ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the corpus of poetry written by Uri Zvi Grinberg (UZG) in the summer of 1936, entitled: “Neither God, nor king, nor hero,” which includes 27 poems, divided into three sub-cycles, published at the end of his The Book of Indictment and Faith (1936). The discussion focuses on the opening sub-cycle, “Face to face,” and on the harsh indictment that UZG leveled at the members of Kibbutz Mishmar ha--Emek in three of its poems, after clarification of the historical factors that had incited UZG’s tirade. These harsh poems caused many echoes in the wake of their publication, both among the kibbutz members and in other audiences, that continued to reverberate even decades afterward. That feedback and later considerations are also studied in this chapter. Excellent documentary evidence, found in The Archives of Kibbutz Mishmar ha-Emek and the Shomriya Educational Institute of the Young Guard [henceforth: AKME-SEI], attest to the nature of the reception of these critical poems.
