Appeal of the "Brit Ivrit Olamit" to the Jewish People after the Death of H. N. Bialik
The central leadership of the "Brit Ivrit Olamit" (World Hebrew Union), in the persons of Dr. Zvi Zohar, Moshe Kleinman, Avraham Levinson and Dr. S. Davidovich, has published the following appeal through the J.T.A.:
"The cedar of our literature has been cut down, the crown of our culture has fallen — Chaim Nachman Bialik is no more! Gone is the seer, the [unclear], the prince of the nation, the greatest of our poets, who sang to the people of Israel its mighty song of freedom and roused it to the struggle for liberation. Gone is the seer, the symbol of our national conscience, who carried in his heart all the sorrow and pain of the Jewish people and who, with endless love and compassion, watched over its fate. Extinguished is the pillar of fire that accompanied the wandering people on all its roads of exile and lit up with a heavenly glow the mists of its cruel existence.
Endlessly great is the grief and pain of our orphaned Hebrew culture, which has lost its father, its spokesman and its pioneer. For Bialik was the master builder of our modern Hebrew culture. The foundation stones for the building of our culture Bialik hewed out of the ancient cultural layers of our historical past. Bialik, the master of collections, opened wide for us the treasures of our ancient culture and brought into our literature its best values, which had been forgotten or abandoned over long generations. Bialik, the artist of the word, enlivened the Hebrew language with old-new words and concepts; in his specific, genuinely Bialikian style he hammered out the cutting steel of biblical language and the fine precision of the Mishnaic style, and so strengthened the wall of the Hebrew language against the plague of the old Maskilic and modern florid rhetoric. Bialik was the teacher, the educator of the generation.
H. N. Bialik.
At the head of our national movement he placed cultural work, and at the head of culture — education, which is the axis and the root of our spiritual renaissance. Bialik was a tireless fighter for a complete Hebrew education, because only such an education prepares the generation for its mission of fulfilment and for our work of building. His view of education found its expression in the splendid children's literature that Bialik created, and in all his educational, publishing and public activity, at whose centre stood the Jewish child, the strength and the future of the people. But education is only one manifestation of our spiritual revival, which embraces all branches of our cultural life, the whole field of our national creativity.
The eternal, immortal foundation of our national creativity is the Hebrew language. Hebrew creativity, which reveals itself in the place of its natural growth, in the Land of Israel, in all its various forms and shapes, has under the conditions of our life in exile shrunk to the bounds of Hebrew literature and the Hebrew book. With flaming zeal and stubbornness Bialik fought for a national language and for the spiritual sanctities of the people. At all congresses and conferences, gatherings and meetings in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora, Bialik propagated and explained the principles of his teaching: building, Hebrew culture, and the observance of the practical commandments bound up with it. With all the force of his stormy spirit the poet fought against the petty Zionist idea that had lightly cut itself off from the Hebrew movement, against the shallow and spiritless conception of Zionism that plants a new exile in the Land of Israel, that brings into the country a torn and fragmented national body not united with a living soul of Hebrew culture. With burning anger the poet demanded redress for the wrong done to the Hebrew language and culture, and rebuked the national public figures who had denied the national sanctities and knocked out of the people's hands its only weapon in its last desperate struggle against the assimilation of exile. Both while living in Tel Aviv and during his travels among the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, the poet did not rest, and did not stop until the last day of his life calling on the leaders and public figures of the people to mobilise all forces in order to save the Jewish spirit from decline and apostasy, to strengthen the prestige of the Hebrew language and culture, to raise the honour of the Hebrew writer and the Hebrew book, to strengthen and support Hebrew creativity and to create a Hebrew cultural fund that would support all our cultural achievements and encourage the Jewish spirit to Hebrew creativity in all fields of culture.
And this is the testament of our late leader, the president of our "Brit Ivrit Olamit" in the Land of Israel. Not only with words of lament and literature of mourning shall we pay honour to our great departed, but by fulfilling his will, and we shall carry out his testament, which was stamped with the blood of his heart and with the stamp of his life and his mighty deeds. And in order to set up an eternal monument to his great name, the creation of a Bialik Fund is proclaimed, a cultural fund whose task is to create conditions for the development and growth of Hebrew deed and Hebrew fulfilment. This fund will serve as a building fund for our language, culture and education, and will be the unshakeable fortress of our spiritual renaissance."