Letter to Y. H. Brenner

Zalman Anokhi

1906

More than once I began writing to you, and each time I took my pen in my hand I felt in my inner heart that in writing I will say nothing—to see you face to face, heart to heart, and to fall on each other’s necks, so that the eyes can talk and the hearts feel and our hot tears will warm our souls, deepen still further the pains and wounds, but in…

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The text presented here is a letter written in the context of the Russian Revolution of 1905–1907. The Revolution, a massive and violent popular revolution against the tsarist autocracy, generated much hope and great readiness for sacrifice across the variegated society of the Russian Empire. Many Jews shared in this optimism, and Jews played an outsized role in the general Russian radical and liberal-reformist wings of the revolution. By contrast, the revolutionary years marked a moment of crisis for Hebrew literature and the Hebraist movement of which both Anokhi and Brenner were a part. Anokhi seems to be referring to this gap and more generally to a sense among many nationally-minded Jewish cultural activists that Russian Jews were losing interest in Jewish national revival in favor of more universalist revolutionary ideals.

Creator Bio

Zalman Anokhi

1878–1947

Born Zalman Yitsḥak Aronson in Liady (today in Belarus), where his father was a rabbi and the head of the Liady yeshiva, Zalman Anokhi received a traditional education and spent some time in the Musar movement, which demanded intense self-abnegation as the basis of true piety. Moving to Gomel to explore secular studies, he met the budding Hebrew modernists Yosef Haim Brenner and Uri Nisan Gnessin and the idiosyncratic then-Nietzschean religious philosopher Hillel Zeitlin, who encouraged his turn to secular literary creativity. In 1903, he began publishing stories that explored questions of doubt and faith in traditional Jewish life in Hebrew and Yiddish journals, including Ha-Shiloaḥ, Literarishe monatsshriftn, Dos yidishe folk, Der fraynd, and others, under his pseudonym Anokhi, meaning “I am.” Particularly popular with readers were his monologues in the voice of Reb Abba, a Hasidic Jew who relates to the world and its challenges with deep and harmonious faith. Quite unlike his most famous character, Anokhi himself was drawn in this period to Russian anarchism and deeply concerned for the health and future of the new, modern Jewish literature and culture he took part in. In 1924, Anokhi immigrated to Palestine, securing a job at the Tel Aviv Municipality and shifting to Hebrew prose. Some of his Hebrew dramas were performed at the Habima and Ha-Mat’ate’ theaters, including his Hebrew Ha-tavat ha-zahav (Etili, or The Golden Peacock, 1930).

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