‘Time for the Orient has come’: The Orient as a spiritual–cultural domain in the work of Uri Zvi Grinberg

Abstract

The Yiddish–Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Grinberg migrated to Eretz Yisrael on 4 December 1923. It was the end of the Third Aliyah, a time of stagnation and decline, of hunger, housing shortages and fighting for a half-day’s wages. Young pioneers were leaving in droves, disappointed and bitter. Why did he choose to migrate just then? Why not earlier, when the Third Aliyah was at its height? Why did Grinberg absent himself in the early 1920s, when the Zionist-pioneering discourse was being shaped? What did Grinberg himself think about his belated move and the fact that he had not taken part in the formative stages of the Third Aliyah? This article is an attempt to examine from a cultural-historical perspective the evolution of Grinberg’s attitude towards Eretz Yisrael and the ‘Orient’ as a spiritual and cultural concept.