by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai was born in 1924 in Würzburg, Bavaria, to a family of Orthodox Jews and was educated at Orthodox schools. As a result of the rise to power of the Nazis, the family migrated to Palestine in 1935, settling first in Petach Tikva and then in Jerusalem, where Amichai continued his religious education. During World War II, Amichai joined the Jewish Brigade of the British Army and served in Egypt. Later, as part of the Palmah, the elite force of the pre-state army, he smuggled arms and Jewish immigrants into Palestine. During his adolescence Amichai abandoned formal religious practice, but he would continue to draw on biblical and liturgical texts in his poetry. Amichai’s first book of poems, Akhshav uva-yamim ha-aherim (Now and in Other Days), appeared in 1955. It was followed in...