (1913). The critique refers to “Leylot” and “Halomo shel Ya’akov Nahum” [Ya’akov Nahum’s dream]. 80.  Agnon to Brenner, Jaffa, 3 June 1912, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 48–49. See also Agnon, “On Brenner,” 152. 81.  See Poznansky’s comment on Brenner’s letter to Berdyczewski, 17 July 1912, in Letters, 374. 82.  Brenner to the owners of Hasharon summer 1912 or 1913, Streit collection, Genazim 314/27601; Brenner to Hasharon, undated, in ibid. See also Brenner to Azar, 6 September 1912, in Letters, 375. 83. Shalom Streit, “Milim ahadot al S. Y. Agnon” [A few words on S. Y. Agnon], Revivim 3/4, 38–43. See also Brenner, “Rishmei sifrut,” 755; “Misdeh hasifrut” [From the field of literature], in Writings, 4:1202; originally published in Hapoel Hatzair, July 1914. 84.  Rabbi Benjamin’s letter to an unidentified addressee, Beit Hakerem, 17 October 1931, Shvadron collection, National Library in Jerusalem. 85.  Yizkor editorial board, Jaffa, 1911, Yizkor, ed. A. Z. Rabinowitz (Jaffa 1911), 5. 86.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Bereshit,” in Beynatayim (Jerusalem, 1913), 95–104. 87.  Brenner, “Mitokh pinkasi,” 165–166. 88.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, Jerusalem, undated [apparently June 1912], Genazim 314/27489/19. 89. Ibid. 90. Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, Jerusalem, 8 June 1912, Genazim 314/27489/17. The description is based on the two letters from June 1912. It is unclear whether Brenner’s mock wedding was with Hassia Feinsod or Shlomit Flaum. Because Flaum also described that night and made no mention of it, and because a few months later Brenner sent love letters to Hassia Feinsod, it seems reasonable that it was Hassia. See Flaum’s description, which is different in several details, in Flaum, Bat Yisrael nodedet, 54. I preferred Streit’s description, which was written at the time. 91.  Brenner to Hassia Feinsod, Jerusalem, October 1912, in Letters, 376. 92.  Brenner to Feinsod, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, November 1912, in ibid., 376. 93.  Brenner, “Micha Yosef Berdyczewski,” in Writings, 3:823–885. 94. Brenner, “Azkara le-yalag” [In memoriam: Yehudah Leib Gordon], in ibid., 889–966, 963; originally published in Hapoel Hatzair (February–June 1913). 95.  Aharonowitz to Brenner, Jaffa, 29 October 1912, in Kitvei Yosef ­Aharonowitz [Writings of Yosef Aharonowitz], ed. Dvora Baron (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1941), 229–231.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 96.  Brenner to Rabbi Benjamin, Jerusalem, 3 January 1913, in Letters, 377. 97.  Ben-Zvi to Zerubavel, Constantinople, 30 May 1913, Israel State Archives, 160/1934 P-160/1934/47. 98.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 14 March 1912, Genazim 314/27489/13. 99.  Brenner to Schoffman, Jerusalem, August 1913, in Letters, 390. Haim Itzkovitz wrote to Menachem Poznansky: “Schoffman has been in Vienna for two weeks and from there he is to go to America. Hatoren has promised to send him a boat ticket” (24 July 1913, Genazim 75/14823/1). 100.  Brenner to Aharonowitz, Jerusalem, May 1914, in Letters, 405. 101.  Brenner to Shimonovich, Jerusalem, July 1913, in ibid., 388. 102.  I deduce this from the regards sent to Mrs. Klausner, which Brenner incorporated into his letters to Klausner. 103.  Brenner to Klausner, Jerusalem, 1 June 1913, in Letters, 382–383; Brenner to Klausner, Jerusalem, 20 July 1913, in ibid., 388. 104.  Shlomo Zemach published a critique on Brenner in Hashiloah 28 (­January– June 1913). Zemach combined his criticism of Brenner’s pessimism and style with praise for his emotional force and talent. “A writer whose soul looks out from his works. And felt even more in them is great pain, and an inner struggle and perpetual conflict that tears the heart to pieces.” Zemach contended that Brenner’s innovativeness lay in the fact that he introduced a description of the soul and its core into his stories. Even before the publication of this critique, Klausner wrote to Brenner, telling him that publication was imminent. Brenner responded, saying that if he could learn something about himself from it—fine, but “praise and censure— withdraw them. If only they did not touch me so much.” After reading the article he wrote to Klausner that it was written in good taste. “But it is written by a man far distant from me, who was never in my world, for whom my nature is foreign, and so it understandably did not touch me that much.” And rebuking Klausner and his friends, he adds: “But the passages and sides of my writing whereby the critics count me, are in my view sometimes the best ones” (Brenner to Klausner, Jerusalem, 20 July 1913, in Letters, 388. 105.  Abba Ahimeir, who arrived in Palestine aboard the same boat as Brenner’s brother and sister attests to the date in “Y. H. Brenner: Hamaskil ha’akharon” [Y. H. Brenner: The last intellectual], in Ein Hakoreh (Tel Aviv, 2003), 76. 106.  Brenner to Klausner, 1 June 1913, in Letters, 382–383. In the manuscript version, Brenner adds a note: “I said ‘worries,’ and at this very moment, after I finished writing the postcard, my brother the worker was brought to Jerusalem in a cart, and he is very sick. He came here six months ago as strong as an ox” (Klausner archive, National Library in Jerusalem, 401086/146). 107.  In a letter to Fichman from Jerusalem, 15 April 1913, he writes: “The malaria has passed. Good riddance to it” (Letters, 381). In a letter to Lachover, 11 May 1913, he writes: “I have recently had malaria for half weeks at a time” (ibid., 382). See also a letter to Berdyczewski, 11 May 1913, and to Bichovsky, 20 June 1913, in ibid., 383–383.

Notes to Chapter Seven 108.  Brenner to Lachover and Zeitlin, Jerusalem, 21 June 1913, in ibid., 384. 109.  Brenner, “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes,” in Writings, 4:1225– 1296, 1260. 110. Ibid., 1293. 111. Ibid., 1287. 112. Ibid., 1296. 113.  Brenner to Aharonowitz, Jerusalem, 21 January 1914, in Letters, 400. 114.  See Brenner to H. Ingberman [est. end of 1913], in ibid., 396. 115.  Rabbi Benjamin, “Ha’arakha atzmit” [Self-evaluation], in Me’ever ligvulin [Beyond boundaries] (Tel Aviv, 1923), 161–166. 116.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 3 January 1913, in Genazim 4:140. 117.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, 13 January 1913, in ibid., 141. 118.  Rabbi Benjamin to Brenner, Jaffa, 27 May 1913, in ibid., 143. 119. Chaya Broide to Brenner, Jaffa, June 1913, in Makhbarot Brenner 3–4 [Brenner’s notebooks, vols. 3–4], ed. Menakhem Dorman and Uzi Shavit (Tel Aviv, 1985), 11; hereafter cited as Brenner’s Notebooks. 120.  Brenner to Chaya, Jerusalem, 8 June 1913, in ibid., 11. 121.  Brenner to Chaya, 23 August 1913, in ibid., 12. 122. Ibid. 123. Feinsod to Sukenik, Lodz [apparently fall 1913], Yadin family archive, Brenner collection at Yad Tabenkin. 124.  Brenner to Chaya, Jerusalem, 25 August 1913, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 14. 125.  Brenner to Chaya, Jerusalem, 27 August 1913, in ibid., 15–16. 126.  Chaya to Brenner, Nahalat Binyamin, 28 August 1913, in ibid., 17. 127.  Brenner to Chaya, Jerusalem, 29 August 1913, in ibid., 17. 128. Ibid., 19. 129. Ibid., 20. 130. Ibid., 20–22. 131.  Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 2 September 1913, in ibid., 22. 132.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, Jerusalem, 27 September 1913, in Letters, 393. 133.  Letters of Dina Feffermeister and Shimoni, in Shimoni, Eser shanim, 166–167. 134.  Agnon to Brenner, Berlin, 8 October 1913, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 53. 135.  Agnon to Brenner, Berlin, 8 April 1914, in ibid., 54. 136.  Lachover to Brenner, Warsaw, 28 September 1913, Genazim 4:187. 137.  Itzkovitz to Poznansky, 15 October 1913, Genazim 75/14839/1. 138.  Poznansky to Brenner, 21 October 1913, Genazim 75/4296/6. 139.  Brenner to Poznansky, Jerusalem, 1 October 1913, in Letters, 395. 140.  Gnessin to Beilin, 20 October 1909, in Gnessin Letters, 153; Gnessin to Beilin, Warsaw, 19 October 1912, in ibid., 189. 141.  Gnessin to Bichovsky, 11 February 1912, in ibid., 169. 142.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Jerusalem, 5 January 1912, in Letters, 371. 143.  Lachover to Brenner, Skolimow, 27 April 1913, in Genazim 4:186–187. In the text the words “Of course I know” are written in Russian.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 144.  Brenner to Bichovsky, Jerusalem, 11 May 1913, in Letters, 381. 145.  See Brenner’s letter to the writers, in ibid., 384–395. 146.  Frishman to Brenner, 6 July 1913, Fichman archive, Genazim. 147.  Beilin to Brenner, London, 31 July 1913, Genazim A-20/18176. 148.  Berdyczewski to Brenner, Friedenau, 24 April 1914, Berdyczewski–Brenner Letters, 117. 149.  Brenner, “Uri Gnessin,” Hatzida, 140–145. 150.  Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, end of August 1913, in Letters, 392. 151.  Agnon, “On Brenner,” 123. 152.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, 15 April 1912, Genazim 314/27489/14. 153.  Brenner to Lachover, Jerusalem, March 1914, in Letters, 402. 154.  Brenner to Poznansky, February 1913, in ibid., 378; early April 1913, in ibid., 379. 155.  Haherut, letters to the editor, 29 March 1914, LA IV-104-37-80. 156.  Several vegetarian students to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-56d. 157.  Oath of loyalty, 8 October 1913, LA IV-104-37-56b. 158.  The letter was published in Haherut on 7 April 1914. See Letters, 403. 159. Flaum, Bat Yisrael nodedet, 51–52. 160.  Itzkovitz to Brenner, 24 July 1913, Genazim 75/14825/1. 161.  Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 13 September 1913, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 29. 162.  Chaya Rotberg, Sefer me’ukhar [A late book] (Tel Aviv, 1987), 49–50. 163.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, Saturday morning, 6 September 1913; Jaffa, 7 September 1913; Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 8 September 1913, in Brenner’s Note­ books, 23–25. 164.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, Kruglyakov’s shop, Tuesday, 16 September 1913, in ibid., 31. 165.  Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 5 a.m., 19 September 1913, in ibid., 32. 166.  Y. Maharshak, “Miyeshivato befetach tikva” [His time in Petach Tikva], Hatzida, 136. 167.  See Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 8 September 1913, in Brenner’s Note­ books, 25. 168.  Brenner to Azar, Jerusalem, 20 July 1914, in Letters, 407. For the omissions, see page 395 onward. 169.  Chaya to Brenner, Jerusalem, 8 September 1913, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 25. 170.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, 10 September 1913, in ibid., 26. 171.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, 19 September 1913, in ibid., 33. 172.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, 26 May 1914, in ibid., 36. 173.  Greeting from K. L. Silman and family, Hapoel Hatzair, 31 July 1914. 174.  Brenner to Ya’ari-Poleskin, Jerusalem, 1 August 1914, in Letters, 406. 175.  Brenner to Ya’ari-Poleskin, Jerusalem, August 1914, in ibid., 408 (letters 658 and 659). The reference to Chaya’s candidacy to run the kindergarten in Rishon Lezion is omitted in both letters.

Notes to Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight 1.  Kruglyakov to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 2.  Brenner to Wilkansky, Jerusalem, 20 September 1914, in Writings, 409. 3.  Aharonowitz to Brenner, Jaffa, 20 August 1914, in Kitvei Yosef Aharonowitz, 246. 4.  Mordechai Eliav, Eretz Yisrael vi’ishuva bamea hayod tet, 1777–1914 [Palestine and its settlement in the nineteenth century, 1777–1914] (Jerusalem, 1978), 437–441. 5.  I was unable to decipher the signature on the invitation to Brenner (written in French), Jerusalem, 2 October 1914, LA IV-104-37-53. His membership on the American aid committee is also mentioned in Ha’akhdut, 23 October 1914, 36. 6.  Minutes of the committee for the distribution of the U.S. aid monies on 5 October 1914, held at the home of H. Lupo, LA IV-104-37-53. 7.  Based both on Eliav, Eretz Yisrael vi’ishuva bamea hayod tet, 437–441, and the committee minutes cited in the preceding note. 8. Y. A. Vulcani [Yitzhak Wilkansky] to Poznansky, 29 December 1940, Genazim 75/32561/1. 9.  In his letter to Blumenfeld dated 23 November 1914, Zerubavel mentions that the Brenner family was in Ben Shemen; published in Asufot 7 (March 1961), 86. 10.  Vulcani to Poznansky, 29 December 1940, Genazim 75/32561/1. 11.  See the fascinating description of conditions in the Turkish army in ­Aharon Reuveni’s novel, Shamot. See also the sections on the conscription of Herzliya Gymnasium graduates in Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen’s diary Milkhemet he’amim [War of the nations] (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzakh Ben-Zvi, 1981–1985), 272; hereafter cited as Hacohen, War of the Nations. 12. Zerubavel, “Hitazrekhut hayishuv” [Naturalization of the Yishuv], Ha’akhdut, 20 November 1914, 3. 13. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 28, 100. 14.  Zerubavel’s letters, Asufot 7 (March 1961), 86–88, and his summarizing article, “Kach nisgar Ha’akhdut” [The closing of Ha’akhdut], in ibid., 97–101. 15. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 47–52. 16. Ibid., 20. 17.  Zerubavel, “Kach nisgar Ha’akhdut,” 99. 18. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 65. 19. Ibid., 67–70, 108–109; see also page 210. 20. Ibid., 120. 21.  Ahad Ha’am, “Higi’a hasha’a” [The time has come], in Al parashat dera­ khim [At the crossroads], 4:72–86; in a footnote Ahad Ha’am added to this article, he mentions that the Young Turks had deviated from the path he had attributed to them, but in his view this did not detract from the rightness of his argument. 22.  Brenner, “Mehasifrut vehaitonut ba’aretz” [From literature and the press in Palestine], in Writings, 3:349; originally published in Hapoel Hatzair (May 1909). 23.  In his letter to Chaya from early April 1915, Brenner reports on his siblings’

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Notes to Chapter Eight situation: a sister and a brother are in dire straits. He also visited Chaya’s parents and reported on the poverty in the home. See Brenner’s Notebooks, 38. 24.  Brenner to Chaya, from Jaffa to Ben Shemen, early 1915, in ibid, 38. 25. Brenner, 23 November 1914, LA IV-104-37-2. 26.  Jacob Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Beven shemen” [At Ben Shemen], in More M ­ emoirs, 138. 27. The translation appeared in 1914 in the Hapoel Hatzair issues dated 29 May, 12 June, 17 July, and 31 July. 28.  Brenner to K. Y. Silman, Tel Aviv, July 1915, in Letters, 410. 29.  Brenner to Rabinowitz, Tel Aviv, July 1915, in ibid., 409. 30.  Yitzhak Michaeli (Bortinker), “Im Brenner bishnot milkhemet ha’olam” [With Brenner in the war years], in More Memoirs, 142. 31. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 176. 32.  Brenner’s “Hane’eman,” in Writings, 4:1391–1421; originally published in Besha’a zo: Lesifrut uleinyanei hayishuv (Jaffa), no. 2 (June 1916). 33. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 135–136. 34.  See Anita Shapira, Hatanakh vehazehut hayisraelit [The Bible and Israeli identity] (Jerusalem, 2005), 4–8, 37–80. 35. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 151. 36. Ibid., 266–267. 37.  Brenner, “Hanoseh: Hasifrut bettor yetzira leumit” [Literature as national creation], LA IV-104-37-567. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40.  Brenner, “Habikoret hasifrutit” [Literary criticism] and “Georg Brandes,” LA IV-104-37-56. 41. Brenner, “He’arot latokhnit haretzufa bazeh, tokhnit limudei ha’ivrit ­lemakhlaka dalet (bemeshekh hashlish harishon 1915)” [Comments on the appended curriculum, the Hebrew curriculum for the fourth department (in the first semester 1915)], LA IV-104-37-56. 42.  Students’ compositions, Brenner files, Genazim 436/31684. 43. Brenner, Mehatkhala, in Writings, 2:1745–1814; hereafter cited as From the Beginning. See also “Al ‘mehatkhala,’” Brenner files, Genazim 436/31684. 44.  Brenner, “He’arot latokhnit haretzufa bazeh,” LA IV-104-37-56. 45. Ibid. 46.  Brenner’s book lists for his students, LA IV-104-37-56. 47. Ibid. 48. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 157. 49. Ibid., 25 November 1915, 184–185. 50.  Memorandum by a former student [apparently a member of the students’ union], Herzliya Gymnasium Archive, Tel Aviv. 51. Hacohen, War of the Nations, 404–405.

