Smilansky Mosque

Moshe Smilansky (pseudonyms: Cheruti; Chawadscha Mussa ; born February 12 ^{. Jul} / 24. February  1874 ^{. Greg} in Telepino , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 6. October 1953 in Rehovot ) was a Zionist set Hebrew writers - by Shaked " the most outstanding poet of his generation ”and a“ clear representative of naive genre literature ”.

life and work

Moshe Smilansky was born in a village in Kiev Oblast . After giving up his original plan to train at the Uman Agricultural School , he moved alone to Eretz Israel in 1891 , where he was one of the founders of Hadera . In 1893 he settled in Rechovot, where he owned orange groves and vineyards. His literary career began in 1898 with the publication of numerous articles in Jewish newspapers in Russia , Eretz Israel, and other countries. He was also one of the founders of the literary magazine Ha-Omer .

Smilansky saw himself as a student of Achad Ha'am and was one of the first employees of the Ha-Poel ha-Tzair ("The Young Worker") newspaper under the pseudonym Cheruti ("My Freedom "). In 1918 he volunteered for the Jewish Legion . After the First World War he became a supporter of Chaim Weizmann's political views and published corresponding articles in the country's press, especially in Haaretz .

As a member of the Jewish peace movement Brit Shalom he campaigned for understanding between Arabs and Jews and took part in unofficial and unpublished talks with leading Arab personalities at the beginning of the Arab uprising in 1936 . In the 1940s he resisted the yishuv's struggle against British rule in Palestine . In the Palmach he held a leading position and was responsible for the region around Rechovot within this organization.

In much of his literary work, Smilansky describes the history of the agricultural settlement of Jews in Eretz Israel. Before the First World War he published under the pseudonym Chawadscha Mussa, in part romanticizing stories about life among Arabs. Towards the end of his life he wrote several autobiographical novels, for example Bi-Sdot Ukraina ("In the Ukrainian Fields", 1944), Be-Tzel Ha-Pardesim ("In the Shadow of the Orchards", 1951) and Tekuma we-Shoa ("Uprising and Shoa ", 1953).

literature

• Encyclopedia Judaica 1971 f., Vol. 15, pp. 3-4
• Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature , Frankfurt am Main 1996

Web links

• Moshe Smilansky (1874-1953) , Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature (ITHL)