ABSTRACT
At the crux of this chapter stands the web of unique relationships created at the end of the Third ‘Aliyah between Uri Zvi Grinberg (UZG), the poet, and his pioneer readership, the people of the Labor Movement. It discusses how UZG’s image and poetry charmed the pioneer readers, while expressing their sense of spiritual closeness to him, as reflected in the correspondence found in the poet’s personal archive at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem (NLI). It examines the way in which UZG simultaneously dealt with various community issues in both his poetic and journalistic writings, addressing each different type of targeted readership using a different mode of writing, not just in his poetic expression but, first and foremost, in his attitude toward them, too. For example, in the mid-1920s in his column in the newspaper Davar, UZG expressed his growing criticism of the proletariat’s political leaders. At that same time, he felt a great spiritual affinity toward the workers themselves. “My generation finds favor in my eyes; I smell them. They are my brothers and sisters,” he wrote in his Hebrew collection of thoughtful, philosophical, and poetic essays, entitled Facing Ninety-Nine (1928).