Notes to Chapter Eight 52.  List of the gymnasium’s teachers, their hours, and salary (as allocated in early 1917), Metman’s principal’s diary, 1916–1917, Herzliya Gymnasium Archive. 53.  Brenner’s correspondence with the Herzliya Gymnasium, 1918–1919, LA IV-104-37-3. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56.  Brenner to Dr. Jacob Thon, Tel Aviv, 26 November 1916, in Letters, 411. 57.  Katznelson to Brenner, Kinneret, end of summer 1915, in Igrot Berl Katznel­ son, 1915–1917, ed. Yehuda Sharett (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1974), 25–27. It seems that Brenner scorned the book’s scientific standard, which was intended for laymen, causing Katznelson to respond in his letter to S. Yavneeli, Kinneret, 10 May 1916, in ibid., 40–56. 58.  See “Brenner: A Teacher in the Gymnasium,” in More Memoirs, 142–147. See also Yosef Breslavi [Breslavsky], Benetivot lo-slulot el yediat ha’aretz [On unpaved paths to Palestine geography] (Tel Aviv, 1973), 20–29. 59.  Pesah Lipovetzky in “Brenner: A Teacher in the Gymnasium,” 146. 60.  Jacob Levi to Poznansky, Paris, 6 April 1935, Genazim 75/15334/1. 61.  See, for example, Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 71. 62. Ibid., 69–71. Binyamin Brenner does not always pass the test of credibility, but in this case the story appears to be plausible. Brenner’s letter to Lifschitz is quoted in ibid., 71. The original, dated 3 April 1915, is in Genazim 3575/6-477. 63.  Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 94. 64. Ibid. 65.  Binyamin Brenner to Azar [apparently 1916], Genazim 3575/6-477. 66.  In the Binyamin Brenner collection in Genazim 3560/6-477, there is a letter to Ahuva Brenner, marked “not sent,” in which he mentions his roles in class, including “class monitor.” 67.  Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 96–109; minutes of the students’ committee meeting, summer 1916, Aviezer Yellin Archives of Jewish Education in Israel and the Diaspora, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 34.1/51; hereafter cited as Yellin Teachers’ Seminar Archive. 68. Binyamin Brenner to Ahuva Brenner, Jerusalem [not sent], Genazim 3557/6-477. 69.  Minutes of the Jerusalem Teachers’ Seminar faculty meeting, 6 December 1916, words of A. M. Lifschitz, Yellin Teachers’ Seminar Archive, ibid. 70.  Ibid. According to another version his readmission after a year was conditional solely on the faculty’s agreement. 71.  Y. Feldman [Rabbi Benjamin], to Yellin and Lifschitz [separate copies], undated, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem, S2/724. 72.  Minutes of the Jerusalem Hebrew schools supervisory committee, 12 December 1916, Yellin Teachers’ Seminar Archive, box 4. 73.  Yellin’s letter to the National Hebrew Education Committee, Jaffa, 12 December 1916, CZA S2/724. The story of Brenner’s slapping Lifschitz has been re-

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Notes to Chapter Eight counted several times; see, for instance, Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 119–135 (includes Brenner’s notes summarizing his version of the events); David Benvenisti, Me-Saloniki le-Yerushalayim [From Salonika to Jerusalem] (Jerusalem, 1980), 198–202; Moshe Rinot, “Binyamin ve-Yosef Haim Brenner: Nituakh eru’a pedagogi” [Binyamin and Yosef Haim Brenner: Analysis of a pedagogical incident], Iyyunim behinukh 20 (September 1978), 73–78; Haim Be’er, “Hastira shehekhtif Brenner lamoreh Lifschitz” [The slap Brenner gave teacher Lifschitz], Ma’ariv, 17 April 1992; and also Haim Be’er, “Milui intimi vedokumentatzia enoshit pshuta: Mikhtavim lo yedu’im shel Brenner” [Intimate fulfillment and simple human documentation: Brenner’s unknown letters], Alpayyim 5 (1992), 226–240. 74.  Yellin’s letter to the National Hebrew Education Committee, Jaffa, 12 December 1916, CZA S2/724. 75.  Nissan Turov to Dr. Thon, Jaffa, 23 December 1916, CZA S2/724. 76.  Brenner to the National Education Committee and Teachers Center in Jaffa, 25 January 1917, CZA S2/724. 77. A letter from Binyamin Brenner to his sister Batya, Hulda [apparently March 1917; not sent], Genazim 3557/6-477. 78.  Brenner to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 5 February 1917, in Letters, 412. 79.  Brenner to Silman, Tel Aviv, end of November 1919, in ibid., 434. 80.  In his letter to Gershon Gera dated 27 October 1918, Uri Brenner claims that Chaya worked as a kindergarten teacher during those years. Private archive. 81.  Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Beven shemen,” 137. 82.  Vulcani to Poznansky, 29 December 1940, Genazim 75/32561/1. 83.  Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Beven shemen,” 137. 84.  Ziona Rabau-Katinsky, Be-Tel Aviv al haholot (Ramat Gan, 1973), 113. 85.  Descriptions of the expulsion, the number of evacuees and the size of Tel Aviv at the time of the expulsion can be found in Rabau-Katinsky, Be-Tel Aviv al haholot, 61–85, and in Yosef Eliahu Chelouche, Parashat hayyay [My life story] (Tel-Aviv : Bavel, 2005), 224–255. 86.  Chaya Broide-Brenner to Manya Poznansky, LA IV-104-37-69. 87. Ibid. 88. Manya Poznansky to Menachem Poznansky, 28 July [apparently 1917], Genazim 32816/1. 89.  Brenner to Poznansky, Shfeya, May 1917, in Letters, 412. 90.  In the Brenner files, Genazim 436/31684, there are letters and diaries of his students that Brenner used to write From the Beginning, a portrait of the gymnasium students as he saw them, published posthumously in Hatekufa in 1922. In one of Pesach Lipovetzky’s letters, the writer describes the absence of learning in Shfeya, and Brenner’s conduct, Genazim 436/31684, page 30. 91.  Brenner to the gymnasium administration, LA IV-104-37-3. 92.  Chaya and Yosef Haim Brenner to the emigrants committee in Zikhron Ya’akov, LA IV-104-37-54. 93.  Brenner to the gymnasium administration, LA IV-104-37-3.

Notes to Chapters Eight and Nine 94. This description is based on Michaeli’s memoir, “Im Brenner bishnot milkhemet ha’olam,” 164, and on a short article by Poznansky who attempted to reconstruct the Brenner family’s wanderings during their exile, IV-104-106b. 95.  Aharon Zisling, “Behadera biyemei hamilkhama” [In Hadera during the war], in Selected Memoirs, 207–208. 96. Ibid., 211–212. 97. Poznansky to Brenner, May 1918; published in Mibifnim 29 (February 1967), 93. 98.  Brenner, “Hamotza,” Ha’aretz veha’avoda (Jaffa) 5 (January 1919), 54–62. 99. Ibid., 62. 100.  Brenner to Poznansky, Zikhron Ya’akov, June 1917, in Letters, 412. 101.  Moshe Natan, related by Eliezer Braun, in More Memoirs, 165; Yosef Matz to Poznansky, Jerusalem, 6 September 1913, Genazim 75/15161/1. On fear of conscription, see Brenner to Poznansky, Hadera, March 1918, in Letters, 413. The complete original letter, from which I have quoted, is in the Brenner archive at the Labor Archives, LA IV-104-37. 102.  Brenner, writing as Bar-Yochai, “Mipinkis (leregel haknisa)” [From a notebook (following the entry [of the British into Palestine])] in Ha’aretz veha’avoda (March 1918), 13–16. 103.  Brenner to Dov Kimchi [in Letters the name is “Anonymous” because of Poznansky’s policy of deleting material that might discomfit living persons], Ein Ganim, 1917, in Letters, 413. 104.  Brenner to Poznansky, Hadera, March 1918, in ibid., 413. 105.  Brenner’s sketch, “Asonot” [Disasters], in Writings, 2:1711–1713, is a monologue by a washerwoman who finds work with the Jaffa evacuees. 106.  Brenner’s Notebooks, 38–39. The estimated date in the volume is summer 1917, but in view of Chaya’s mentioning a move to Haifa, the notes should be dated a year later. 107. On the shirts, see Ahuva Remez, “Be-Zikhron Ya’akov” [In Zikhron Ya’akov], in Selected Memoirs, 205. On the breakfast, see Zisling, “Behadera biyemei hamilkhama,” 210. 108.  Poznansky to Brenner, 14 March 1918; published in Mibifnim 29 (February 1967), 92.

Chapter Nine 1.  Brenner to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, October 1918, in Letters, 414. In my opinion the date identified by Poznansky should be two weeks later. See also the letter to Rabinowitz, in ibid., 414; letters to Poznansky, in ibid., 415. 2.  Brenner to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 26 October 1918, in ibid, 415. Poznansky omitted the words “and goes to the kindergarten with his mother” from the letter. 3.  Aharonowitz to Brenner, 13 October 1918, Kitvei Yosef Aharonowitz, 266. 4.  Berdyczewski to Brenner, Berlin-Friedenau, 30 December 1919, ­Berdyczewski– Brenner Letters, 120.

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Notes to Chapter Nine 5.  Beilin to Brenner, undated, Genazim A-20/18178; Asher Beilin, “Bli-ma,” published in London in 1918, copy with the dedication dated September 1918, Genazim A-20/18177. 6.  Marmor to Brenner, 12 August 1919, Genazim A-20/18587. 7.  Agnon to Brenner, Munich, 16 February 1920, in “Agnon–Brenner Letters,” 55. 8.  Shimonovich to Brenner, Warsaw, 4 March 1920, in Shimoni, Eser shanim, 228–229. 9.  Ben-Gurion named his daughter “Geula”; the first names of Yigal Paikovich [Alon], and Yigael Sukenik [Yadin] have the same derivation. Alon was the most important commander in the War of Independence, later education minister and foreign minister; Yadin, the chief of staff in 1949, later deputy prime minister. 10.  Brenner, “Sridei sikhot noshanot” [Remnants of old discussions], in Writ­ ings, 4: 1456. 11.  An example of this mood is Brenner’s article “Mibayit umihutz” [Home and abroad], in Writings, 4:1627–1634; originally published in Ha’adama (November 1919). See also a response in favor of a Jewish state and Herzlian Zionism, “Mikhtavei haverim” [Comrades’ letters], Kuntress (December 1919), 55–56. 12.  Brenner to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 26 November 1918, in Letters, 415. 13.  See Brenner’s letters to Rabinowitz and A. D. Gordon, Tel Aviv, October 1918, in ibid., 414–415. 14.  Brenner to Abba Goldberg, Daniel Persky, and others, Jaffa, 21 October 1918, in ibid., 415. 15.  Brenner to Dov Kimchi, Tel Aviv, 29 November 1918, in ibid., 416. 16.  Brenner to Y. L. Goldberg, Tel Aviv, December 1918, in ibid., 416. 17.  Brenner to Stiebel, Tel Aviv, January 1918, in ibid., 418. 18.  Brenner to Rabinowitz, Tel Aviv, March 1919; Brenner to Shalom Streit, Tel Aviv, 12 March 1919, in ibid., 420. 19.  Brenner to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 26 November 1918, in ibid., 415. 20.  Brenner to Stiebel, Tel Aviv, January 1919, ibid., 418. 21.  Brenner’s Notebooks, 40–41. 22.  Chaya to Brenner, Jaffa, early May 1919, in ibid., 42. 23.  Chaya to Brenner, Jaffa, 26 April 1919, in ibid., 40. 24.  Aharonowitz to Wilkansky, Tel Aviv, 22 June 1919, in Mikhtavim, 270. 25.  Memorandum between the Hapoel Hatzair party and Y. H. Brenner regarding publication of Ha’aretz veha’avoda, July 1919, LA IV-104-37-2. 26.  Berl Katznelson, “Likrat hayamim haba’im” [Toward the future], in Yalkut Akhdut Ha’avoda [Akhdut Ha’avoda book] (Tel Aviv, 1931), 2:1–16. See also Anita Shapira, Berl (Tel Aviv, 1980), 117–134. 27. Shapira, Berl, 135–156. 28.  Katznelson to Yudkeh Helman, 18 May 1938, in More Memoirs, 181. 29.  Ibid. I have not found any direct evidence of Brenner’s membership in Akhdut Ha’avoda, but he actively participated in the Haifa conference when the Histadrut was founded and where it was declared that he had the status of an

Notes to Chapter Nine ­ khdut Ha’avoda delegate; however, it seems to me that he participated not as a A party member but as the editor of Ha’adama and sat at the press table. 30.  Aharonowitz to Wilkansky, Tel Aviv, 22 June 1919, in Mikhtavim, 270–271. 31. Memorandum between Akhdut Ha’avoda and Y. H. Brenner regarding publication of a monthly to be called Ha’adama, 16 June 1919, LA IV-104-37-2. 32.  Brenner to Rabinowitz, Tel Aviv, 29 June 1919, in Letters, 424. 33.  Brenner to Katznelson, Tel Aviv, 1 July 1919, in ibid., 426. 34. Ibid., 426–427. 35. These positions are similar to those of Aharonowitz, who stated that Ma’abarot would be a literary journal that would avoid “matters whose power lies solely in their party value” (Aharonowitz to Shalom Streit, Tel Aviv, 22 June 1919, in Mikhtavim, 272). 36.  Brenner to Katznelson, Tel Aviv, late July 1919, in Letters, 430. 37. Ibid. The quotation follows the original handwritten letter from which Poznansky “pruned” any identification of Rutenberg or besmirchment of his honor. 38.  Minutes of the executive committee of Ahdut Haavoda, 3 June 1921, LA IV-4040-1a. See also Shapira, Berl, 190–191. 39.  Berl Katznelson, Arakhim genuzim [Hidden values] (Tel Aviv, 1957), 111. 40.  Katznelson to Alexander Heshin, Jerusalem, 14 April 1919, in Igrot Berl Katznelson, 1918–1921, ed. Yehuda Erez (Tel Aviv, 1970), 216; hereafter cited as Katznelson Letters, 1918–1921. 41. “Likutim,” Kuntress (June 1919), 23–24. 42.  Brenner, “Bibliografia” [Bibliography], in Writings, 4:1615; originally published in Ha’adama (October 1919). 43. Ibid., 1618. 44.  Katznelson to Brenner, London, October 1919, in Katznelson Letters, 1918– 1921, 54. 45. Brenner, “Lefanim uleakhor: Dapim mikitvei sofer” [Back and forth: Pages from an author’s writings], in Writings, 4:1700–1718; originally published in Ha’adama (February 1920). 46.  The translator’s identity was determined by Brenner’s letter to Rabbi Benjamin, Tel Aviv, 30 June 1920, in Letters, 437. 47.  Brenner, “Beshulei gilyonot hapoema” [In the margins of the poem’s pages], in Writings, 4:1800–1805; originally published in Ha’adama (June–July 1920). 48.  Brenner, “Rishmei sha’a” [Current impressions], in Writings, 4:1824; originally published in Kuntress (April 1921). 49.  Brenner, “Lefanim uleakhor,” 1702, 1714–1715. 50.  Brenner, “Rishmei sha’a,” 1824. 51.  Otto Bauer, “Haderekh el hasotsialism” [The road to socialism], Ha’adama 4 (January 1920). 52.  The articles appeared in Ha’adama 4 and 5 (January and February 1920). 53.  Yehuda Burla, “Brenner biyerushalayim” [Brenner in Jerusalem], in Carmelit: A Literary Annual, ed. Noah Paniel and Ephraim Shmueli (Jerusalem, 1963), 32–36.

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Notes to Chapter Nine 54.  Ha’adama 3 (December 1919). 55. Avissar to Poznansky, Jerusalem, 6 February 1933, Genazim 75/14745/1. Regarding M. D. Gaon, see his letter to Poznansky, 23 August 1931, Genazim 75/15012/1. 56.  Burla, “Brenner biyerushalayim,” 35. 57. Keshet, Kedma veyama, 77–79. 58.  Brenner to Kimchi, Tel Aviv, early February 1919 and February 1919, in Let­ ters, 418–420. 59.  Kimchi to Shalom Streit, Jerusalem, 15 February 1919, Genazim 314/27419/14. 60.  Brenner to Kimchi, 20 June 1919, in Letters, 424–425. 61.  Brenner to Zvi Schatz, Tel Aviv, May–June 1920, in ibid., 436. 62.  Schatz’s letters to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-105. 63.  Brenner to Stiebel, Tel Aviv, late May 1919, in Letters, 422. 64.  Rabinowitz to Brenner, April 1920, Genazim A-20/18722. 65.  Moshe Smilansky to Brenner, Rehovot, 6 July 1919, Genazim A-20/18620. 66.  Meir Bogdanovsky conveyed Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen’s request to Brenner, March 1920, LA IV-104-37-88. See Brenner’s reply, 28 September 1919, in Letters, 433. 67.  Katznelson to the Kuntress editorial board, 7 August 1920, in Katznelson Letters, 1918–1921, 130. 68.  Brenner to Katznelson, Tel Aviv, 25 July 1919, in Letters, 430. 69.  Katznelson to Brenner, Mikve Yisrael, 24 July 1919, in Katznelson Letters, 1918–1921, 486. Because Katznelson’s letter is a reply to Brenner’s letter dated 25 July 1919, one of the assigned dates must be incorrect. 70.  Katznelson to David Remez, Stockholm, 10 October 1919, in Katznelson Letters, 1918–1921, 51. 71.  Katznelson to Brenner, London, October 1919, in ibid., 54. 72.  Katznelson to Benzion Chernomorsky (Yisraeli), London, 27 October 1919, in ibid., 62. 73.  Katznelson to Ben-Gurion, Jaffa, 20 October 1920, in ibid., 159; Zalman Rubashov and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to Brenner, 24 July 1920, LA IV-104-37-104. 74.  Brenner to Chaya and Uri, Tel Aviv to Rehovot, June 1919, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 42. 75.  Ganenu, no. 1 (1919), 2–3. 76. K. Y. Silman to Brenner, undated (but clearly from 1919), Genazim A-20/18608. 77. Ibid. 78.  Brenner to Batya, Tel Aviv, 17 November 1920, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 73. 79.  Chaya to Brenner, Jaffa, 18 July 1920, in ibid., 49; Chaya to Poznansky, 4 May 1921, in ibid., 90. 80.  Brenner to Chaya, Ein Ganim, late February 1920, in ibid., 49. 81.  Chaya to Brenner, Jaffa, 18 July 1920, in ibid., 49. 82.  Chaya to Brenner, Alexandria, 22 July 1920, in ibid., 51.

