The Russian-born author Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) was the foremost Hebrew poet of modern time. He expressed the sentiments of his Jewish contemporaries, who had left the ghetto in search of a new way of life based on Judaism.

Hayyim N. Bialik was born in Radi, a village in the province of Volhynia, Russia. When he was 5, the family moved to the larger town of Zhitomir. His father, a pious man, eked out a living as a tavern keeper. At the counter he kept open a holy book, which he studied between serving drinks. His father died when Bialik was 7, and to support the family his mother spent her days peddling and her nights knitting. Bialik later wrote of her sorrowful lot in his poem "My Song."

At 16 Bialik was sent to the famous Talmudical academy of Volozhin, where he studied until 1891, when the czarist government closed the...