Nathan Alterman

Nathan Alterman was born in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). In 1925, when he was 15 years old, the family moved to Tel Aviv and he continued his studies at the Herzliya Hebrew High School.

When he was 19 years old, he travelled to Paris to study at the University of Paris (a.k.a. La Sorbonne), but a year later he decided to go to Nancy to study agronomy. Though maintaining close contacts with his family and friends in Tel Aviv and visiting them on vacations, Alterman spent three years in France and was highly influenced by his occasional meetings with French artists and writers. On his return to Tel Aviv in 1932, he started working at the Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school, but soon left it in favour of working as a journalist and poet.

In 1933, when Alterman was 33 years old, he joined the literary circle "Together" (Hebrew: יחדיו). Members of that literary group published the literary magazine "Columns" (Hebrew: טורים) and rebelled against the literary establishment of that time, identified with the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and his followers.

On the 22nd of August, 1934, he married Rachel Marcus, an actress in "The Cameri Theatre" (Hebrew: התיאטרון הקאמרי) In January 1941 their only daughter was born: Tirtza Atar, who would grow up to become a poetess herself.

Alterman is credited with bringing the seeds of the marmande tomato to Israel, where it was the main species cultivated in the country until the 1960s.[1]

In 1933, when he was 23 years old, Alterman began to write songs for the vaudeville theatre "The Broom" (Hebrew: המטאטא)."[2]

In 1934, he began to publish in the daily newspaper Davar a rhymed column named "Tel Aviv Sketches" (Hebrew: סקיצות תל אביביות). that addressed current affairs and during four months 26 of these rhymed columns were published.

In November 1934 he left Davar and began to publish in the daily newspaper Haaretz a similar column named "Moments" (Hebrew: רגעים) but this time the columns had a less lyrical and more satirical nature, and he continued to publish these columns for eight years during which he published a total of 297 columns.

Alterman's first published book of poetry was Kokhavim Bakhuts ("Stars Outside"), published in 1938. This volume, with its "neo-romantic themes, highly charged texture, and metrical virtuosity,"[3] as Israeli critic Benjamin Harshav puts it, established him as a major force in modern Hebrew literature.

His next major book was "The Joy of the Poor" (Hebrew: שִׂמְחת עניים ṡimḥàt aniyím, 1941). This is a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria consisting of 31 interconnected poems, all from the viewpoint of the ghost of a dead man obsessed with the living woman he loves – a reversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The dead man wants to protect his living love from war and poverty, but more than anything he wants to drag her into his world. His plans are continually frustrated. The light from a humble candle is enough to drive him back. The story reads like a supernatural thriller, but the rhyme and the meters are regular and elegant.

In 1942, when the first news about the Holocaust reached the Zionist Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine, Alterman wrote a poem, which can be described as a sarcastic paraphrase on the Jewish prayer, "Praised are You ... who has chosen us out of all the nations". In this poem Alterman says, "At our children's cry, shadowed by scaffolds, we heard not the world's furor. For you have chosen us out of all nations, you loved and favoured us. For you have chosen us of all nations, of Norwegians, Czechs and Britons. As they march toward scaffolds, Jewish children of reason, they know their blood shan't be reckoned among the rest, they just call to the mother 'turn away your face'." In 1943, Alterman wrote the maqama "The Swedish Tongue", in which he praised Sweden's willingness to welcome Jewish refugees from Denmark.[4]

In 1943, he also wrote a poem that was critical of Pope Pius XII, a poem that is featured at the Yad Vashem museum.[5]

In 1945–1947, Alterman's weekly column in the Labour Movement "Davar" newspaper denounced the British army's oppressive measures and praising the illegal immigrant boats landing Jewish holocaust survivors on the country's shores, in defiance of British policy. The most well-known of these is the 1945 "In Praise of an Italian Captain" (Hebrew: נאום תשובה לרב חובל איטלקי).[6]