Notes to Chapter Nine 83.  Brenner to Chaya, Tel Aviv, 26 July 1920, in ibid., 52. 84.  Chaya to Brenner, Jaffa, 18 July 1920, in ibid., 49. 85.  Brenner to Chaya, Ein Ganim, late July 1920, in ibid., 50. 86.  Shalom Streit to Brenner [n.d.], in ibid., 51. 87.  Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, Petach Tikva, 20 July 1920, Genazim 341/27488/19. 88.  Brenner to Shalom Streit, Tel Aviv, 6 August 1920, in Letters, 437. 89.  Brenner to Berdyczewski, Tel Aviv, late August 1920, in ibid., 437–438. 90.  Chaya to Poznansky, Vienna, 29 July 1920, in ibid., 54–55. 91.  Chaya to Brenner, Vienna, 3 August 1920, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 56–57. 92.  Chaya to Brenner, Vienna, 5 August 1920, in ibid., 56. 93.  Shalom Streit to Brenner, Vienna, 2 September 1920, in ibid., 60. 94.  Brenner to Chaya, Jaffa, 28 September 1920, in ibid., 64. 95. Ibid., 65. 96.  Brenner to Shalom Streit, Jaffa, 28 September 1920, Genazim 314/27160– 27170. The letter appeared in extremely truncated form in Letters. In Brenner’s Notebooks, 68n209, it is stated that the letter was not preserved; thus, I have quoted it in full. 97.  Shalom Streit to Brenner, Vienna, 19 October 1920, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 68–69. 98.  Chaya to Brenner, 24 October 1920, in ibid., 69–70. 99.  Chaya to Poznansky, Berlin, 4 May 1921, in ibid., 90. 100.  Poznansky to Chaya, 14 September 1920, in Menahem Poznansky, 1909– 1956 (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1960), 12; hereafter cited as Poznansky Letters. 101.  Brenner to Chaya, Tel Aviv, 1920 [in my opinion, considering the speed of the mail services of the time, the letter was sent in mid-November], in Brenner’s Notebooks, 70. 102.  Poznansky to Chaya, 16 November 1920, after the copy held by Chaya Broide, Genazim 75/211/15. 103.  Poznansky to Chaya, Jaffa, 11 May 1921, Genazim 75/217/15. 104. Yeshayahu Streit to Shalom Streit, Jaffa, 26 October 1920, Genazim 314/90694/1. 105.  Poznansky to Aryeh Keren-Zvi, 21 October 1920, in Poznansky Letters, 13. 106.  Brenner to Schoffman, Tel Aviv, 29 September 1920, Letters, 438; the date is Poznansky’s estimated date, but it is unlikely that this letter was sent only one day after Brenner’s letter to Streit. 107.  Chaya to Shalom Streit, Berlin, 26 November 1920, Genazim 314/27154/1. 108.  Chaya to Brenner, Berlin, 11 November 1920, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 72. 109.  Chaya to Shalom Streit, 19 November 1920, Genazim 314/27153/1. Harizman’s review, “Omanut shel silsul” [The art of the trill], was published in Hapoel Hatzair 24 (1920), 9–10. Kabak’s review, “Sefarim vesifrut” [Books and literature], was published in Ha’aretz on 12 September 1920. I gratefully acknowledge Dan Laor who let me know about these reviews.

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Notes to Chapter Nine 110.  Brenner, “Aliyot viyeridot” [Ascents and descents], in Writings, 4:1598– 1608; originally published in Ha’adama (October 1919). 111.  Yosef Trumpeldor, “Lepoalei Eretz Yisrael” [To the workers of Palestine], Kuntress (December 1919/January 1920), 37–38. 112.  Brenner, “Shituf hape’ula” [Cooperation], in Writings, 4:1734–1736; originally published in Ha’adama (January 1920). 113.  Brenner, “Let the Workers of Palestine Take Care of the Workers of Palestine,” in Writings, 4:1813–1814; originally published in Ha’adama (June–July 1920). The description of the printing is in Yehuda Sharett, “Al veidat Akhdut Ha’avoda uveidat yisud Histadrut Ha’ovdim” [On the Akhdut Ha’avoda conference and the founding conference of the Histadrut], from a letter to Moshe Sharett in London, 22 December 1920, in More Memoirs, 174. 114. Katznelson, “Brenner ve-Akhdut Ha’avoda” [Brenner and Akhdut Ha’avoda], in More Memoirs, 181–182. 115.  Katznelson to Yudkeh Helman, 18 May 1938, in ibid. 116.  Asupot (December 1970), 67. 117.  Aharonowitz to Eliezer Shohat, 31 May 1931, Genazim 139/90637/1. This is a fascinating letter that explains Aharonowitz’s path to unification with Akhdut Ha’avoda and the founding of Mapai. 118.  Eliahu Golomb to Moshe Sharett, mid-December 1920, in More Memoirs, 178–180; see also Jacob Ya’ari-Poleskin, “Beveidat Haifa” [At the Haifa conference], in Selected Memoirs, 221–223; Emmanuel, “Beveidat yisud ha-Histadrut” [At the Histadrut founding conference], in ibid., 226–227. 119.  See Brenner’s letters to Bercovich, Tel Aviv, 1 September and 14 September 1919, in Letters, 432–433. 120. Bercovich to Brenner, New York, 20 November 1919, Genazim 20/128890/1. See also Brenner to Bercovich, 17 December 1919, in Letters, 435. 121.  Brenner to Bercovich, mid-October 1920, in ibid., 438. 122.  Manager of the Stiebel publishing house to Brenner, 19 November 1919, 15 July and 30 November 1920, LA IV-104-37-86. 123. Brenner, Breakdown and Bereavement, in Writings, 2:1444, 1677, 1679. 124. Ibid., 1469. 125. Ibid., 1533. 126. Ibid., 1604. 127. Ibid., 1593. 128. Ibid., 1557. 129. Ibid., 1611, 1640–1641, 1682. 130. Ibid., 1572–1573. 131. Ibid., 1680. 132. Ibid., 1681–1687. 133. Ibid., 1443. 134.  Before writing this portion of the chapter, I reread a number of books and probably internalized some of their ideas. The books included Menachem

Notes to Chapter Nine Brinker, Ad hasimta hatverianit [Up to the Tiberian alley] (Tel Aviv, 1990); Gershon Shaked, Lelo motza [Dead end] (Tel Aviv, 1973); Yosef Haim Brenner: Mivkhar ma’amarei bikoret al yetzirato hasifrutit [Y. H. Brenner: Selected critical articles on his literary writing], ed. Yitzhak Bakon (Tel Aviv, 1972), especially articles by Natan Zach, “Haholi umetek hastarim” [Sickness and the secret sweetness], and Gershon Shaked, “Iyyunim beshkhol vekishalon le-Y. H. Brenner” [Studies of Brenner’s Breakdown and Bereavement] which is similar to the chapter in his Lelo motza. 135.  Mordechai Kushnir to Brenner, undated, LA IV-104-37-103. 136.  Brenner to Kushnir, Tiberias–Tabha road, 10 January 1921, in Letters, 440. 137.  R. Margolin [of the Histadrut Cultural Committee] to Brenner, Jaffa, 17 February 1921, LA IV-104-37-100. 138.  Chaya to Brenner, Berlin, 6 December 1920, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 75. 139.  Brenner to Chaya, Migdal, 28 December 1920, in ibid., 77. 140.  Rabinowitz to Shalom Streit [apparently early 1921], Genazim 314/27457/17. 141.  Shalom Streit to Yeshayahu and Bracha Streit, Vienna, Monday, 10 January 1921, Genazim 314/27593/12. 142.  Brenner, “Tel Hai,” in Writings, 4:1752; originally published in Ha’adama (March 1920). 143.  Brenner, “Tsiyunim” [Notes], in Writings, 4:1724; originally published in Ha’adama (February 1920). 144.  Brenner, “Tsiyunim,” in ibid., 1685; originally published in Ha’adama (January 1920). 145. Ibid., 1687. Another description, more sympathetic toward Halperin, can be found in Shimonovich, “Im Brenner,” 73. 146.  Brenner, “Tel Hai,” 1752. 147.  Brenner, “Tsiyunim,” in Writings, 4:1638–1640; originally published in Ha’adama (November 1919). 148. Brenner, “Tsiyunim,” in ibid., 1609–1610; originally published in Ha’adama (October 1919). 149.  Brenner, “Bibliografia” [Bibliography], in Writings, 4:1818. 150.  Brenner, “Mipinkas” [From a notebook], in ibid., 1833; originally published in Kuntress (April 1920). 151. Brenner, “Tsiyunim,” in Writings, 4:1687; originally published in Ha’adama (January 1920). 152.  Brenner, “Mibayit umihutz,” in Writings, 4:1635; originally published in Ha’adama (November 1919). 153. Ibid. 154. Brenner, “Tsiyunim,” in Writings, 4:1722–1723; originally published in Ha’adama (February 1920). 155.  Brenner, ibid., 1763–1765. 156. Brenner, “Le’inyanenu” [On our issue], in Writings, 4:1758; originally published in Kuntress (April 1920).

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Notes to Chapters Nine and Ten 157. Ibid. 158.  David Shimoni, “Pegisha aharona” [Last meeting], in More Memoirs, 212– 213; Chaya Rotberg, “Pegishot” [Meetings], in Selected Memoirs, 246–247; M. Z. Wolfovsky, “Rishonot ve’aharonot” [First and last], in Selected Memoirs, 270. 159.  Wolfovsky, “Rishonot ve’aharonot.” 160.  Brenner, “Le’inyanenu,” 1758. 161.  Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 235. 162.  Yehuda Sharett to Moshe Sharett, early December 1920, in More Memoirs, 173. 163.  Y. Lichtenboim, “Kabbalat panim” [A welcome], in Selected Memoirs, 250. 164.  Mordechai [Motke] Hadash, “Brenner bagedud im hakrima’im” [Brenner in the Gedud with the Crimeans], in More Memoirs, 186–187. 165.  K. Bar-Lev, “Im gedud ha’avoda be-Migdal” [With the Gedud Ha’avoda in Migdal], in Selected Memoirs, 235. 166.  Poznansky to Chaya, 3 January 1921, in Poznansky Letters, 17. 167.  Poznansky to Chaya, 2 February 1921, in ibid., 18. 168.  Geula Shertok’s testimony to Haim Ben-Asher appears in Ayelet Negev, “Geula Shertok meta beleidata” [Geula Shertok died in childbirth]; quoted in Seven Days: Yedioth Ahronoth Supplement, 10 February 1989. 169.  There is a hint of Brenner’s editing Hasolel in Brenner’s letter to Katznelson, February 1921, in Letters, 441, and also in Geula Shertok to Moshe Shertok, 9 February 1922, in More Memoirs, 228–229. 170.  Brenner to Poznansky, 7 January 1921, in Letters, 439. 171.  Brenner to Poznansky, 7 February 1921, in ibid., 440. 172.  Poznansky to Chaya, 30 March 1921, in ibid., 19–20. 173.  Chaya to Manya and Menachem Poznansky, Berlin, 27 January 1921, in Brenner’s Notebooks, 79. 174.  Chaya to the Poznansky family, 30 January 1921, in ibid., 80–81. 175.  Uri to Brenner, 29 January 1921, in ibid., 82; Chaya to Brenner, Berlin, 21 February 1921, in ibid., 83. 176.  Chaya to Poznansky, Berlin, 4 March 1921, in ibid., 84. 177.  Brenner to Uri, Brenner’s Notebooks, 85–86. 178.  Brenner to Chaya, Tel Aviv, 12 April 1921, in ibid., 87. 179.  Poznansky to Chaya, Tel Aviv, 12 April 1921, in ibid., 88. 180.  Chaya to Poznansky, 4 May 1921, in ibid., 90–91. 181. Ibid., 91.

Chapter Ten 1.  This description of the location appeared in Ha’aretz, 4 May 1921. 2.  On “odd” Louisdor, see Poznansky’s letter to Aryeh Keren-Zvi, 21.10.1920, in Poznansky Letters, 13. On Brenner providing for Louisdor, see Moshe Natan, “Mipi Rivka Yitzkar-schatz” [Chaya Rotberg on the Yitzkar house], in More Mem­ oirs, 217. A 24 March 1922 letter written by David Ben-Gurion to Moshe Louisdor, the writer’s father, indicates that his origins were in Lodz, Poland. See Igrot Ben

Notes to Chapter Ten Gurion (Ben-Gurion’s letters), ed. Yehuda Erez (Tel Aviv, 1973), 2:96. The list of his publications and his unpublished papers are in LA IV-104-96-688. 3.  David Zakkai, “Mi-Ein Ganim ad beit Yitzkar” [From Ein Ganim to the Yitzkar house], in Selected Memoirs, 256. 4.  Testimonies of Malka Shalish and Yitzhak Ben Yosef Marpert, 4 May 1921, CZA L4/1059. See also Rivka Schatz-Yitzkar, “Hag hapesach ha’aharon” [The last Passover], in More Memoirs, 214. 5. Mordechai Kushnir, Ohel lidevarim shebikhtav [A tent for writings] (Tel Aviv, 1921), 3–4. 6.  I found the only contemporaneous testimony of the Lehrers in Kuntress (May 1921), which appeared before the thirtieth day of mourning. On page 3, under the heading “Testimonies,” is the testimony of Ya’akov Lehrer, who recounts the warnings he received to abandon the hives and the rest of the property. He says: “By chance I encountered an automobile and went into the city.” 7.  Nira Elul, daughter of the taxi driver Alex Steinberg, told me about his account (telephone interview, 14 November 2006). The family heard from their father about his journey to rescue Brenner and Brenner’s refusal to be evacuated. The father told this story angrily. I gratefully acknowledge Shulamit Gera and Gila Shaham, who helped me to locate Nira Elul. In the testimony he gave to Haganah Archives researcher Chaya Ironi on 13 July 1950, Steinberg said that he drove to evacuate Brenner and his friends and witnessed the negotiations with him. He knew no Hebrew and did not understand what was said, but going by facial expressions and gestures, he understood that they were refusing to leave. He did not explain why and also did not explain why no one knew about the vehicle’s return without Brenner. Regrettably, the researcher did not question him about this. See testimony of Alex Steinberg, 13 July 1950, 22 July 1950, Haganah Archives (Tel Aviv), 40.23, page 1. 8. See also Kushnir, Ohel lidevarim shebikhtav, 4. The 6 May 1921 issue of Ha’aretz reports: “On that day [Sunday] another friend visited [Brenner] and suggested that he and his family move to the city, but he was reluctant to do so and thought he would be able to defend himself.” 9. “Testimonies,” Kuntress 78–79, 11 May 1921, 3. 10.  Moshe Natan, “Mipi Rivka Yitzkar-Schatz,” 217. 11. Kushnir, Ohel lidevarim shebikhtav, 8–9. 12.  The description is based on testimonies of people who drove to the house and were recorded close to the time of the incident. See CZA L4/1059. See also Kushnir, “Hape’amim ha’ahronot baderekh el me’on Brenner” [The last time on the way to Brenner’s lodging], in Ohel ledevarim shebikhtav, 3–16. 13.  Testimony of Haim Herman, 3 May 1921, CZA L4/1059. 14.  Ibid. In his letter to his sister Ada in Kinneret, 7 May 1921, and also in his letter to his brother Moshe in London, 13 May 1921, Yehuda Shertok reports on the testimony of the Arab woman who asked her employer’s permission to attend the funeral and reported on her return from it. See More Memoirs, 221–225. 15.  Yehuda Shertok to Moshe Shertok, 13 May 1921, in ibid., 224.

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Notes to Chapters Ten and Eleven 16.  Geula Shertok to Moshe Shertok, 9 February 1922, in ibid., 228–229. 17.  Ha’aretz, 4 May 1921. 18.  Ha’aretz, 9 May 1921. 19.  Hapoel Hatzair, 6 May 1921, 6. 20. Y. Lufban, “Biyemei metzuka” [In times of trouble], Hapoel Hatzair, 13 May 1921, 4. 21.  Binyamin Brenner, Great Was the Loneliness, 244–245; Yehuda Shertok to Moshe Shertok, 13 May 1921, More Memoirs, 225. 22.  According to the testimony of Gershon Gera given to Shoshana Brenner, Meir Brenner’s daughter, he received a photograph of Shlomo Brenner, the family patriarch, from a Jew whose father had apparently found it in the Yitzkar house after the murder and kept it for many years. On his deathbed he asked his son to return it to the Brenner family, on condition that his name would not be revealed. This information was conveyed to me by Shoshana Brenner. 23.  Berl Katznelson’s report on the murder of Brenner and his friends, 7 May 1921, in “The Brenner Case” [testimonies on the matter of Brenner and his friends], CZA L4/1059. See also Kushnir, “Hape’amim ha’ahronot baderekh el me’on Brenner.” 24.  Shalom Streit to Poznansky, 8 May 1921, Genazim 75/15630/1. 25.  Poznansky to Chaya, Jaffa, 11 August 1921, Genazim 75/217/15. 26. Katznelson to Leah Meron-Katznelson, London, 16 August 1921, in Katznelson Letters, 1918–1921, 290. 27.  In ibid., 292.

Chapter Eleven 1.  Stiebel to Shimonovich, 5 May 1921, Genazim 165/6280/1. 2.  Lachover to Shalom Streit, Kudova, 11 May 1921, Genazim 314/27297/1. 3.  Schoffman to Asher Barash, 24 May 1921, Genazim 49/8300/75; the letter ends with a message addressed to Devorah Baron. Published in Genazim, no. 79. 4.  Shalom Streit to Asher Barash, undated, Genazim 48/6298/27. 5.  Kruglyakov to Beilin, 21 Tammuz [no year], Genazim A-19/1950. 6.  H. D. Nomberg, “Brenner,” Der Tag [n.d.], LA IV-104-37-113; Reisen, “Y. H. Brenner: Der heiliger martirer unserer,” 375–376. 7.  The memorial gathering was held on 24 July 1921, LA IV-104-37-109a. 8.  Poznansky to Chaya Broide, 15 May 1921, copied by Chaya Broide, Genazim 75/216/15. 9.  Stiebel to Poznansky, 25 August 1921, Genazim 75/32603/1. 10.  On the makeup of the trustees, see Ha’aretz, 14 December 1921; on the preparations for the trial, see Yehoshua Redler [Rabbi Benjamin] to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 6 October 1921, Genazim A-75/51756. See also Poznansky’s letters to Rabbi Benjamin, 7 October 1921, in Poznansky Letters, 33–34; Poznansky to Rabbi Benjamin, 29 January 1923, in ibid., 49–51. See also the correspondence with the Jaffa and Tel Aviv Community Committee, August 1923, LA IV-104-37-108.

