Haim Hazaz

Haim Hazaz (1898-1973) was born in the Ukraine and spent his childhood in a small village with a mixed population of gentiles and Jews. He received a traditional Jewish education, but at the age of sixteen he left the village to pursue a secular education in Kiev, Kharkov and Moscow. In 1921 he left Russia and spent a year and a half in Constantinople with Zionist pioneers. He then traveled to Paris, where he lived for the next nine years. In Paris he wrote his first fiction — three stories on the Russian revolution and the poetic story “Bridegroom of Blood”, which was praised by T.S. Eliot.

In the summer of 1928 he visited Berlin, where he witnessed the growth of the Nazi movement and sensed the forthcoming catastrophe. In Berlin he conceived the idea for his play The End of Days, although he did not begin writing it until he arrived in pre-state Israel, where it was first published in 1933. After his arrival in spring 1931 Hazaz made his home in Jerusalem, where he lived and worked until his death, and where he is buried on the Mount of Olives.

Hazaz left a legacy of unpublished manuscripts, and a  number of his works have been translated into other languages. Hazaz was given the title “Freeman of Jerusalem.”  He was an Honorary Member of the Hebrew Language Academy and President of the Hebrew Writers Association. He received Honorary Doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Dropsie College in Philadelphia, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.