In the early stages of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he wrote numerous patriotic poems, the most well-known of which is "The Silver Platter" (Hebrew: מגש הכסף magásh ha-késef). Having become a canonical text read on Israel's Remembrance Day, this poem was written in response to Chaim Weizmann's words in December 1947, after the adoption of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, "No state is ever handed on a silver platter... The partition plan does not give the Jews but an opportunity". In his poem, Alterman describes a scene similar to the Biblical Revelation on Mount Sinai, where the Jewish People are waiting to receive the Jewish state, as the Israelite were waiting to receive the Torah. And yet, instead of Moses descending with the Tablets of Stone, the people see two unfamiliar youths, a boy and a girl, wounded and near dead with exhaustion. When asked, "Who are you?" they reply, "We are the silver platter on which the state of the Jews was handed to you".

He also wrote One from the GHL (GHL is a Hebrew acronym for overseas draft), which refers to the nearly 20,000 of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees who immigrated to the newly created State of Israel and were immediately drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and sent to the front lines. They had no military training and some 300 died in battle shortly after their immigration to Israel. The poem was published in Davar on the last day of the war, in protest of the inhumane treatment of these soldiers. The poem contrasts the sacrifice of these soldiers with the pretension of the state to be a safe homeland for Jewish refugees.

Later the poem was set to music by Shem Tov Levy and first performed by Arik Einstein in his 1985 album Land Product. It is often sung during the Israeli Remembrance Day and in ceremonies marking the 1948 war of independence.

Alterman translated Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, Gozzi, Molnar, Lully, Dostoevsky, Bernard Shaw, Ionesco, Courteline, Priestley, Barrie, Anouilh, de Beaumarchais, Jonson, Labiche, Ostrovsky into Hebrew and Yiddish. He wrote the lyrics of the famous Moshe Vilenski song Kalaniyot, sung by Shoshana Damari.

Some of Alterman's poems have been turned into popular songs, e.g., "A meeting with no end" (פגישה לאין קץ). An episode in Season 3 of the Israeli Netflix show Shtisel is named after one of his poems, "First Smile," which is read at a memorial service during the show.[7] An English-language translation of "First Smile" by Robert Friend (from Found in Translation, Toby Press, 2006) is also included in the episode.

During the 1950s, Alterman was opposed to the martial law imposed at the time on Israel's Arab citizens (until 1966), and was also strongly supportive of workers' struggle such as the 1952 sailors' strike which was suppressed by the Ben Gurion Government.

After the Six-Day War, Alterman was one of the founders of the Movement for Greater Israel finding himself in alliance with right-wing activists whom he greatly opposed in earlier times of his career. He criticized David Ben-Gurion (who only held at the time the position of a Knesset member, but was still influential) for being too willing to give up the territories captured during the war in return for a peace agreement.

NIS 200 banknote, showing Alterman.

Alterman has been featured on Israel's NIS 200 bill since 2016.[8]

• In 1946, Alterman received the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation, for his translations of plays Phèdre by Jean Racine and Merry Wives of Windsor by Shakespeare.
• In 1947, he received the Ruppin Prize for his book "Joy of the Poor".
• In 1957, Alterman was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.[9]
• In 1967, he again received the Tchernichovsky Prize, for translations of the plays of Moliere.
• In 1968, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.[10]
• In 2011, his portrait was chosen to be on Israel's currency.[11]

• List of Bialik Prize recipients
• List of Israel Prize recipients
• Arik Einstein performing Nathan Alterman's (and Naomi Shemer's) "Meeting without end" on YouTube

• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1

• Nathan Alterman at Poetry International's website. Includes links to Moon, The Killers of the Fields and On the Highroad. Nathan Alterman, Poetry International's website, at the Wayback Machine
• Bottomless Deep: Moshe Dayan on Alterman at Poetry International's website
• Erlich, Tsur Nathan the Wise - Natan Alterman, poet of Zionism, offered a bold new vision of Jewish national identity. Azure no. 28, Spring 5767/2007 at AzureOnline
• Israel and Zionism - Alterman, Natan (1910-1970) Poet, Journalist, and Translator
• Neverending Meeting - Yossi Banai reads Nathan Alterman