Notes to Chapter Eleven 11.  On the announcement to the Jewish press, see the Society of Jewish Writers and Journalists circular letter, signed by Hillel Zeitlin, Warsaw, 23 July 1921, Genazim 75/14772/1. 12.  See Rabbi Benjamin to Asher Barash, 2 January 1923, Genazim A-49/51081; Rabbi Benjamin to Poznansky, Genazim A-75/51751; Stiebel Publishing House to Poznansky, Berlin, 3 April 1928, Genazim 75/15625/1. 13.  LA IV-104-37-108. 14.  Haim Dan to Moshe Sharett, Tel Aviv, 30 January 1959 [confidential file], CZA A245/32/1. 15.  Uri Brenner to Poznansky, Maoz Haim, 23 February 1954 and 9 March 1953, Genazim 75/14989/1. 16.  Yosef Hayim Brener, fun lebn un shafn: Zamlbukh tsum tsvantsikstn yortsayt [Yosef Haim Brenner, his life and achievements: A collection to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his death], ed. Shlomo Grodzensky (New York: Natsyonaler Arbeṭer Farband, 1941). 17.  See Poznansky’s articles from the 1930s and 1940s, LA IV-104-106b. 18.  Poznansky’s notes, page 29, LA IV-104-106b. 19.  Yehoshua Redler to Poznansky, Jerusalem, 20 November 1921, Genazim A-75/51758. 20. Ibid. 21. Rabbi Benjamin, “Brenner behayav uvemoto” [The life and death of Brenner], Moznayim, 10 May 1929, 8–9. 22.  Poznansky to Chaya Broide, evening, 3 November 1921, in Poznansky Let­ ters, 34. 23.  Hapoel Hatzair, 6 May 1921, 9–12. 24.  Moshe Glickson “Yizkor” (In memoriam), Hapoel Hatzair, addendum to the 19 May 1921 issue. 25.  Poznansky to Brenner, 14 February 1921, in Poznansky Letters, 19. 26.  Binyamin Brenner to Ahuva Brenner, Tiberias, 24 December 1921, in More Memoirs, 192–193. 27.  Aharonowitz to Poznansky, Tel Aviv, 24 May 1921, Mikhtavim, 274. 28. Ya’akov Fichman, “Im Brenner” [With Brenner], Hatekufa (July–September 1921), 463. Shimoni has a different version of the same idea, stating that Brenner told him that he loves life, “but if called upon to give my life for Uri, I will give it unhesitatingly, gladly, with a feeling of happiness,” in Forty Years of Hapoel Hatzair, 81. 29.  Fichman, “Im Brenner,” 465. 30.  For example, in his letter to Shalom Streit immediately after the murder, Rabinowitz explains why he had not met with Brenner after his return to Tel Aviv. The main reason was that David Zakkai had told him that Brenner was planning to go to the Gedud Ha’avoda camp in Rosh Ha’ayin and also to Petach Tikva, where Rabinowitz lived. Undated, Genazim 27456/17.

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Notes to Chapter Eleven 31.  Poznansky to Chaya Broide [copied by Chaya Broide], Jaffa, 11 June 1921, Genazim 75/217/15. 32.  Hillel Zeitlin, “Values and memories,” Hatekufa (February–June 1922), 619. 33. Ibid., 633. 34. Ibid., 644. 35. Ibid., 621. 36.  Poznansky to Shalom Streit, Jaffa, 7 July 1921, in Poznansky Letters, 30. 37.  Ya’akov Malachov, Akharei mitato shel Brenner [After Brenner’s cortege] (Jaffa, 1921). 38.  Kook to Brenner, Jaffa, October 1907, Genazim 15840/1. 39.  Kook to Poznansky, 31 January 1933, Genazim [no stamp]. 40.  The article appeared in Baderekh (Warsaw), 1931. The quotation is from Joshua Ovsay, “Y. H. Brenner,” in Ma’amarim ureshimot [Articles and writings] (New York: Ohel, 1946), 179. 41.  Eva Tabenkin, “Ma haya lanu Brenner” [What Brenner was for us], in ­Selected Writings, 214. 42.  Chaya Rotberg, “Pegishot,” in ibid, 242. 43. Ibid., 244. 44.  D. K., “Pakhad” [Fear], Kuntress (April 1923), 8–10. 45.  H. P., “Bemigdal” [At Migdal], in ibid., 13. 46. Y. D. Bercovich, “Biyeme Hameorer” (In the days of Hameorer), in ­Selected Memoirs, 323. 47.  Ewa M. Thompson, Understanding Russia: The Holy Fool in Russian Cul­ ture (Lanham, MD, 1987), 9. 48. Ibid., 141. 49.  Regarding Katznelson, see his comment on Kafka: “After the great Russian [apparently Dostoevsky] no European artist-philosopher touched me as he did” (letter to Dov Stock [Sadan], Tel Aviv, November–December 1931, in Berl Katznelson, Igrot, ed. Anita Shapira and Esther Reisen [Tel Aviv, 1984], 6:65). Regarding Ben-Gurion, see his conversation with Hazaz, “Al hamedina vehasifrut: du siakh” [The state and literature: A conversation], in Anita Shapira, Hatanakh vehazehut hayisraelit, 154: “I was a great admirer of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov.” 50.  Schoffman, “Brenner in Lvov,” 190. 51.  See Brenner, “Ha’arakhat atzmenu bishloshet hakrakhim.” 52.  Schoffman, “Y. H. Brenner,” in Selected Memoirs, 298. See also Ovsay: “In the face of the horrors of our time, the rattle of the death wagons and the pillars of smoke from the crematoria, his words become balls of flame, the tolling of the great bell” (Ma’amarim ureshimot, 164). 53.  Asher Beilin, Y. H. Brenner (bitekufat Hameorer) [Brenner in the Hameorer period] (Merhavia, 1943), 12. 54.  Zakkai, “Lidmuto.” 55. Ovsay, Ma’amarim ureshimot, 165.

Notes to Chapter Eleven 56. Beilin, Y. H. Brenner (bitekufat Hameorer), 48. 57.  Poznansky to Wolfovsky, 19 September 1922, in Poznansky Letters, 39. 58.  Poznansky to Beilin, 1 March 1932, Genazim A-19/43100. 59.  M. Z. Wolfovsky, “Rishonot ve-akhronot,” 270. 60.  Poznansky to Beilin, Tel Aviv, 1 August 1932, Genazim A-19/43100. 61.  Dov Sadan, “Al Yosef Haim Brenner” [On Yosef Haim Brenner], Molad 19 (June 1961), 291–300; 291. A slightly different version appears in Sadan’s book, Beyn din leheshbon: Masot al sofrim vesifrut [Between judgment and reckoning: Essays on writers and literature] (Tel Aviv, 1963), 137–154. 62.  H. Rivkin, “Matsevat Brenner” [Brenner’s gravestone], from the exhibition of the Society of Hebrew Artists, Hahayim (Life), vol. 1, no. 2 (1922), LA IV-104-37-113; the illustration apparently commemorates the first anniversary of Brenner’s death. 63. Katznelson, Ha’aliya hashniya, 25. 64.  Shalom Streit to Rabbi Benjamin, 23 January 1922, in which he quotes from Schoffman’s letter to him, Genazim 99/7661/39. 65. A letter from Shalom Streit to Yeshayahu Streit, undated, in which he quotes from Rabbi Benjamin’s letter, Genazim 314/27594/4. 66.  For examples of Brenner’s declarations on stopping writing, see Yehuda Burla, “Im Sofrim” [With writers], 2:36; Mordechai Kushnir, Bnei Hador umorav (Tel Aviv, 1958), 32–33. 67.  Poznansky to Ya’akov Cohen, 1 August 1922, in Poznansky Letters, 37. 68.  Schoffman to Shalom Streit, 18 January 1923, Genazim 314/27473/13. 69.  See Poznansky to Chaya Broide, 13 June 1921, in Poznansky Letters, 24. 70.  Poznansky to Chaya Broide, 7 January 1933, in ibid., 158–159; 31 March 1933, in ibid., 162–163. 71. Poznansky’s letters to Zilla Drapkin, 7 January 1933, in ibid., 158–159; 31 March 1933, 162–163. 72.  Hayug, “Memoirs,” 198. 73.  Ya’akov Yosef Hoz to Rabbi Benjamin, Tel Aviv, 1 May 1940, Genazim A-99/85967. 74.  Poznansky to Schoffman, 26 December 1935, in Poznansky Letters, 183–185. See also Nurit Govrin, Me-ofek el ofek, 1:171–172, 2:510–511. 75.  Shalom Streit to Poznansky, 13 September 1934, Genazim 75/156381/1. 76.  Poznansky to Itzkovitz, 24 July 1939, in Poznansky Letters, 209–210; Shapira, Berl, 647. 77. Gershon Schoffman, “Mekom megurav ha’aharon” (His last dwelling place), in Selected Memoirs, 297. 78.  E. Solodor to Azar, Jerusalem, 8 December 1921, LA IV-104-37-12. 79.  Jacob Rabinowitz, “Al Brenner ve-Eretz Yisrael” [On Brenner and Palestine], Hedim (Tel Aviv) (July 1923), 51–56; 55–56. 80. Kimchi, Masot ktanot, 49–51. 81.  Zalman Schneur to Poznansky, 4 March 1935, Genazim 75/43039-11.

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Notes to Chapter Eleven 82. Sadan, Beyn din leheshbon, 153. 83.  “Dvar hayom,” Davar editorial, 24 April 1960. My thanks to Sharon Geva, who brought this piece to my attention. 84.  On Sharett’s talk, see Haim Dan to Moshe Sharett, Tel Aviv, 30 January 1959 [confidential file], CZA A245/32/1. 85.  Shlomo Grodzensky, “Igeret Y. H. Brenner to B. Katznelson” [Brenner’s letter to Katznelson], in literary and art supplement of Davar, 2 May 1958. 86. See, for example, the symposium on Brenner in Mibifnim 43 (Spring–­ Summer 1981). 87.  “Berl Katznelson Reads from Breakdown and Bereavement with Mourners,” More Memoirs, 230.

Index

Abramovich, Sholem Yankev. See Mendele Mocher Seforim Abramson (Ben-Avram), Chaim Shalom, 142, 146, 154–55, 156, 191 Abramson, Abba Reuben, and family, 142–43, 154–59 Abramson, Moshe (M. Hayug), 142, 146, 154–55, 156, 159, 395, 396, 420n18 After, Ya’akov, 363–64 Agnon, S. Y. (Shmuel Czaczkes), 244–57; And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight (Vehaya he’akov lemishor), 244, 247–49, 253, 255, 257, 258–59, 274; on attitudes of YHB to women and marriage, 249–50, 279; on beach at Jaffa with YHB, 186; on Bialik, 181; Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB) and, 256, 348, 357–58; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 250–56, 272, 310, 336, 357–58; on financial carefulness of YHB, 276–77; on followers of YHB, 179, 246; “Forsaken Wives” (Agunot), 169, 244, 246, 249, 259; Hapoel Hatzair (journal) and, 173, 237; immigration to Palestine, 169, 172, 246; Katznelson, Berl, essay on, 244; “Leylot” (Nights), 244, 255, 258, 259; Lvov, meeting with YHB in, 245–46; on marriage of YHB, 272; Only Yesterday (Tmol Shilshom), 244, 248; personal relationship with YHB, 245–48, 254, 255, 261; photo of, 185; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 310; Reisen on, 151; on return of YHB to Hapoel Hatzair, 242; “Tishrei,” 246, 247, 253, 259; on writing of YHB, 190, 256–57; Yefet literary enterprise, 216; “Yosef Haim Brenner behayav uvemoto,” 244 agricultural laborer, YHB’s work as, 169–70 Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg): “All in All “ (Sakh hakol), 215, 435n341; Berdyczewski versus, 129, 135, 203, 208,

210–11; Bialik aligned with, 63, 64, 147; “Brenner affair” and, 202–3, 205–10, 212, 213–15, 432n171; at Hashiloah, 42; Here and There (YHB) parodying, 232; on Klausner’s Yeshu hanotzri, 432n178; “Labor Palestine” and, 213–15; in London, 101, 130; Maximovsky as disciple of, 77, 98, 129; “Of Two Minds” (Al shtei hase’ipim), 202, 208, 430n141; in Palestine, 165, 178, 214, 215; on secularism at Tel Aviv gymasium, 290; on separation of Jewish religion and Jewish identity, 21, 202–3, 213–14, 430n131; “Slavery in Freedom” (Avdut betokh herut), 202; “The Torah from Zion” (Torah mi-Zion), 213–14; “Truth from the land of Israel” (Emet me-Eretz Yisrael), 215; unsuccessful meeting of YHB with, 129–31, 205; on Young Turks revolution (1908), 287, 443n21; Zionism of, 22, 321, 387 Aharonowitz, Yosef: on beach at Jaffa with YHB, 186; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 252; “Brenner affair” and, 207, 208, 209, 211; character and personality of, 173; dath of YHB and, 376; departure of YHB from Hapoel Hatzair editorial board and, 184; friendship with YHB, 246; Here and There (YHB), response to depiction of editorial board in, 233–35, 242; Histadrut, establishment of, 338; immigration to Palestine, 169; Ma’abarot and, 318, 449n35; mother of YHB, obituary of, 5; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 309; post-war renewal of contact with YHB and return to Palestine, 309, 314–15; return of YHB to Hapoel Hatzair and, 242, 265; in WWI, 283, 284, 287, 288. See also Hapoel Hatzair Aharonson, Z. Y. See Anochi, Z. Y.

461

462

Index Ahiasaf publishing house, 13, 50, 56–57, 60, 66 Akhdut Ha’avoda (Labor Unity) party, 315–19, 327, 334, 336, 337, 351, 353, 355, 374, 392, 393, 448–49n29 Aleichem, Sholem, 58, 63, 100–101, 103, 382; “Tevye der milkhiker” (Tevye the dairyman), 81, 198 Alexander II (tsar), 38 Aliens Act of 1905 (UK), 55 Alliance Israélite Universelle (Alliance), 172 Alon, Yigal Paikovich, 448 Am Oved publishing house, 373 anarchists, 52–54, 58, 67, 71, 74, 109, 155, 203, 241, 316 Der Anfang, 172 Anochi (Aharonson), Z. Y.: Elyashuv’s attack on, 145, 421n51; Hameorer and, 91, 113, 121; military service of YHB and, 40, 41, 42–44, 46, 49; move from writing in Hebrew to Yiddish, 95; in Palestine, 194; “Reb Abba,” 194; “The Little One” (Hayenuka), 42, 44; youthful friendship with YHB, 21 An-sky, S. (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport), 74 anthologies. See Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), anthologies edited by Arabs: Beilin’s enquiries about beauty of girls in Palestine, 175, 176; Epstein, Yitzhak, “She’ela ne’elama” (The hidden question), 232; in Here and There (YHB), 220–21, 225, 227, 230, 231, 232; hostilities between Jews and, 97, 178, 241, 243–44, 260, 349–50; inquiries of YHB about moving to Palestine and, 97; Jerusalem, Passover 1920 riots in, 352; as laborers, 178, 215; May riots (1921), 359, 360; pan-Semitism of Rabbi Benjamin, disputes with YHB over, 259–61, 351; Tel Hai incident and evolution of YHB’s thought on Jewish self-defense, 349–55. See also death of YHB Arbeiter Stimme, 408n18 Around the Point (Misaviv lanekuda; YHB), 60–66; Bialik and, 58, 59, 60, 64–66, 147; Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB) compared, 347, 348; Here and There (YHB) and, 226, 230; Katznelson, Berl, on, 393; London, YHB in, 53, 58, 59, 60–66, 72, 75, 78, 85, 104, 132–33; military service of YHB and, 42, 43, 44; sexual ambiguity in, 390; youth of YHB and, 15, 16, 18 Asch, Shalom, 153; Pedigree (Hayikhus), 192 Averbuch, Zvi (Alexander Heshin), 238, 277, 279, 319, 332, 349, 372 Avissar, David, 324

Avrahamit (Gluchman), Dora, Hayyim, 155, 156, 159, 164, 424n103 Azar (Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitz), 172, 207, 208, 211, 216, 237, 243–44, 272, 280, 315, 397 Ba’al Makhshoves. See Elyashuv, A. babies and children, YHB’s special feeling for, 6, 112, 155, 161, 162, 163, 230, 305, 381, 390–91 Baha al-Din, 286 Bakfar, 284, 314 Balfour Declaration, 304, 311, 312 Balzac, Honoré, 383 Barash, Asher, 335, 375, 398 Baron, Devorah, 165, 172, 208, 233, 371; Meanwhile (Le’et ata), 286 Bar-Tuvia (Shraga Feybush Frenkel), 106, 132, 169 Baruchov., M., “Notes on Hygiene,” 324 Bashi, Haham, 287 Bauer, Otto, 323 Baum, Shalom Sander, 16–18, 20, 43–44, 49, 60, 104, 128, 203, 376, 403n58 Be’er, Haim, Gam ahavatam, gam sin’atam (Their love and their hate), 56 Beilin, Asher: death of YHB and, 371; on emotional difficulties of YHB, 389; Gnessin anthology and, 275–76; immigration to Palestine, 395; London, friendship with YHB in, 75, 80, 100–109, 112–13, 117, 119, 120, 122–25, 127, 129–31; in Lvov, 139; Lvov, correspondence with Schoffman and YHB in, 141–42, 143, 154, 158, 160, 163, 164–65; Lvov, YHB’s departure for, 134; marital unhappiness of, 101, 103, 414n11; on military service of YHB, 45, 47, 48, 51; on mood swings of YHB, 386; Palestine, correspondence with YHB in, 175–77, 193, 236, 273, 275–76, 309; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 309–10; “Without Anything” (Bli-ma), 309–10; “Y. H. Brenner in London,” 108, 399 Beilin, Jacob (Koba or Yankele), 100, 103 Beilin, Zipora (Tsipa), 100 Beit Ha’am, Jerusalem, 180, 241 Belinsky, Vissarion, 14, 320 Ben Avuya (Yitzhak Wilkansky; A. Zioni), 95, 110, 164, 207, 208, 209, 211, 237, 284, 296, 301, 314, 375 Ben Shemen, 195, 284, 287–88, 289, 297, 301 Ben-Atar, Haim, 203 Ben-Avigdor (Abraham Leib Shelkowitz), 12, 30, 66 Ben-Avram (Abramson), Chaim Shalom, 142, 146, 154–55, 156, 191

