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Modern Hebrew literature is rich, dynamic and fascinating. Though relatively young, it has, in its 200 years, undergone a process of rapid growth and turbulent change through its contact with European culture. It has nevertheless remained a vibrant link in a 3000-year old chain of tradition, having accumulated traces from the manifold strata of classical Hebrew, from the Bible to the Renaissance. Modern Hebrew literature reflects, more than any historical documentation, the dramatic vicissitudes of Jewish existence in recent times: from the aspirations of emancipation to the despair of the Holocaust; from the life of traditional faith to modern secular lifestyles; from ideological and geographic dichotomies to the rebirth of the national identity in its Zionist lsraeli form. Above all, modern Hebrew literature has an aesthetic power, which, at its best, falls short of nothing in Western literature.
This series of stamps depicts 14 exemplary creators of modern Hebrew literature, both in poetry and in prose. Some were active in European literary centres; some immigrated to the Land of Israel and participated in the process of the rebirth of Hebrew literature here, and some were born here, where they drew on their native environment and perfected their creativity throughout their lives.
Yokheved Bat-Miriam Keplits Belorussia 1901 – Tel Aviv 1980 (immigrated to Israel in 1928)
Bat-Miriam started by writing expressionistic poetry loaded with emotional tension and outbursts of feminine passion. She reached the peak of her creativity in the ’40s in her symbolistic poems rich in sound and portraying complex conditions of the soul. Her metaphysic inclinations are seen in her spiritual flights, full of yearning for the divine and the eternal.
