Haim Hazaz was born in the village of Sidorovichi,
Kiev Governorate in the
Russian Empire, the same village of future prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin's family. His father, a
Breslov Hasidic Jew, was a timber agent and the family spent long periods of time in the forests around
Kiev. Hazaz was taught mainly by private tutors and educated in both the traditional
Hebrew texts and the
Russian language. In 1914, at the age of 16, Hazaz left home and joined a group of Jewish students in
Radomyshl, preparing for matriculation examinations. Hazaz then became more familiar with classic and contemporary works of Russian authors. At that time. Hazaz was introduced to the works of the great Hebrew poet,
Hayim Nahman Bialik in
Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Russian translation. This led him to other modern Hebrew writers, and influenced his decision to start writing poetry in this language. In 1918 Hazaz published his first poem, "On Guard" ("על המשמר") in the central Hebrew literary journal of those days,
HaShiloah, and received much encouragement from its editor,
Joseph Klausner. Witnessing the
Russian Revolution in Moscow and other Russian cities played a formative role on his work. Though predisposed since his student days to some form of socialism, Hazaz soon became disenchanted with the Revolution. During the years of the civil strife, which followed the World War and the Revolution, he fled from town to town, and witnessed the havoc and terror. Moving southward, he reached the
Crimea in 1919 and spent about two years there in hiding. In 1921, Hazaz succeeded in making his way from the port of
Sevastopol to
Istanbul, leaving
Russia, never to return. He lived in
Turkey for almost two years among the young Jewish pioneers who made their way to
British Mandate of Palestine, teaching Hebrew at the
Hakhshara farm near Istanbul. His true emergence as a writer began in 1923 when he moved to Paris, with the publication of three powerful expressionist stories about the days of the revolution, which appeared in the literary quarterly
Ha-Tekufah. He also published stories based on the experiences of displaced Jews in Istanbul and Paris. Supported mainly by the publisher and philanthropist Abraham Joseph Stybel, he published his first major works in prose in the celebrated Hebrew journal Hatekufah. In these early works, Hazaz depicted the inner turmoil of the Jewish town during the Bolshevik Revolution. During the years 1926-1929 Hazaz's partner was the poet
Yocheved Bat-Miriam, with whom he made his first acquaintance already back in Russia, a few years earlier. Their only son, Nahum, was born in Paris in 1928. They separated in 1929 when Bat-Miriam left France and emigrated to
British Mandate of Palestine. In 1930 Hazaz published his first book, the novel
In a Forest Settlement ("ביישוב של יער") in two volumes. For some reason, the two other volumes of this great work, describing the life of a rural Jewish family in Ukraine on the eve of the 1905 revolution and based on his childhood memories, were never published. In the spring of 1931 he immigrated to
British Mandate of Palestine and settled in
Jerusalem, where, for the first sixteen years of his life in the city, he moved from one neighborhood to another. In this way, he became familiar with the various different Jewish communities, and especially with that of the Yemenite immigrants, among whom he lived. His two great novels on Yemenite life, Thou That Dwellest in the Gardens ("היושבת בגנים") and "Yaish", were inspired by this turbulent period. The first volume of his collected works from 1942, Broken Millstones ("ריחיים שבורים") was one of the first books published by the newly established
Am Oved press, that shortly afterwards became a central Hebrew publishing house. For the rest of his life, Hazaz had a major role in the activity of Am Oved, and most of his writings were published there. In 1951, Hazaz married Aviva Kushnir (née Ginzburg-Peleg, 1927–2019), his right-hand in his endeavors as an author and public figure, and an impressive intellectual in her own right. Hazaz bequeathed his literary inheritance to his wife and entrusted her with the preparation of his unpublished manuscripts for printing. Hazaz died of a heart attack on 24 March 1973 and was buried in the old cemetery on the
Mount of Olives. == Literary career ==