Index Ben-Eliezer, M., 121 Ben-Gurion, David, 169, 173, 238–39, 240, 285–86, 316, 373, 384 Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 171, 203, 210 Ben-Yehuda, Hemda, 171 Ben-Yisrael (Poppes), 199 Ben-Yitzhak, Avraham, 394 Ben-Zion, Simcha, 63–64, 172, 181, 194, 209, 210, 247, 313, 426n44 Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak, 68, 173–75, 179, 184, 236– 38, 240, 265, 285, 286, 330; “Hatenu’a ha’aravit” (The Arab movement), 351 Bercovich, Y. D., 58, 63–64, 91, 139, 326, 338, 382 Berdyczewski, Emmanuel, 136 Berdyczewski, Micha Yosef: advice given to YHB by, 419n15; Ahad Ha’am versus, 129, 135, 203, 208, 210–11; Bialik and, 63; on “Brenner affair,” 210–11; Breslau, YHB’s visit to, 134, 135–37; death of YHB and, 371; Gnessin anthology and, 275; Hameorer and, 105, 106, 113, 123, 136; Hapoel Hatzair article by YHB on, 265; “lepers” controversy and, 146; Lifschitz and, 301; marriage of YHB, notification of, 272; on Out of a Gloomy Valley, 29; Palestine, YHB’s plans to move to, 164; pessimism of, 26, 129, 137; post-war correspondence with YHB, 309, 331; reclusiveness of, 179; Revivim and, 148; stories taught by YHB in Tel Aviv, 293; “Stuff and Nonsense” (Urva parakh), 406n26; “Two Camps,” 15, 22–23; “the will” in writings of, 25 Berdyczewski, Rachel, 136, 137 Berlin: Brenner, Chaya Broide and Uri, in, 332–36, 357–58; visit of YHB to, 134–35; Zionists and Hebraists in, 76–77, 90 Bershadsky, Yeshayahu, 151 Bezalel School, Jerusalem, 171–72, 180, 277 Bialik, Haim Nachman: Besha’a zo anthology dedicated to, 288–89; “Brenner affair” and, 205, 206, 209, 210, 212; “From the Path” (YHB) and, 47; Hameorer and, 85, 101, 105–6, 148, 386; at Hashiloah, 45, 53, 56, 58, 105–6, 145, 147–48, 181; “In the City of Slaughter,” 58, 76, 353; “lepers” controversy and, 145, 147–48; Naroditsky and, 70; in Palestine, 165, 180–81; “A Pleasant Mistake,” 148– 49, 150, 181, 266, 386; poems taught by YHB in Tel Aviv, 293; relationship with YHB, 56–60, 64–66, 147–50, 180–82, 196, 429n126; “Scroll of Fire” (Megillat ha’esh), 181; “A Twig Fell” (Tsanakh lo zalzal), 239; younger writers and, 63–64; youthful reading of, by YHB, 12, 30

Bialik, Manya, 180 Bialystok, 9–12, 29–31 Bichovsky, Shimon: Gnessin memorial anthology and, 274–75; Gnessin obtaining YHB’s articles from, 273–74; Hameorer and, 92–93, 122; letters of YHB, publication of, 373; London, correspondence with YHB in, 76–77, 78, 80, 89, 92–93, 94, 98, 106, 107, 112, 121–22; Lvov, correspondence with YHB in, 141, 142, 147, 164; military service of YHB and, 40, 49, 51; youthful friendship with YHB, 8, 12, 15, 23, 28 Bildung (publishing house), 31 Biluim, 24 bisexuality/homosexuality, 62–63, 102, 126, 273, 390 Bisko, A. L., 71 Bismarck, Otto von, 259 Black Hundreds, 78, 80 Black Thursday (17 December, 1914), 286–87 Blok, Alexander, “The Twelve,” 322 blood libel, 361 Bluwstein, Rachel, 172 Bobruysk, 50–51 Bogadin, 82, 97–98, 112 Bolshevik revolution (1919), 319–24, 395 Borochov, Ber, 68, 237, 351 Braun, Eliezer, 363–64 Breakdown and Bereavement (Shkhol ve­ kishalon; YHB), 338–49; Agnon and, 256, 348, 357–58; Around the Point compared, 347, 348; Ben-Yitzhak on, 394; composition of, 237, 267, 306, 314, 339; “A Depressed Man” (Enosh ki yidkeh) and, 266, 276, 277; excerpts published in Hapoel Hatzair, 288; Here and There compared, 339–40, 345, 346; life experiences of YHB co-opted for, 169, 216, 226; Out of the Depths compared, 347, 348; public reception of, 348–49; publication of, 313, 338–39, 372; least autobiographical of YHB’s work, 347, 391; structure, themes, and synopsis, 339–48; In Winter compared, 340, 347, 348; yurodivi (holy fool) characters in, 384 Breinin, Reuben, 134–35 Brenner, Ahuva (Lyuba; sister), 197–98, 217, 257, 279, 297, 355, 367, 429n130, 438n75 Brenner, Batya (sister), 266, 297, 367 Brenner, Binyamin (brother), 197–98, 217, 257, 279, 296–300, 355, 367, 375–76, 429n130, 438n75 Brenner, Chaiya-Raisa (mother), 3, 4, 5, 197 Brenner, Chaya Broide (wife): Agnon and, 250–56, 272, 310, 336; articles published

463

464

Index in Ganenu by, 328; Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB) and, 348; correspondence between YHB and, 280–81, 307, 314, 328, 395; death of YHB and, 369, 373–74; development of YHB’s romantic relationship with, 268–71; difficulties of YHB relating to women and, 389–90; divorce from YHB, 327–36, 391; Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and, 385; in Europe with Uri, 330–36, 348, 357–59, 391; family, background, and immigration to Palestine, 251; FeinsodSukenik, Hassia, and, 264, 265, 278; on financial carefulness of YHB, 277; jam sent to YHB’s brother by, 297; in Jerusalem circle of YHB’s friends, 253, 261–62; as kindergarten teacher, 251, 252–53, 261, 279, 303, 309; life after death of YHB, 395; married life of YHB with, 278–81; photo of, 329; on post-mortem publication of YHB’s writings and letters, 280, 372; Poznansky family correspondence with, 302, 306, 331, 334–35, 356–57, 358–59; proposal of, and marriage to, YHB, 271–73; study in Germany, 251, 252; Tel Aviv, fondness for, 289; tensions in marriage to YHB, 305, 307–8; during WWI, 301, 302, 303, 305–7 Brenner, Lyuba (Ahuva; sister), 197–98, 217, 257, 279, 297, 355, 367, 429n130, 438n75 Brenner, Meir (brother), 197, 266–67, 297, 367, 395, 440n106, 456n22 Brenner, Shlomo (father), 3–7, 9, 10–12, 35–36, 137, 197, 395, 456n22 Brenner, Shmuel (brother), 6, 35, 395 Brenner, Shoshanna (niece), 456n22 Brenner, Uri Nissan (son): birth of, 280–81; chickenpox of, 309; childhood letters to YHB, 314, 332; death of YHB and, 369; devotion of YHB to and sorrow at separation from, 301, 304, 329–30, 332–33, 358, 361, 376, 386, 390–91, 457n28; in Europe with mother, 330–36, 357–59; life after death of YHB, 395; named after Gnessin, 129, 276; photo of, 329; separation of parents, 327–36; in WWI, 297, 301, 302, 304, 307 Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB): as agricultural laborer, 169–70; babies and children, special feeling for, 6, 112, 155, 161, 162, 163, 230, 305, 381, 390–91; Bar Mitzvah, 7; birth (1881), parents, and family background, 3–6; under British Mandate (1918–1921), 309–59; character of, 5–6; death of (1921), 360–84; divorce, 327–36, 391; emotional relationships, difficulty with, 129, 389–90; English studied by,

88–89, 412–13n120; finances and attitude to money and spending, 10, 13–14, 15, 30–31, 53, 55–57, 75, 88, 143, 217, 276–77, 283–84, 295–96, 313; German learned by, 12, 14, 420n18; hypochondria and psychosomatic illnesses, 10, 94, 215, 247, 314, 376, 386; in Jerusalem (1909), 173–74, 175, 182–84; in Jerusalem (1911–1914), 237–81; Jews and Judaism in work of, 391; as Lamed Vavnik, 382, 385; legacy and commemoration of, 392–95, 397–299; as librarian, 13, 67, 410n53; in London (1904–1908), 53–133; in Lvov (1908–1909), 134–66; marriage of (See Brenner, Chaya Broide); military service (1901–1904), 37–52; money sent to family by, 31, 42, 174, 276; mood swings and depressions of, 385–88; mystical elements of personality and writings of, 374–84; Palestine, early years in (1909–1911), 167– 236; pessimism of, 15–18, 20, 44, 129, 137, 179, 203, 387, 392; photos of, 84, 140, 185, 240, 368; physical appearance of, 8, 14, 102, 355; political involvement, relative lack of, 391–92; religious education of, 4, 6–11; Russian culture and literature influencing, 384–85; Russian learned by, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 21; secular education of, 7, 9–15; self-flagellation of, 102, 142, 385; significance of, 1–2; socialism, youthful exposure to, 18–20; as teacher, 289–96, 302, 303, 355–57; as typesetter, 74–75, 82, 89, 96, 108, 123, 136, 139, 142, 144, 163, 168, 170; Weltschmerz and youthful concern for Jewish people, 23–28; women, gender, and sexuality, issues with, 389–90; in World War I (1914–1918), 282–308; yurodivi (holy fool), as type of, 382–85; Zionism, youthful exposure to, 13, 15, 20–24. See also specific main entries for subjects listed as subentries above, e.g. military service Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), anthologies edited by: Besha’a zo (At this time), 288–89; Ha’aretz veha’avoda, 305, 306, 314–15, 317, 324–25; Hatzida (Sideways; memorial anthology for Uri Nissan Gnessin), 126–27, 267, 274, 275–76, 388, 402n35–36; Hayyei Trumpeldor, 357; He’atid, 258; In the Meantime (Beynatayim), 258, 259, 267; Netivot, 258, 276, 277 Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), as writer: Agnon on, 190, 256–57; death, publications following, 372–73; earliest writing efforts, 7, 8, 9–13; in early years in Palestine (1909–1911), 182–83, 191,

Index 192, 197 (See also Here and There); first published works, 20, 28–36; Hebrew, commitment to writing in, 57–59; London, employment as writer in, 55–58, 66–67, 69–75; loneliness and, 390; loss of writings, 33, 35–36, 41, 51, 53, 367–69; in Lvov, 142, 154, 160–63; during military service, 41–42; mood swings and depressions, ability to write during, 386; Naroditsky on writing habits, 107; pseudonyms, 71, 83, 192, 204, 323; translations, 216, 235, 288, 296, 338, 372; writer’s block following Here and There, 256, 265–66; in Yiddish, 57–59, 74–75, 373, 408n18 Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), journal publishing and editing of: Bakfar, 284, 314; Ha’akhdut, 236, 237–42, 240, 256, 265, 267, 274, 279; Hasolel, 357, 454n169; Kuntress, 317, 318, 319, 353, 363, 365, 372, 375, 397; Lachover’s proposed literary journal, 183; literary projects with Rabbi Benjamin and Streit brothers, 257–59; “Makhshavot” (Thoughts) literary series, 132, 137, 139. See also Ha’adama; Hameorer; Hapoel Hatzair; Revivim Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), works of: “The Audience Demands” (Hakahal doresh), 66; “Between Himself and Himself” (Beino leveino), 413n140; “Between Waters” (Beyn mayim lemayim), 149, 170, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 196, 209, 217, 226, 234, 348, 429n123; Beyond Boundaries, 107–8, 110–12, 132, 137, 142, 163, 347, 384, 395; Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), YHB’s translation of, 216, 235, 296, 338, 372; “Days of Sun,” 59; “Deliverance and Recompense” (Hageula vehatmura), 369; “A Depressed Man” (Enosh ki yidkeh), 266, 276, 277; Evening and Morning (Erev uvoker), 119–20, 142, 147, 164, 415n44, 420n31; “Faithful” (Hane’eman), 150, 288; “For the Hundredth Time” (Bapa’am hame’ah), 182; “For the Public to Judge” (Lemishpat hatsibur), 300; For the Time Being (Le’et ata), 66, 415n44; From A to M (Me-aleph ad mem), 48, 82, 88, 89, 94, 132; From the Beginning (Mehatkhala), 293, 314, 369, 394–95, 446n90; “From my Notebook” (Mitokh pinkasi), 259; “From the Path” (Min hamishol), 47, 191–92; “From the Side” (“Min hazavit”)/”The Jerusalemite,” 56, 64; “Hahu gavra,” 51; “He sent me a long letter” (Mikhtav

arokh shalakh li), 86, 87; “He Told Her” (Hu amar la), 75–76, 88, 198, 350, 393; “He Told Himself” (Hu siper leatzmo), 50, 78–79, 80, 94, 413n140; “Hendil,” 64, 401n11; “In the press and literature: On the phenomenon of apostasy” (Ba’itonut ubasifrut: Al hizayon hashmad), 198–201, 212, 378; “Incidentally” (Agav orkha), 167, 177, 178, 181; The Last Ones (Ha’akhronim), 53, 59; Letters to Russia (Mikhtavim leRussia), 86; “Nerves” (Atzabim), 168, 192; Nothing (Lo khlum), 80, 413n140; “On the entry [of the British into Palestine]” (Leregel haknisa), 306; “On the Road” (Al haderekh), 100; “One Year” (Shana ahat), 3, 35, 37, 44, 45, 47, 142, 148, 163, 164; “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes” (Ha’arakhat atzmenu bishloshet hakrakhim), 237, 267–68, 378, 393, 394; Out of a Gloomy Valley (Me’emek akhor), 20, 29–30, 39; Out of the Depths, 160–63, 164, 347, 348, 384, 391; “The Palestine genre and its adjuncts” (Hazhaner ha-Eretz-Yisraeli veavizareihu), 234; “Penitential prayers” (Selihot), 5; “A Piece of Bread” (“Pat lechem”), 28, 42, 130; “There” (Shama), 6; “These too are a writer’s sighs” (Gam eleh ankhot sofer), 242–43; “Travel Notes” (Rishmei derekh), 51–52, 66, 192; “Twice” (Pa’amayyim), 401n11; “Uri Nissan,” 275–76; “The Way Out” (Hamotza), 304–5, 376. See also Around the Point; Breakdown and Bereavement; Here and There; In Winter “Brenner affair,” 198–215; Ahad Ha’am and, 202–3, 205–10, 212, 213–15; Hacohen, Mordechai Ben Hillel, and, 206–7, 290; Haherut article, 203–5; Here and There (YHB) and, 233; Odessa Committee and, 172, 206–11, 213, 214; original article on apostasy by YHB in Hapoel Hatzair, 198–203; public/literary debate over, 207–12; response of YHB to, 204, 209– 10, 212–13; separation of Jewish religion and identity, YHB on, 200–201 Breslau, YHB’s visit to, 134, 135–37 Breslavsky, Moshe, 373 Brinker, Menachem, 434–35n237, 434n227 British Mandate (1918–1921), 309–59; Akhdut Ha’avoda party, 315–19; divorce and departure of Chaya and Uri for Europe, 327–36, 348; Gedud Ha’avoda camp, Migdal, YHB at, 348, 355–57; Histadrut, formation of, 336–38; initial Jewish elation regarding, 311–12; liter-

465

466

Index ary activity of YHB under, 312–15; May riots (1921), 359, 360, 361–63; renewed contacts with friends post-war, 309–11; response of YHB to, 312; Russian revolution, reactions of Palestinian Jews to, 319–24; Tel Hai incident, Jewish selfdefense, and Arab hostilities, YHB on, 349–55; volunteering for Palestinian battalions, controversy over, 311–12, 315–16. See also death of YHB; Ha’adama British occupation of Palestine in WWI, 286, 287, 302, 303, 304 Broide, Chaya. See Brenner, Chaya Broide Broide, Yeshayahu, 335 Bronstein, Lev Davidovich (Leon Trotsky), 26–27 Buber, Martin, 323; Tales of the Hasidim, 392 Bugrashov, Haim, 289, 294 Bund: desertion of YHB from military service and, 49–51; London, YHB in, 57, 77, 87, 90, 408n18; Yiddish used by, 57, 152; youthful exposure of YHB to, 18–19, 26, 36, 392, 403n66 Burla, Yehuda, 326; “Luna,” 324; Without a Star (Bli kokhav), 324 Cahan, Jacob, 106, 236 Caligula (Roman emperor), 188 Cervantes, Miguel, 294 Chabad Hasidim, 4, 7 Chaike, Brenner influenced by, 88 Chekhov, Anton, 93, 458n49; “Habitza” (Mire), 244, 274 children and infants, YHB’s special feeling for, 6, 112, 155, 161, 162, 163, 230, 305, 381, 390–91 Chizik, Chana, 226, 375, 434n223 Chizik, Ephraim, 434n223 Chizik, Rivka, 226–27, 347 Chizik, Sarah, 326, 375, 434n223 Christianity: apostasy article by YHB in Hapoel Hatzair, 198–203 (See also “Brenner affair”); Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB) and, 341; historical Jesus, Jewish writers on, 200–201, 209, 432n178; Jewish conversion to, 198–99, 430n131–32; Out of the Depths (YHB) and, 162; Smolenskin’s children conversion to, 195; “That Man” as reference to Jesus, 44, 162; YHB on music and paintings of, 109–10 Chwolson, Daniel, 198 Club und Institut Arbeiter Freund (Workers’ Friend Club and Institute), London, 67 Cohen, Jacob, 50, 87–88,

Cohen, Jacob, (a different person), 167–68 Cohen, Rosa, 19, 50 Cohen, Virgili, 19, 50, 403n66 Committee for the Revival of the Hebrew Language in Galicia, 139 Communist Party, 310, 316, 353, 360 communists and communism, 54, 70, 203, 310, 316, 323, 331–32, 353, 360, 396 Cooper, James Fenimore, Last of the Mohicans, 23, 25, 26 Creditor, S. L., 82 Czaczkes, Shmuel. See Agnon, S. Y. Czernowitz Conference of Yiddish Writers (1908), 151–54 D. K., diary of, 382 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 312 Darwin, Charles, 202 Davar, 373 death of YHB (1921), 360–84; burial, 366–67; evacuation of Mantura house, efforts at, 362–64, 376–78, 455n7; investigation of, 364–65, 367–69, 373–74; May rallies and riots, 359, 360, 361–63; memorial service, 372; murder of YHB and five others, 364–65; mystical elements of YHB’s personality and writings stressed after, 374–84; reaction to, 365–72, 374–75, 393; writings and papers on, 367–69, 372–73; Yitzkar family, room in Mantura house rented by YHB from, 353, 360–61 Democratic Fraction, 68 depression. See mood swings and depressions of YHB Diesendruck, Zvi, 348, 372 divorce of YHB, 327–36, 391 Don-Yihye, A., 82 Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Ben-Gurion on, 458n49; The Brothers Karamazov, 320, 385; Crime and Punishment, 28, 120, 216, 235, 270–71, 295–96, 313, 320, 338, 372, 383; The Idiot, 383; lifelong admiration of YHB for, 384–85; London, YHB in, 63, 94, 109; Lvov, YHB in, 160, 162; Memoirs from the House of the Dead, 37; military service of YHB and, 38, 63, 94, 109, 160, 162, 266, 271, 294, 319, 347, 384–85, 458n49; Palestine, YHB in, 266, 294, 319, 347; YHB’s translation of Crime and Punishment, 216, 235, 296, 338, 372; youthful reading of, by YHB, 14, 28, 38 Drapkin, Zilla and Uri Nissan, 395 Eighth Zionist Congress, 117, 139

