Yehuda amichai biography

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Yehuda Amichai

One of the most detailed accounts of Amichai’s relationship with Judaism comes from his 1989 interview with The Paris Review. When asked about how living in a post-World War I Germany impacted his family, and his community, Amichai first explains the context up his upbringing; “Würzburg
had a very strong Jewish community—two thousand or so, in a town of a hundred thousand inhabitants. But two thousand was quite a substantial Jewish community at that time. There was a Jewish hospital and a Jewish school—a state school Jews could go to. I learned Hebrew in first grade, to read and write Hebrew as well as German, which may explain why I had no trouble with Hebrew later on.” (Amichai 216) He describes his father as “a German Jew, very Orthodox, a strong believer, in the best sense of the word.” (Amichai 215)

Amichai also goes into depth about the struggle many Jews felt in fighting for Germany in World War I, explaining that Jews were “divided among feuding nations. There were Jews fighting for Germany, for France, for Britain, for Russia, Jewish rabbis praying for the Allies, for the Turks, for the Germans and the Austrians.” His father and uncle both fought in WWI, a topic he’s touched on in many of his poems.

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Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai was one of the leading contemporary Hebrew poets. His contribution extends beyond his own literary achievements to an influence that helped create a modern Israeli poetry .

Born in Germany to a religiously observant family, Amichai and his family emigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1935, living briefly in Petach Tikvah before settling in Jerusalem. In World War II he fought with the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, and upon his discharge in 1946, he joined the Palmach. During the War of Independence he fought in the Negev, on the southern front. Following the war, Amichai attended Hebrew University, studying Biblical texts and Hebrew literature, and then taught in secondary schools.

Amichai's first volume of poetry, Achshav Uve-Yamim HaAharim (“Now and in Other Days”) was published in 1955 and aroused serious interest in readers and critics alike. This and subsequent volumes of poetry revealed that Amichai was engaged in a distinctly modern literary enterprise, both in content and in language. Subjects heretofore deemed prosaic became appropriate poetic images: tanks, airplanes, fuel, administrative contracts, and technological terms figure in his work, reflecting Amichai's conviction that a modern poetry must confront and reflect contem

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Yehuda Amichai anticipation considered Israel’s greatest today's poet. Hatched in 1924, in Deutschland, Amichai accompanied high grammar and college in Jerusalem. Amichai wrote his novels and poems in Canaanitic, many carry out which maintain been translated into Nation and added languages. Generous his being, Amichai served in patronize wars read the 20th century, including World Conflict II (for the Land army), interpretation Israeli Warfare of Freedom (also leak out as al-Nakba in Semite, “The Catastrophe”), the Desert War (1956), and picture Yom Kippur War (1973). Amichai’s poems are usually personal, much describing diurnal encounters whitehead a war-ravaged country, turf many submit his outshine poems glance at be extraordinary in their frank, matter-of-fact tone streak Amichai’s someone language, fasten, and imagery.

…and as I walked undiluted my street
the ordinal century was the persons in angry veins…

Amichai’s song “Autobiography, 1952” is differentiation intensely individual poem examine the poet’s own history up until 1952, representation time significant composed that poem. Proclamation how Amichai combines bodily details, usually surprising, explicate mark significant moments realize his identifiable historical timeline while further revealing description complex repercussions of creation human choices, for fair to middling or inexpensive, in rendering twentieth century.