Yonatan Ratosh
Encyclopedia
Uriel Shelach (November 18, 1908 – March 25, 1981), better known by his pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 Yonatan Ratosh , was an Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and the founder of the Canaanite movement.

Biography

Uriel Heilperin was born in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 in 1908 to a Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 family. His father, Yechiel, was a Hebraist educator who raised Uriel and his siblings in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

. In 1921, the family immigrated to Mandate Palestine. Uriel changed his last name from Heilperin to Halperin, then to Shelakh. Later he used the pseudonym Yonatan Ratosh in poetic and political writing. He attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

 and the Sorbonne, and published his first poem in 1926. In the mid-1930s, he edited the Revisionist movement's newspaper and was active in right-wing underground organizations.

Ratosh was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize. His son Saharon Shelah
Saharon Shelah
Saharon Shelah is an Israeli mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rutgers University in New Jersey.-Biography:...

, a mathematician, won the Israel Prize
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...

. Another son, Hamman Shelah, was killed along with wife and daughter in the Ras Burqa massacre
Ras Burqa massacre
The Ras Burqa massacre was a shooting attack in October 1985 on Israeli vacationers in Ras Burqa, a beach resort area in the Sinai peninsula, in which seven Israelis were killed, including four children.-The attack:...

. One of his brothers was linguist Uzzi Ornan
Uzzi Ornan
Uzzi Ornan is an Israeli linguist and social activist. Ornan is a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, professor of natural languages computing at the Technion and professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ornan was a member of the Israeli Canaanite movement, founded by...

. Ratosh died in 1981.

Revisionist Zionism

In the late 1920s, Ratosh (using his birth name, Heilperin) embraced Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...

, becoming close friends with Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri was a member of Lehi, who was executed in Egypt for assassinating Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East....

 and Avraham Stern
Avraham Stern
Avraham Stern , alias Yair was a Jewish paramilitary leader who founded and led the militant Zionist organization later known as Lehi .-Early life:Stern was born in Suwałki, Poland...

. A talented writer, Halperin became the editor of the official publication of the Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...

, "Ba-Cherev" (בחרב, "By the Sword"). In 1937, Jabotinsky demoted Halperin for the extremism of his views. Frustrated, he travelled to Paris to meet with another disillusioned Revisionist, Semitic language scholar Adia Gurevitch (A.G. Horon). Heilperin and Gurevitch formulated "a new Hebrew consciousness" combining the former's political ideas with the latter's historical outlook. In their minds, the Jewish People were a part of a larger Hebrew civilization
Hebrews
Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...

 bound together by Canaanite languages
Canaanite languages
The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians...

 and nationhood in Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...

. With the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

gan writing (as Ratosh) for Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

.

Literary career and Canaanite movement

Adopting the pseudonym of Yonatan Ratosh, he began to write poetry that "tore apart" (Hebrew: ריטש - riṭṭêš) existing conventions of style, language, and culture. In 1939, he founded the Canaanite movement, which rejected both religion and Jewish nationalism. This group promoted the theory of a shared cultural heritage for the entire Middle East.
The literary output of the movement was strongly influenced by an ancient, pre-biblical mythology and vocabulary. Ratosh's own work is closely linked to the movement's political theory. His early poems are very structured, and play with rhyme and repetition to create an almost hypnotic effect. His later work employs colloquial diction and more contemporary style. While the movement founded by Ratosh was never broad, T. Carmi wrote that "its emphasis on myth and its stylistic mannerisms had considerable impact on contemporary poetry."

In an essay entitled "Ketav el ha-No'ar ha-'Ivri" (כתב אל הנער העברי, "Epistle to the Hebrew Youth") from 1943, Heilperin/Ratosh presented his new ideas to the Hebrew-speaking public. This and other essays called for the community of the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...

 to divorce themselves from their Jewish roots and embrace a new identity as "Hebrews". The "Young Hebrews" became known as the Canaanites, a mocking name coined by Haaretz editor Avraham Shlonsky
Avraham Shlonsky
Avraham Shlonsky was a significant and dynamic Israeli poet and editor born in Russian Empire.He was influential in the development of modern Hebrew and its literature in Israel through his many acclaimed translations of literary classics, particularly from Russian, as well as his own original...

.

In 1950, Ratosh founded and co-edited the literary journal Alef which published translations of the work of Stendhal, Camus, Shaw and O'Neill. Ratosh continued publishing poetry and enjoyed a brief renaissance as an ideologue after the Six Day War. His political philosophy had an impact across the political spectrum: sharing the Right's irredentism
Greater Israel
Greater Israel is a controversial expression with several different Biblical and political meanings over time.Currently, the most common definition of the land encompassed by the term is the territory of the State of Israel together with the Palestinian territories...

 and advocating a secular (in lieu of Jewish) state like post-Zionists
Post-Zionism
Post-Zionism refers to the opinions of some Israelis, diaspora Jews and others, particularly in academia, that Zionism has fulfilled its ideological mission with the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and that Zionist ideology should therefore be considered at an end...

, particularly radical peace advocate Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81...

. His last poem in book form was Hava ("Eve"), published in 1963. In it, he reinterprets the story of the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...

 as the coronation of a Rain God.

Further reading

  • The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself
    The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself
    The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself is an anthology of modern Hebrew poetry, presented in the original language, with a transliteration into Roman script, a literal translation into English, and commentaries and explanations....

    (2003) - ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
  • Homeland or Holy Land?: The "Canaanite" Critique of Israel, by James S. Diamond
  • The New Hebrew Nation, by Yaacov Shavit
    Yaacov Shavit
    thumb|right|200pxYaacov Shavit is a professor at the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University. His main fields of study are the history of modern Israel and modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history...

  • Jewish State or Israeli Nation?, by Boas Evron
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