Index

Faisal (king of Syria), 348 Feffermeister, Dina (later Shimonovich), 252, 264, 272, 311 Feinsod-Sukenik, Hassia, 253, 261–65, 268– 69, 270, 278, 389, 439n90 Fichman, Jacob, 106, 160, 217, 257, 318 First World War. See World War I First Zionist Congress, 13 Flaum, Shlomit, 253, 261, 262, 278, 439n90 Franz Josef (emperor), 131 “free Jew,” concept of, 145, 200, 203, 212, 220 Freie Arbeiter Welt, 74, 75, 89 French Revolution, 321 Frenkel, Shraga Feybush (Bar-Tuvia), 106, 132, 169 Freud, Sigmund, 384 Fried, Yosef, 246, 252 Friedman, Haim, 382 Frishman, David, 16, 29, 120, 143, 178–79, 275, 349

Gnessin, Uri Nissan: Agnon, YHB letters of introduction for, 245–46; Baum and, 403n58; on Berdyczewski’s “Two Camps,” 22–23; “Beynatayyim,” 102; Chekhov translation by, 244, 274; death of, 128, 273–74; Drapkin, Zilla, and son, 395; on family life, 279; Hameorer and, 90, 105, 113, 121, 128; Hatzida (memorial anthology edited by YHB), 126–27, 267, 274, 275–76, 388, 402n35–36; “Hatzida” (Sideways), 120; London, correspondence with YHB in, 59, 63, 89, 90, 92– 94, 97, 102, 105, 408n11; military service of YHB and, 39, 40–41, 51; Nisyonot and, 92, 93, 121; in Palestine, 124, 128, 129, 134, 165, 178, 245; rupture in YHB’s relationship with, 113, 120–29, 131, 273–74, 389; son of YHB named after, 129, 276; youthful friendship with YHB, 8, 9, 11, 23, 25, 27–28, 30, 402n36; Zionism of, 23 Gnessin, Yehoshua Natan, 7–8, 11 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 25, 294 Gogol, Nikolai, 14 Goldberg, Abba, 312 Goldfaden, Avrom, 193 Goldman, Ya’akov, 364 Golomb, Eliahu, 338 Goncharov, Ivan, Oblamovs, 28 Gordin, Jacob, God, Man and Devil, 110, 192, 195 Gordon, A. D., 169, 173, 189, 191, 192, 195, 214, 230, 248, 312, 313, 316, 393 Gordon, Yehuda Leib, 21–22, 265; Between the Lion’s Teeth (Beyn shinei arayot), 293 Gorky, Maxim, 29, 321 Govrin, Nurit, 424n102 Great War. See World War I Grodzensky, Shlomo, 373, 398 Gugig, Zvi, 360–63 Gutman, Nachum, 426n44

Galicia, 138. See also Lvov Gan Shmuel, 304 Ganenu, 328 Gaon, M. D., 324 Gaster, Moses, 68 Gedud Ha’avoda camps, 348, 355–57, 361, 377, 382 gender issues. See women, gender, and sexuality Gera, Gershon, 456n22 Ginsberg, Asher. See Ahad Ha’am Ginsburg, Gershon, 8, 27–28, 175 Glickson, Moshe, 375 Gluchman (Avrahamit), Dora, Hayyim, 155, 156, 159, 164, 424n103 Gnessin, Menachem, 97, 192, 252, 273, 274

Ha’adama: demise of, 326–27, 330, 333; establishment of, 317, 318; as platform for young writers, 324–26; on Russian culture and Russian Revolution, 321, 322; on socialism, 323–24; on Tel Hai incident, 350; worker unification movement and, 337 Ha’akhdut: “Brenner affair” and, 208, 210; editorial staff photo, 240; as Poalei Zion journal, 173, 316; work of YHB at, 236, 237–42, 256, 265, 267, 274, 279; in WWI, 284, 286, 288, 299; Yizkor anthology and, 243–44 Ha’aretz, 334, 366 Ha’avuka, 76–77, 411n85 Hacham, Noah, 297–98, 299, 300

Ein Ganim, 184–92, 195, 214, 226, 232, 256, 302–3, 314–15, 327, 328, 390 Ein Ganim Workers Club, 190 Elisha Ben Abuya, 379 Elul, Nira, 455n7 Elyashuv, A. (Ba’al Makhshoves or The Thinker): at Hatzofeh, 66; “lepers” controversy and, 145, 146, 421n48; “Two Languages—One Literature” (Zwei sprachen—ein einzige literatur), 154 emotional relationships, difficulties of YHB with, 129, 389–90 Epstein, A. M., 297 Epstein, H. Y., 123 Epstein, Yitzhak, “The Hidden Question” (She’ela ne’elama), 232 Epstein, Zalman, 290 Ezra Association, 172, 205, 251, 261, 277

467

468

Index Hacohen, Mordechai Ben Hillel, 13, 19, 50, 206–7, 251, 289–90, 294, 326, 407n43 Hadegel, 142, 147 Hadera, 169–70, 304–5 Ha’eshkol, 12 Haganah, 362, 464 Haherut, 203–5, 278 Haifa, 168, 171, 307 Hakeshet, 98 Hakibbutz Hameuhad publishing house, 373 Hakof, 8 Halper, Benzion, 88, 413n120 Halperin, Michael, 350 Hamahanot Haolim, 393, 395, 398 Hamelitz, 8, 29 Hameorer: Bialik and, 85, 101, 105–6, 148, 386; closure of, 123–29, 134, 386; correspondence with friends regarding, 94; establishment of, 76–78, 81–83; “From A to M” published in, 48, 82, 88, 89; Ha’adama compared, 326, 337; on Hebrew versus Yiddish controversy, 83–85, 95–96, 399; Die Jüdische Freiheit as model for, 73, 77, 82; Kook and YHB, connection between, 380; management, promotion, and distribution issues, 88–90, 92–93, 96, 97, 112; Masada Association and, 80–81, 86, 89, 100, 148; Naroditsky and, 82, 88, 98–99; political and social context of, 85–86, 90; proposals to revive, 139, 142, 257–58; Rabbi Benjamin and, 80, 81–83, 87, 89, 90, 105, 106, 113, 124, 259; Russian censorship, problem of, 92–93; in second year of publication, 100, 105–7, 112, 113, 131; Shimoni and, 185; standing given to YHB by, 132; typesetting of, 75, 80, 82; writers’ reactions to, 90–92; Zionism and territorialism in, 86–88, 95–96 Hamsun, Knut, 16, 294 Hanoar Ha’oved, 393 Haolam, 77, 106, 139, 145–46, 147, 160, 198, 216, 421n48, 430n131–32 Haomer, 172, 246, 426n44 Ha’or, 171, 194, 207, 208, 210 Haperakh, 8, 9 Hapoel Hatzair (journal), 172–73; birth of YHB’s son noted in, 281; on death of YHB, 366, 374–75; employment of YHB by (1909–1911), 170, 173–75, 177, 184; employment of YHB by (from 1912), 242– 44, 265–66, 267, 284, 288, 297, 314–15, 317; Gordon, A. D., articles of, 189; Here and There (YHB), depiction of editorial board in, 232–35; marriage of YHB announced in, 272; notice of death of

YHB’s mother in, 5; on Ottomanization, 285; post-war reappearance of, 314; “soft” ideological stance of, 237, 316; weekly, conversion to, 242; in WWI, 283, 284, 288, 303–4. See also “Brenner affair” Hapoel Hatzair (party), 169, 173, 190, 192, 243–44, 291, 311, 315, 316, 317, 336, 337, 393 Haredim, 139, 171, 209, 426n33 Harizman, M., 336 Hasharon, 258 Hashiloah: Jerusalem, YHB in, 266, 440n104; London, YHB in, 53, 56, 58–60, 63–67, 77, 85, 96–97, 105–6; Lvov, YHB in, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152–53, 160, 420n31; military service of YHB and, 42, 45; Palestine, YHB’s early years in, 172, 181–82, 199, 212, 217, 426n44; young YHB and, 7, 12, 28, 29 Hashomer, 243, 286 Hasidim, 1, 4, 7, 9–11, 208, 259, 338, 355, 379, 392 Hasifria Ha’amamit, 376 Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), 6, 21–22, 265, 367 Hasolel, 357, 454n169 Hassan Bek, 286 Hassin, Abrasha, 356 Hatzfira, 27, 30, 79, 275 Hatzofeh, 66, 77, 85 Hatzvi, 169, 171, 180 Hauptmann, Gerhard, 294; Michael Kramer, 216 Haver, Yosef (pseudonym of YHB), 204 Hayehudi, 67, 76, 100 Haynt, 178–79 Hayug, M. (Moshe Abramson), 142, 146, 154–55, 156, 159, 395, 396, 420n18 Hayug, Uri Nissan, 395 Hazaz, Haim, “The Sermon” (Hadrasha), 291 Hazman, 66, 69, 77, 85, 106, 153, 275, 409n49, 410n51 Heatid, 146 Hebrew versus Yiddish: in Beyond Boundaries (YHB), 110; Bialik on, 150, 153; commitment of YHB to writing in Hebrew, 57–59; Czernowitz Conference of Yiddish Writers (1908) and, 151–54; Hameorer on, 83–85, 95–96, 399; in Palestine, 193–95, 277=278; as spoken languages, 72, 98; vernacular Hebrew, YHB’s efforts to express, 394–95; writings of YHB in Yiddish, 57–59, 74–75, 373, 408n18; in Zionism and territorialism, 87 Hechalutz, 336, 337, 349, 355, 398 Hed Hazman, 142, 146, 147–48

Index Heilperin, Polya, 155, 159, 274 Heine, Heinrich, 294 Here and There (Mikan umikan; YHB), 216–35; Arab hostilities, YHB’s view of, 354; Breakdown and Bereavement compared, 339–40, 345, 346; complexity of YHB’s view of Palestine and Zionism in, 220–21, 230–32; composition of, 192, 197; dedication to Henich Pasilov and Rivka Chizik, 191, 226–27; excluded from YHB’s student reading list, 294; experiences from YHB’s early years in Palestine informing, 170, 185, 189, 191, 197, 198; Halperin, Michael, and, 350; Hapoel Hatzair response to depiction of editorial board in, 232–35, 242; intent of YHB regarding, 218–19; Katznelson, Berl, on, 393; “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes” (YHB) and, 268; public reception of, 218, 231–32; publication of, 216–18, 313; sexual ambiguity in, 390; structural complexity of, 219–20; synopsis, themes, and characters, 221–30; “Uri Nissan” (YHB) compared, 276; writer’s block of YHB after completion of, 256, 265–66 Hermoni, Aaron, 146 Herzen, Alexander, 53, 77 Herzl, Theodor, 22, 69, 139, 188, 215, 232, 260, 262, 381; Der Judenstadt, 167 Herzliya Gymasium, Jaffa, 193, 277, 297 Herzliya Gymasium, Tel Aviv, 289–96, 299, 302–4, 313, 314, 356, 363, 369, 381 Herzl-Nordau Bibliotheque, London, 67, 81, 88 Heshin, Alexander (Zvi Averbuch), 238, 277, 279, 319, 332, 349, 372 Hirschbein, Peretz, 95, 106, 110, 326 Hirszenberg, Samuel, “Exile,” 69, 109 Hissin, Haim, 289 Histadrut, 336–38, 348, 355, 360, 372, 373, 398, 448n29 Hlusk, 6 Hofshi, Nathan, 351 Hoffenstein family salon, Homel, 47, 49 holy fool (yurodivi), YHB as type of, 382–85 Homel: Arond the Point (YHB) and, 60; Hoffenstein family salon, 47, 49; pogrom in, 46–47; youthful experiences of YHB in, 6, 7, 13–21, 28, 29, 30, 36 homosexuality/bisexuality, 62–63, 102, 126, 273, 390 Hotel Rabinowitz, Petach Tikva, 188, 190 Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), 70 Hoz, Ya’akov Yosef, 396 Ibsen, Henrik, 16, 294

Imber family, 154 In Winter (Bahoref; YHB), 31–36; Breakdown and Bereavement compared, 340, 347, 348; compared to Here and There by YHB, 218; London, YHB in, 60, 61, 63, 67, 104, 120, 132; military service of YHB and, 41–42, 43, 44, 50; youth of YHB and, 3–4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 31–36 infants and children, YHB’s special feeling for, 6, 112, 155, 161, 162, 163, 230, 305, 381, 390–91 Ish-Horowitz, S. Y., 199, 258 Iskra, 77 Israel, Land of. See Palestine Itzkovitz, Chaim: on dissatisfaction of YHB with Palestine, 182; immigration to Palestine, 395; Lvov, friendship with YHB in, 143–44, 149, 155, 156, 158–59, 165, 278; on marriage of YHB, 272; Palestine, correspondence with YHB in, 169–70, 174, 184–85; Poznansky, correspondence with, 144, 158, 278; publication of YHB’s collected works and, 183 Ivriah (Society for the Dissemination of Hebrew), New York, 100, 123, 413n140 Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 27, 71, 165, 178, 312, 349, 350–51 Jaffa, 168, 171, 172, 173, 183, 186, 194, 257, 285–86, 302, 359, 360–62 Jamal Pasha, 286, 302 James, Henry, 383 JCA (Jewish Colonization Association), 172 Jerusalem (1909): character of city, 173–74; departure of YHB from, 183–84; happiness of YHB in, 175; writings of YHB in, 182–83 Jerusalem (1911–1914), 237–81; Ben Shemen, YHB’s move to, 284; circle of friends of YHB in, 250, 253, 261–65, 324–25; collaboration of YHB with Rabbi Benjamin and Streit brothers, 257–59; death of Gnessin and Hatzida anthology, 273–76; Feinsod-Sukenik, Hassia, and YHB, 261–65; Ha’akhdut, YHB’s work for, 236, 237–42, 240, 256, 265, 267, 274, 279; Hapoel Hatzair, YHB at, 242–44, 265–66, 267; “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes,” composition of, 237, 267–68; public figure, YHB’s stature as, 277–78; son, birth of, 280–81. See also Agnon, S. Y.; Brenner, Chaya Broide Jerusalem, Passover 1920 riots in, 352 Jesus. See Christianity Jewish Chronicle, 88 Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), 172

469

470

Index Jewish Communist Party, 310 Jewish Daily Forward, 310 Jewish Legion, 304, 310, 311 Jewish National Fund, 314 Jews and Judaism: Ahad Ha’am versus Berdyczewski on, 129, 135; apostasy/ conversion to Christianity, 198–99, 430n131–32 (See also “Brenner affair”); Baum on, 16, 17; Berdyczewski on YHB’s relationship with, 136; “free Jew,” concept of, 145, 200, 203, 212, 220; Haredim, 139, 171, 209, 426n33; Hasidim, 1, 4, 7, 9–11, 208, 259, 338, 355, 379, 392; “lepers” controversy, 145–48; in London, 54–55; in Lvov, 138–39; Mitnagdim, 4, 6, 259; in “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes” (YHB), 267–68; Passover in Lvov, YHB’s observance of, 142–43; religious education of YHB, 4, 6–11; separation of Jewish religion and Jewish identity, 21, 200–203, 213–14, 430n141 (See also “Brenner affair”); in work of YHB, 391; YHB on Palestine and, 177–79, 183, 188, 191–92, 387–88 journal publishing and editing. See Brenner, Yosef Haim (YHB), journal publishing and editing of Judaism. See Jews and Judaism Die Jüdische Freiheit, 71, 72–73, 77, 82 Die Jüdische Wort, 72 Die Jüdische Zukunft, 421n48 Kabak, Aharon Avraham, 172, 194, 209, 275, 336, 451n109; On the Narrow Path (Bamishol hatsar), 209 Kabbalah, 112, 315, 379 Kafka, Franz, 458n49 Kaminitzky, Yosef, 241 Kampf, 19, 30 Kasdan, Zvi, 288 Katznelson, Berl: Agnon on, 244; Aharonowitz and, 173; Akhdut Ha’avoda party, 315–19, 336; on Around the Point (YHB), 60; Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB) and, 348; death of YHB and, 365, 367–70, 378; friendship between YHB and, 186–87, 189–90, 246; “From the Path” (YHB) and, 191, 192; “Gleanings [from literature]” (Likutim), 319–20; Gordon, A. D., and, 189; Ha’adama and, 318, 327; on Here and There (YHB), 218, 231; immigration to Palestine, 169, 170, 189; on legacy of YHB, 393, 399; at Poalei Zion conference in Vienna, 331– 32; post-mortem publication of YHB’s writings and, 372, 373; on Russian litera-

ture, 384, 458n49; Schoffman’s immigration to Palestine and, 396; Shertok, Yehuda, and, 399; as territorialist, 69; Timiriazev’s The Life of the Plant commissioned by, 296; “Toward the Coming Days” (Likrat hayamim haba’im), 315, 316; on volunteering for Palestinian battalions, 312, 315–16; Weltschmerz of, 25, 26; on worker unification, 336, 337; on young secular Jews, 21 Katznelson, H. Y., 37, 39–40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49 Katznelson, Yitzhak, 58, 91, 106, 123, 144 Katznelson-Shazar, Rachel, 172, 231 Kautsky, Karl, 323 Keshet, Yeshurun (Ya’akov Kopelewitz), 173, 324–25 Kfar Sava, 304 Kimchi, Dov (Berish Meller), 180–81, 247–48, 252–53, 262, 306, 397, 426n44, 437n34; Ma’abarot (Transitions), 325 Kishinev pogrom, 26, 42–43, 76, 78 Klausner, Yosef: Bialik and, 63, 66; “Brenner affair” and, 206, 209, 210, 212, 213; “Freedom and Heresy” (Herut ve’epikorsut), 212; in Hameorer, 95; at Hashiloah, 29, 42, 46, 145, 153, 181–82, 188, 266, 440n104; Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshu hanotzri), 209, 432n178; Lvov, YHB in, 142, 145, 152, 153; territorialism of YHB criticized by, 87; YiddishHebrew controversy and, 152, 153 Kleinman, Moshe, 139, 159; “Our Languages” (Leshonotenu), 152–53 Koller, A. M., 243–44 Kolokol, 77 konditzia, 15 Konotop, 7 Kook, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen, 251, 380–81 Kook, Zvi Yehuda Hacohen, 380 Kopelewitz, Ya’akov (Yeshurun Keshet), 173, 324–25 Korolenko, Vladimir, “Makar’s Dream,” 320–21 Kossuth, Lajos, 53 Kotik, Avrohom-Hersch, 31, 41 Kropotkin, Prince Peter, 53–54, 67 Kruglyakov, Shimon Hillel, 8, 183, 216, 242, 257, 282, 371 Kunst un Leben, 151 Kuntress, 317, 318, 319, 353, 363, 365, 372, 375, 397 Kushnir, Mordechai, 333, 348, 356, 361–62, 364, 367, 375, 377–78 La’am publishing house, 192

