Yehuda Amichai
(1924–2000)

Yehuda Amichai managed to weave several identities—refugee, poet, soldier, teacher, linguist—into one multifaceted life. Born to a German Jewish family in 1924, Amichai fled Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s for British-controlled Palestine. He fought with the Jewish Brigade of the British Army during World War II, and later in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

In its early years after achieving independence in 1948, the fledgling Israeli state contained a confusing mixture of languages. Yiddish, a language spoken by German and Eastern European Jews, was often more commonly heard than Hebrew, the language of the Bible. Amichai joined the growing movement to update ancient Hebrew and popularize its use among Israel's growing population. He studied biblical texts and Hebrew literature at Hebrew University, then taught in the secondary schools for a number of years.

At the same time, Amichai launched a literary career that had a profound effect on the development of modern Hebrew. Beginning in 1955, he published eleven volumes of poetry, two novels, and a book of short stories. Amichai became famous for his witty wordplay and inventive combination of biblical and modern words in works that dealt with everyday Israeli concerns. He became known internationally through translations of his poetry. At the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasir Arafat, Amichai read Wildpeace (English translation, 1996), his poem about the weariness caused by years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dawning of a sudden, fragile hope for peace.

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