On Literature and the State

The Hebrew novelist and short-story writer Chaim Hazaz was born in a village in the province of Kiev and received a traditional Jewish education. He left home at age sixteen and lived a peripatetic life until 1921 in Russian cities. During these years of turbulence and upheaval, he witnessed events that became the foundation of his works. From 1921 to 1931, he lived in Istanbul, Paris, and Berlin. He settled in Jerusalem in 1931 and remained there the rest of his life. Central to most of his work is the tension between the old Jewish world and the wish for redemption through political movements such as Zionism. He was one of the most popular Hebrew writers of his time.