Index labor movement in Palestine: agricultural laborer, YHB as, 169–70; Ahad Ha’am and, 213–15; Akhdut Ha’avoda (Labor Unity) party, 315–19, 327, 334, 336, 337, 351, 353, 355, 374, 392, 393, 448–49n29; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 251; death, view of YHB after, 376; Haifa conference, 336–38; Here and There (YHB) and, 218; Histadrut, 336–38, 348, 355, 360, 372, 373, 398, 448n29; May 1 riots (1921) following workers’ rallies, 360; Palestinian battalions, controversy over joining, 311–12. See also Poalei Zion Lachover, Fishel: on “Between Waters” (YHB), 196; correspondence with YHB in Palestine, 177, 178, 183, 244, 267; death of YHB and, 371; Gnessin, death of, 274; Gnessin anthology and, 275; Hameorer and, 106; literary journals proposed to YHB by, 183, 257; Lvov, YHB in, 143, 146, 160, 165; on marriage of YHB, 272; in Palestine, 218; publication of YHB’s works by, 181, 182, 217–18, 276, 277; Sifrut, 143, 146, 181, 217, 218 Ladizhansky, Baruch, 205–6 Lamdan, Yitzhak, 397–98 Lamed Vav, 382, 385 Lampert, Ernestina (Tinka/Estherkeh), 155–59, 164, 177, 263, 347, 389, 396 Landau, Yehudah Loeb, Bar Kokhva, 193 Landauer, Gustav, 323 Lasek-Cohen, Y. H., 81–82 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 315 Lazar, S. M., 199 Lehrer brothers (beekeepers), 362–63, 365, 377, 455n6 Lemberger Tagblat, 139 Lenin, Vladimir, 54, 77, 321 Leonardo da Vinci, 200 “lepers” controversy, 145–48, 421n48 Lermontov, Mikhail, 49, 216; A Hero of Our Time, 28 Leschinsky, Ya’akov, 403n131 Levin, Shmaryahu, 27, 96–97 Levin, Tuvia (Tal), 322 Lian (Linn), Joseph, 76–77, 90 Lichtenboim family, 355 Lifschitz, A. M., 253, 298–301 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib, 22, 24 Linn (Lian), Joseph, 76–77, 90 Lipovetsky, Pesah, 296, 446n90 London (1904–1908), 53–133; Beilin, YHB’s relationship with, 75, 80, 100–109, 112–13, 117, 119, 120, 122–25, 127, 129–31; Beyond Boundaries (YHB), writing and publication of, 107–8, 110–12; Bialik, YHB’s relationship with, 56–60,

64–66; collaborations with Marmor and Naroditsky, 68–77; completion and publication of Around the Point in, 53, 58, 59, 60–66; “Days of October” pogroms and death of Chaya Wolfson, 78–80; decision of YHB to leave, 129, 131–33; Gnessin, rupture in YHB’s relationship with, 113, 120–29, 131; Ha’am, Ahad, YHB’s visit with, 129–31; importance to Brenner’s development as writer, 132–33; Jewish theater in, 193; journey of YHB to, 53, 55–56; leisure and cultural opportunities in, 109–10; libraries and clubs frequented by YHB in, 67–68, 69, 109; Marmor, Sara-Shifra, YHB’s relationship with, 113–20; Out of the Depths (YHB) set in, 160–63; Palestine, YHB’s 1906 plans to go to, 96–99; as refugee city, 53–55; writing work put together by YHB in, 55–58, 66–67, 69–75. See also Hameorer London Hebrew Speakers Society, 76, 77, 81, 88–89 London Mission to the Jews Library, 67 loneliness of YHB: emotional relationships, difficulties with, 129, 389–90; in London, 59, 94, 101, 124, 125, 127; in Lvov, 137, 141, 144, 150, 154, 157; in military service, 39, 40, 41; in Palestine, 177, 179–80, 185, 190, 226, 252, 269, 271, 297, 390; writing and, 390; as youth, 8, 9, 10, 11 Louisdor, Joseph, 360–64, 367, 369, 373 Luakh Ahiasaf, 30, 59, 81 Lubanov, Haim (uncle), 3, 7, 10, 401–2n16 Lubanov, Shmuel (paternal grandfather), 3 Lubetzsky, Y. A., 421n48 Lufban, Yitzhak, 288, 303, 366–67 Luria, Yosef, 294 Lvov (1908–1909), 134–66; Abramson family, YHB’s friendship with, 142–43, 154–59; Agnon’s meeting with YHB in, 245–46; Bialik, relationship of YHB with, 147–50; consideration of YHB of returning from Palestine to, 183; Czernowitz Conference of Yiddish Writers (1908) and, 151–54; decision of YHB to leave Lvov for Palestine, 163–66; decision of YHB to move to Lvov, 131–32; Jewish culture in Lvov, 138–39; journey of YHB to Lvov, 134–38; Lampert, Ernestina, and breakdown of YHB’s friendship with Schoffman, 155–59, 164; “lepers” controversy, 145–48; Reisen, correspondence and friendship with, 150–52; Revivim, publication of, 141–44, 146, 148–50, 158, 159–60, 164, 165; Schoffman, YHB’s friendship with,

471

472

Index 139–45, 140, 154, 421n44; writing of YHB in, 142, 154, 160–63 Ma’abarot, 318, 449n35 Ma’aravi society, 68, 69 Maeterlinck, Maurice: The Blue Bird, 109; translations in Hameorer, 106, 109 Maharshak, Yochanan, 247, 279, 384 Malachov, Ya’akov, After Brenner’s Cortege (Akhar mitato shel Brenner), 379–80 Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order (Russia), 78, 79 Mantura house, death of YHB at. See death of YHB Mapu, Avraham, The Love of Zion (Ahavat Zion), 6 Marmor, Kalman: Ben-Zvi, correspondence with, 174, 175, 184; Beyond Boundaries (YHB) and, 111; Hameorer and, 86–89, 95, 117; liaison between YHB and wife of, 113–20, 175; life after death of YHB, 395–96; Palestine and, 97–98, 165, 174, 176, 178; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 310; relationship with YHB, 68–76, 114–17; United States, move to, 68, 86–89, 93–94, 113–16 Marmor, Sara-Shifra: affair with YHB, 113–20, 175, 263, 389; death of, 396; in London, 68, 73, 75, 111, 128, 131; Lvov, YHB in, 134, 156; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 310 Marmor, Shmuelik, 68, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118–19, 310, 396, 417n83 marriage of YHB. See Brenner, Chaya Broide Marx, Karl, 53, 69, 383 Marxism: Akhdut Ha’avoda and, 316; Bolshevik Revolution, Marxists on, 321; early years of YHB in Palestine and, 173, 210; London, YHB in, 57, 95, 111; Lvov, YHB in, 160; of Poalei Zion and Ha’akhdut, 237, 241, 336, 393; Russian literature and, 383–84; youthful exposure of YHB to, 19–20 Masada Association, 80–81, 86, 89, 100, 148 Maximovsky, S. B. (Maximon), 77, 81, 82, 98, 129, 130, 132, 184, 429n123 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 53 Mehaber, Y. (pseudonym of YHB), 71, 323 Meller, Berish. See Kimchi, Dov Menashe, Shimon, 278 Mendele Mocher Seforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovich), 63, 150, 182, 267–68; Be’emek habakha, 293 Mendelssohn, Moses, 199 mental illness. See mood swings and depressions of YHB

Merhavia, 241 Meron, Leah, 369 Metman-Cohen, Yehuda Leib, 171, 194, 289, 294, 295 Mikhaylovsky, Nikolai, 57 military service, 37–52; Baum’s suicide and, 42–44; changing names to obtain exemption from, 3; desertion of, 40, 45– 52; enlistment, 30, 47; failure of YHB’s father to have him exempted from, 35–36; friendships alleviating hardship of, 39–41; Jewish view of, 38–39; Kishinev pogrom during, 42–43; non-Jewish Russians, YHB exposed to, 37–38; physical labor and military discipline, adapting to, 38, 39–40, 44; writing of YHB during, 41–42 Mill, John Stuart, 212 Mintz, Chaiya-Raisa (later Brenner; mother), 3, 4, 5, 197 Mintz, Hinda (maternal grandmother), 3 Mintz, Yosef Haim (maternal grandfather), 3 Mitnagdim, 4, 6, 259 Molad, 244 Der Moment, 211 Montefiore, Claude, 202 mood swings and depressions of YHB, 385– 88; ability of YHB to continue writing during, 386; after divorce from Chaya and separation from Uri, 333–34, 358–59; Breakdown and Bereavement, depression of main character in, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 347; in early years in Palestine, 177, 189, 191, 195–97, 216; emotional relationships, difficulties of YHB with, 129, 389–90; in Jerusalem, 271–72; in London, 76, 80–81, 94, 97, 103–5, 107–8, 112–13, 123, 127; in Lvov, 143, 149, 154–55; post-war, 313–14; self-flagellation, 102, 142, 385; in WWI, 306–8; as young man, 12, 14–15, 43; yurodivi (holy fool), YHB as type of, 384, 385 MOPS (Socialist Workers Party), 360 Morgenthau, Henry, 283 Moriah, 196 Moselevich, Isser (Talush), 226 Mosensohn, Benzion, 171, 194, 289, 290, 293, 294 Moser, Jacob, 289 Motza, 250, 261–62, 271–72 Murillo, Bartolmé, 109, 162 mystical elements of YHB’s personality and writings, 374–84 Nachalat Yehuda, 280, 281 Naroditsky, Israel: collaboration with Marmor and YHB, 70–71, 72–73, 74,

Index 75, 77; Hameorer and, 82, 88, 98–99; Nisyonot printed by, 93; on writing habits of YHB, 107; YHB ceasing to work for, 123, 129, 418n114 Naroditsky, Mrs. Isaac, 74, 107 Narodnaya Volya, 24 Narodsky, David (uncle), 3, 9–10 Das Neie Land, 235 Ness Zion School, 71 Die Neue Zeit, 57, 58, 74 Neveh Shalom, 173, 181, 331, 334, 360, 362, 379, 381 Neveh Zedek, 172, 173, 198, 216, 248 “nevertheless,” 387, 393 New York, YHB’s plans to immigrate to, 235–36 Nibilyov, A. S., 22 Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Nietzscheanism, 20, 22, 34, 73, 103, 105, 115, 129, 135, 203, 205, 209, 342, 383; Thus Spake Zarathustra, 16 Nikolai I (tsar), 27, 38 Nikolas II (tsar), 78 Nili espionage ring, 303 Nisyonot, 92, 93, 105, 121 Nomberg, Hirsch David, 58, 145–46, 151, 153, 275, 372 Nordau, Max, 16 Norman, Y., 323 Novo Mlini, Chernigov, Ukraine (birthplace of Brenner), 3, 4 Odessa Committee, 172, 206–11, 213, 214 Odessa Hotel, Jaffa, 186 Odessa school, 63 Orloff, L. A., 242, 249, 366; “Desolation” (Yeshimon), 326; A Tale of Death (Haggadat hamavet), 244, 274, 326 Oryol, 37, 38, 45, 49 Ottoman Empire. See Turkey/Ottoman Empire Ottomanization, 238, 285–87 Ovsay, Joshua, 388, 458n52 Palestine, 167–236; agricultural laborer at Hadera, YHB working as, 169–70; Bialik in, 165, 180–81; conflicted response of YHB to, 175–79, 182, 191–92, 220–21, 230–32, 265–66, 354–55, 387–88; followers of YHB in, 179, 185–90, 211, 246; Gnessin in, 124, 128, 129, 134, 165, 178, 245; Hebrew theater in, 192–93; intellectual and cultural milieu, 170–73; Jews visiting but not staying in, 165, 178–79; journey of YHB to, 165, 167–69; leg problems of YHB, 215–16, 347; Marmor and, 97–98, 165, 174, 176, 178; New York, YHB’s plans

to leave for, 235–36; Rabbi Benjamin in, 128, 131, 163, 172; siblings of YHB in, 197–98, 217, 257, 266–67, 279, 296–300, 429n130, 438n75, 443–44n23; Third Aliya, 337, 351, 384; writing of YHB in early years in, 182–83, 191, 192, 197 (See also Here and There); YHB’s plans to go to, 96–99, 131, 141, 143, 163–66. See also “Brenner affair”; British Mandate; Jerusalem; labor movement in Palestine; Second Aliya; World War I; specific towns Palestine Office, 171, 172, 251, 284, 313 Palestine Teachers Association, 197 Palestinian Communist Party, 353, 360 Palmach, 395 Pasilov, Henich, and Pasilov family, Ein Ganim, 191, 226, 303, 361 Pelzer, 56, 408n11, 410n56 Peretz, Judah Leib, 20, 58, 63, 131, 150, 194; “If Not Higher” (Oyb nisht nokh hekher), 259, 293; “Relics” (Altwarg), 20 Persky, Daniel, 89, 132, 216, 244, 312 pessimism of YHB, 15–18, 20, 44, 129, 137, 179, 203, 387, 392. See also mood swings and depressions of YHB Petach Tikva, 184, 188, 195, 220, 245, 247, 274, 279, 302, 303–4, 316 Pinsker, Leon, 24 Pinsky, Shammai, 106 plays. See theater and plays Plekhanov, Georgi, 69 Poalei Zion: activism of, 238, 243; BenGurion in, 169; British Mandate and, 316, 327, 330, 331, 336, 351; debates with Hapoel Hatzair, 190; distancing of YHB from circles of, 241; journals of, 172–73, 210, 236, 237–38; in London, 68–74, 81–82, 87–88, 97, 111, 114, 392; Marmor and, 68–74, 310; Marxism of, 237, 241, 336, 393; Muscovites in, 174; in U.S., 87; Vienna conference, 330, 331–32; World Union of, 68; in WWI, 285, 286 Pochep, 7–9, 11–12 pogroms: Bolshevik revolution (1919) and, 319, 395; of “Days of October,” 78–80, 100; deaths of YHB’s family members in, 456n22; in Homel, 46–47; in Kishinev, 26, 42–43, 76, 78; Russian censorship regarding, 85, 92; in Zhitomir, 75–76 Poppes (Ben-Yisrael), 199 post-Zionists, 398 Poznansky, Binyamin (Beba), 302–3 Poznansky, Manya, 302–3, 306, 358 Poznansky, Menachem: death of YHB and, 369, 374, 376; on emotional issues of YHB, 129, 389, 390; Gnessin anthology and, 275; Ha’aretz veha’avoda an-

473

474

Index thologies, 315; Itzkovitz, correspondence with, 144, 158, 278; letter of former student of YHB to, 296; letters of YHB edited and published by, 265, 280, 373; in Lvov, 144; Marmor, Kalman, and, 118; marriage of YHB and, 272–73, 280, 334–35, 389, 390; Palestine, correspondence with YHB in, 191, 277, 303, 305, 306; post-mortem publication of YHB’s works and, 372–73, 394–95; Schoffman, correspondence with, 424n103; Trumpeldor letters, translating and editing of, 357 Poznansky family correspondence with Chaya, 302, 306, 331, 334–35, 356–57, 358–59 Prussia, 52, 53 pseudonyms of YHB, 71, 83, 192, 204, 323 Pushkin, Alexander, 28, 49 Rabau-Katinsky Ziona, 301, 302 Rabbi Benjamin (Yehoshua RedlerFeldman): Agnon and, 246, 254–55, 257; on altercation of Binyamin Brenner with teachers, 298; on Berlin visit of YHB, 135; on Beyond Boundaries (YHB), 112; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 251–52, 268; “Brenner affair” and, 207, 211, 431n160; on death of YHB, 374–75, 390, 394; departure from London, 83, 93–94, 97; friendship wit YHB in Palestine, 186, 246; “Genesis” (Bereshit), 259; Gnessin and, 126, 128; Hameorer and, 80, 81–83, 87, 89, 90, 105, 106, 113, 124, 259; Hapoel Hatzair and, 237, 242, 243; illness of YHB and, 215–16; Katznelson, Berl, and, 317; literary collaboration with YHB and Streit brothers, 257–59; London Hebrew Speakers Society addressed by YHB and, 88–89; “Masa arav” (An Arab prophecy), 259; meeting with YHB in Drohobych, Galicia, 165, 167; on “Our Self-Evaluation in Three Volumes” (YHB), 268; in Palestine, 128, 131, 163, 172; pan-Semitism of, disputes with YHB over, 259–61, 351; people, remark of YHB on his lack of, 96, 97; photo, with YHB and Shapiro, 84; post-mortem publication of YHB’s writings and, 372; post-war literary activities of YHB and, 313; Revivim and, 148; “A Scroll of Imagination” (Megilat shigayon), 410n51; Shimonovich, correspondence with, 216, 227; writer’s block of YHB and, 265; Yefet literary enterprise, 216 Rabin, Yitzhak, 19 Rabinovitz, Alexander Ziskind (Azar), 172,

185, 207, 208, 211, 216, 237, 243–44, 272, 280, 315, 397 Rabinowitz, Jacob, 98, 237, 288, 315, 326, 348–49, 372, 375, 385, 397, 457n30 Rafaelovich, Shmuel (Refaeli), 204 Rappoport, Shloyme-Zanvl (S. An-sky), 74 Ratosh, Yonatan, 155 Rav Tza’ir (Chaim Tchernowitz), “To the Deniers of Judaism,” 199 Ravitch, Melech, 372 Ravnitzky, Joshua Chana, 180, 209 Redler-Feldman, Devorah, 215, 268 Redler-Feldman, Yehoshua. See Rabbi Benjamin Refaeli (Shmuel Rafaelovich), 204 Reisen, Avrom: Agnon, YHB letters of introduction for, 245; Bialik on, 148, 150; at Czernowitz conference, 151, 153; death of YHB and, 372; fondness of YHB for work of, 146, 148, 150; at Die Jüdische Wort, 72; loss of manuscript of In Winter and, 31, 41; Lvov, correspondence and friendship with YHB in, 150–52; mystical view of YHB and, 376; New York, YHB’s plans to immigrate to, 235–36; on Out of the Depths (YHB), 161; songs of, 356; youthful friendship with YHB, 30–31 Rembrandt, YHB’s fondness for, 104, 109 Remez, David, 334, 348, 356 Reuveni, Aharon, 172, 238–42, 240, 277, 279, 298–99; At the Beginning of the Turmoil (Bereshit hamevukha), 325–26; To Jerusalem (Ad Yerushalayim), 242; The Sanatorium (Beit hamarpeh), 274 Revivim: in Lvov, 141–44, 146, 148–50, 158, 159–60, 164, 165; in Palestine, 258, 259, 267, 278, 312, 313, 326 Rivlin, H., 299 Rocker, Rudolph, 67, 74, 109 Roslavel, 50 Rotberg, Chaya, 278–79, 381–82 Rothschild, Baron, 178 Rubashov, Zalman (Shazar), 330, 372 Rubinovich, Ephraim, “The Olive and White Viscum,” 324 Ruppin, Arthur, 171, 251, 283; Contemporary Jewry (Hayehudim bazman hazeh), 264 SS Ruslan, 351 Russia: closing down of Hebrew presses in, 85; Hameorer problems with censorship in, 92–93; importance to YHB of culture and literature of, 384–85; Lvov, Russian Jews living in, 138, 159; Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order, 78, 79; Second Aliya and culture of, 320–21, 384; yurodivi (holy fool) tradi-

Index tion in, 382–85. See also military service; pogroms; specific towns Russian Library, London, 67 Russian Revolution: Bolshevik revolution (1919), 319–24, 395; October revolution (1905), 26, 42, 78; young Jews attracted to, 21, 26–27 Russo-Japanese War, 45–46, 78, 138 Rutenberg, Pinhas, 319 Sadan, Dov, 393, 397 Schatz, Boris, 171–72 Schatz, Rivka (née Yitzkar), 363, 369, 373–74 Schatz, Zvi, 172, 325, 326, 360–63; “Batya,” 325; “Without Expression” (Belo niv), 325 Schiller, Friedrich, 294 Schiller, Solomon (Shlomo), 139, 208, 253, 298, 420n18 Schneur, Zalman, 95, 106, 148, 275, 326, 397; “This Is How We Kiss” (Kach noshkim etzlenu), 89, 101 Schoffman, Gershon: “After the Pogrom” (Akharey hara’ash), 71; Agnon and, 245–46; on From the Beginning (YHB), 395; Beilin and YHB brought together by, 101, 102, 104, 109, 139; on Beyond Boundaries (YHB), 112; on Bialik’s critique of Hameorer, 149; on Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB), 348; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 332; correspondence of YHB in Palestine with, 266; death of YHB and, 371, 377, 394; Elyashuv’s attack on, 145; forgiven by YHB, 175; friendship with YHB in Lvov, 139–45, 140, 154, 421n44; Gnessin anthology and, 275; Hameorer and, 91, 101, 105, 106, 124, 139; “Hanged” (Talui), 91; “Ice Cream” (Glida), 157, 158, 424n102–3; immigration to Palestine and visitation of house where YHB was killed, 396–97; joint correspondence with YHB, 123, 124, 127, 137, 141; Lampert, Tinka, and breakdown of relationship with YHB, 156–59, 164; “lepers” controversy and, 145, 146; London, consideration of coming to, 121, 123; “Love” (Ahava), 157–58, 424n102; on Lvov, 131; “Me’idakh gisa,” 175, 424n102; military service of YHB and, 37, 46–47; on Nothing (Lo khlum; YHB), 80; photo of, with YHB, 140; publication of stories by YHB in London, 128, 129; Reisen and, 151; Revivim and, 148, 158; Stories and Sketches (Sippurim vetziurim), 46; “The Walk” (Hatiyul), 105 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 16 Schulman, Kalman, History of the World, 11

Second Aliya: Agnon and, 248, 249, 252; agricultural labor, adaptation to, 170; burial of YHB and, 366; deserters from Russian army in, 46; “great despair” of members of, 177; Here and There (YHB) and, 218, 231, 393; intellectual and cultural milieu established by, 170–73; “Labor Palestine” and, 213–15, 336; motto of, 86; Russian culture and, 319–20, 384; sexual relations of persons of, 177, 280; status of YHB in, 168, 211, 215, 393 self-flagellation of YHB, 102, 142, 385 Seventh Zionist Congress, 76 sex and sexuality. See women, gender, and sexuality Shakespeare, William, 294 Shapira, Konstantin Abba, “In the Cornfields of Bethlehem” (Beshadmot Beit Lekhem), 199 Shapiro, Lamed (Levi Yehoshua), 59, 70, 75, 84, 85, 93–95, 109–10, 132, 150, 152; “A White Challah” (Challah levana), 326 Sharett. See entries at Shertok Shazar (Zalman Rubashov), 330, 372 Shazar, Rachel Katznelson, 172, 231 Shdemot circle, 398 Shelkowitz, Abraham Leib (Ben-Avigdor), 12, 30, 66 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 85 Shenkin, Menachem, 209 Shertok (Sharett), Moshe, 338, 398 Shertok (Sharett), Yehuda, 292, 348, 355, 365–66, 399, 455n14 Shertok, Geula, 356–57, 365–66, 454n168 Shestov, Lev, 105 Shfeya, 302, 303, 307 Shochat, Manya and Yisroel, 287 Shimonivich, Dina Feffermeister, 252, 264, 272, 311 Shimonovich, David (Shimoni): Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 252; correspondence with YHB and friends in Palestine, 106, 196–97, 216, 227, 233, 266; death of YHB and, 371, 376; on devotion of YHB to son, 457n28; friendship with YHB, 185–86, 190, 246; on Gordon, A. D., 189; on marriage of YHB, 272; in Palestine, 170, 185–86, 310–11, 335, 353; photo of, 185; post-war renewal of contact with YHB, 310–11; relationship of YHB and Hassia Feinsod unknown to, 264; return to Russia, 196; Revivim and, 148; on Temkin, 326; Yefet literary enterprise, 216 Shmuckler, Sarah, 317, 318, 369–70 Sifrut, 143, 146, 181, 217, 218

475

476

Index Silman, K. Y., 242, 251, 253, 254, 264, 268, 271, 288, 328, 431n160 Simferopol, 78, 79, 411n89 Sinai, 139 Singer, Mendel, 167–68 Slutszker, Menachem Mendel, 7 Slutzkin, Eliezer, 231 Smilanski, Meyer (Siko), 64 Smilansky, Moshe, 313, 326 Smolenskin, Peretz, 21, 195 Social Democrats, 19, 57, 58, 74 Socialist International, 338, 353 Socialist Revolutionaries, 49, 50, 58, 67, 74, 241 Socialist Workers Party (MOPS), 360 socialists and socialism: Akhdut Ha’avoda (Labor Unity) party and, 315–19; in Ha’adama, 323–24; Hapoel Hatzair (Zionist party) and, 173; Marmor, Naroditsky, and YHB, collaboration between, 68–77; of YHB in later life, 205, 294, 391–92; youthful exposure of YHB to, 18–20. See also Bund; communists and communism; labor movement in Palestine; Marxism Society for the Dissemination of Hebrew (Ivriah), New York, 100, 123, 413n140 Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language and Literature, New York, 89 Solomon’s Stables, Jerusalem, 261 Spencer, Herbert, 212 Spivak, Jonah, 67–68 Sprinzak, Yosef, 303, 337 Stand, Adolph, 139 “state generation,” 398 Steinberg, Alex, 455n7 Stiebel, Abraham, 92–93, 313, 326, 335, 338–39, 357, 371–73 Stiebel, S. Y., 257 Streit, Shalom and Yeshayahu: on Agnon and Chaya Broide Brenner, 246–47, 253–55; on Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB), 348–49; death of YHB and, 369, 371, 457n30; in Jerusalem circle of YHB friends, 253, 261–63, 264, 325; literary collaboration with YHB and Rabbi Benjamin, 257–59; post-mortem publication of YHB’s writings and, 372; on Schoffman, 396; travels of Chaya and YHB in Europe and, 330–35, 357; in WWI, 302, 303 suicide: of Baum, 42–44; of Kaminitzky, 241; in works of YHB, 62, 104, 226; YHB and, 104, 376, 391 Sukenik, Eliezer Lipa, 253, 254, 264, 265, 269 Sukenik, Hassia (née Feinsod), 253, 261–65, 268–69, 270, 278, 389, 439n90

Suwalsky, Isaac, 67, 76 Tabenkin, Eva, 381 Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 170, 384, 393 Tagblat, 152, 155, 159 Tageblat, 89 Tal (Tuvia Levin), 322 Talush (Isser Moselevich), 226 Tashrak (Israel Joseph Zoin), 117 Tchernowitz, Chaim (Rav Tza’ir), “To the Deniers of Judaism,” 199 Tel Aviv, 171, 173, 260, 270, 285–86, 289, 302, 304, 309, 360–62 Tel Hai, 326, 331, 349–50, 375, 377, 434n223 Temkin, Mordechai, 326 Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 261 territorialists and territorialism, 69, 86–88, 95–96, 139 “That Man” as reference to Jesus, 44, 162 theater and plays: Beyond Boundaries (play by YHB), 107–8, 110–12, 132, 137, 142, 163, 347, 384, 395; Brenner, Chaya Broide, and, 251; Evening and Morning (Erev uvoker; play by YHB), 119–20, 142, 147, 164, 415n44, 420n31; For the Time Being (Le’et ata; play by YHB), 66, 415n44; Hebrew theater in Palestine, 192–93; in London, 109–10, 193; Wilde, Oscar, “Salome,” 106, 123 The Thinker. See Elyashuv, A. Third Aliya, 337, 351, 384 Thompson, Ewa M., 382, 383–84 Thon, Joshua, 216 Tiberias, 215–16, 227, 256, 286, 347 Timiriazev, Kliment, The Life of the Plant, 296 Tolstoy, Leo, and Tolstoyism: Anna Karenina, 296; Ben-Gurion on, 458n49; Bialik’s dislike of YHB’s radicalism and, 205; Childhood, 384; death of YHB and spirit of, 374, 375, 378; lifelong importance to YHB of, 384–85; London, YHB in, 109; “Master and Man,” 288; military service of YHB and, 37–38, 44, 47; Resurrection, 384; Second Aliya, Russian culture of, 319; taught by YHB in Tel Aviv, 294; War and Peace, 383; youthful YHB and, 14, 20, 25 Tritsch family, 332 Trotsky, Leon (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), 26–27 Trumpeldor, Yosef, 27, 46–47, 331, 336, 349–50, 355, 357, 377, 406n32 Tschaikovsky, Nikolai, 54, 67 Tschernichovsky, Shaul, 47, 189, 256, 293, 437n32 Tugan-Baranovsky, Mikhail, 323

Index Turgenev, Ivan, 14, 38, 458n49; Fathers and Sons, 320 Turkey/Ottoman Empire: entry of Jews into Palestine and, 168; Ottomanization, 238, 285–87; outbreak of WWI, 237, 295; peace treaty at end of WWI, 311; political situation in Palestine during WWI, 284– 88; threat of conscription into Turkish Army, 289, 295; Young Turks revolution (1908), 174, 285, 287, 443n21 Tushiya publishing house, 12, 20, 25, 30, 66, 93 typesetter, YHB as, 74–75, 82, 89, 96, 108, 123, 136, 139, 142, 144, 163, 168, 170 Tze’irei Zion, 21 Tze’irim publishing house, 16 “Uganda scheme,” 69 Uspensky, Gleb, 38, 382 Ussishkin, Menachem, 206–7 Varon, Lisa, 193, 195 vegetarianism, 20, 23, 25, 37, 277 Voskhod, 40 Waldstein, A. S., 89 Wallhausen’s Bible criticism, 290 Warsaw, 20, 27, 30 Warshawsky (Yavne’eli), Shmuel, 194, 361–62 Webb, Beatrice, 54–55 Weininger, Otto, 16, 17, 262, 267 Weitz, Naphtali, 241 Weizmann, Chaim, 68 Der Weker, 77 Wilde, Oscar, “Salome,” 106, 123 Wilkansky, Yitzhak (A. Zioni; Ben Avuya), 95, 110, 164, 207, 208, 209, 211, 237, 284, 296, 301, 314, 375 Wolfovsky, M. Z., 373, 389, 390 Wolfson, Boaz, 49, 50, 79 Wolfson, Chaya, 48–50, 60–61, 78–80, 94, 108, 120, 128, 156, 263, 386, 389, 412n91 Wolfson, Yisrael, 49 women, gender, and sexuality, 389–90; Agnon on YHB’s attitude toward women and marriage, 249–50, 279; in Around the Point (YHB), 60–63; Beilin and Schoffmann on, 101; in Breakdown and Bereavement (YHB), 341–42, 343–44, 347; Chaike, Brenner influenced by, 88; Chizik, Rivka, dedication of Here and There to, 226–27; in “Days of Sun,” 59; division of labor in Jewish households, 4–5; Feinsod-Sukenik, Hassia, and YHB, 261–65; feminine nature of Jewish character, YHB on, 267; homo-

sexuality/bisexuality, 62–63, 102, 126, 273, 390; in In Winter (YHB), 33–34, 36; Lampert, Ernestina, YHB’s relationship with, 155–59; Lvov, sexual frustration of YHB in, 154; Marmor, Sara-Shifra, YHB’s relationship with, 113–20; Palestine, sexual frustration of YHB during early years in, 176–77; Second Aliya and, 177, 280; Shertok, Geula, YHB’s attraction to, 357; Wolfson, Chaya, YHB’s relationship with, 49–50, 60–61, 79. See Brenner, Chaya Broide, for marriage of YHB Workers’ Friend Club and Institute (Club und Institut Arbeiter Freund), London, 67 workers’ movement. See labor movement in Palestine World Union of Poalei Zion, 68 World War I (1914–1918), 282–308; Ben Shemen, move to, 284, 287–88, 289, 297, 301; Brenner, Binyamin, involvement of YHB in school troubles of, 296–301; economic and cultural effects of, 282–83; evacuation from Tel Aviv, 302–8; Hapoel Hatzair in, 283, 284, 288, 303–4; political situation in Palestine and, 284–88; son, YHB’s devotion to, 301, 304; teacher, YHB working as, 289–96, 302, 303; threat of conscription into Turkish Army during, 289, 295; U.S. aid to Palestine, distribution of, 283–84 Ya’ari-Poleskin, Jacob, 169, 226, 236, 301 Yadin, Yigael Sukenik, 448 Yanishevsky, Isaac, 72, 81–82, 98 Yann, Ira, 180 Yavne’eli (Warshawsky), Shmuel, 194, 361–62 Yefet (publisher), 216 Yellin, David, 297, 298, 299 Yevreyskaya Zhizn, 75 YHB. See entries at Brenner, Yosef Haim Yiddisches Wochenblat, 105 Yiddish. See Hebrew versus Yiddish Yiddishen Journal, 123, 129, 160 Der Yiddisher Kämpfer, 87, 94, 114 Yishuv. See Jews and Judaism; Palestine; Zionists and Zionism Yitzkar, Avrahamchik, 361–65, 377 Yitzkar, Yehuda, 361–64 Yitzkar family, room rented by YHB from, 353, 360–61. See also death of YHB Yitzkar-Schatz, Rivka, 363, 369, 373–74 Young Turks revolution (1908), 174, 285, 287, 443n21 yurodivi (holy fool), YHB as type of, 382–85

477

478

Index Zakkai, Anna, 361 Zakkai, David, 189, 356, 361, 386, 457n30 Zalel, H. B. (pseudonym of YHB), 83 Zangwill, Israel, Children of the Ghetto, 54, 69 Ze’ira, B. (pseudonym of YHB), 192 Zeitlin, Hillel: on “Brenner affair,” 211–12; correspondence with YHB in Palestine, 267; death in Warsaw during WWII, 396; on death of YHB, 378–79, 381; “lepers” controversy and, 146; London, YHB in, 59, 64, 104–6, 112, 113, 121, 132; military service of YHB and, 40, 45, 49, 50–51; Rabbi Benjamin article critiqued by, 401n51; young YHB, friendship with, 13, 14, 16, 18–20, 29 Zemach, Ada, 170, 227 Zemach, Shlomo, 167, 169, 172, 177, 181, 440n104 Zerubavel, Ya’akov, 238–39, 240, 241–44, 286 Zhitomir pogrom, 75–76 Zikhron Ya’akov, 303, 305–6, 307 Zion Mule Corps, 349

Zioni, A. (Yitzhak Wilkansky; Ben Avuya), 95, 110, 164, 207, 208, 209, 211, 237, 284, 296, 301, 314, 375 Zionist Labor movement, 184 Zionist Organization, 167, 171, 284 Zionists and Zionism: Hapoel Hatzair, YHB’s departure from editorial board of, 184; at Herzliya Gymasium, Tel Aviv, 289, 291; in Lvov, 139; Marmor, Naroditsky, and YHB, collaboration between, 68–77; pan-Semitism of Rabbi Benjamin, disputes with YHB over, 259–61; post-Zionists, 398; territorialists and territorialism versus, 69, 86–88, 95–96, 139; YHB on fulfillment of, 177–78, 220–21, 230–32, 318–19, 387–88, 392; young Jews committed to Jewish people but not identifying with, 23, 26; young YHB and, 13, 15, 20–24; Zionist Congresses, 13, 76, 117, 139, 238 Zlatopolsky, Hillel, 92 Zoin, Israel Joseph (Tashrak), 117 Zola, Emile, 420n18 Zukunft, 372