In a ceremony held on January 2, 2019, KKL-JNF awarded the Yitzhak and Rachel Goldberg Foundation literary prize to authors of outstanding Hebrew poetry and prose. Isaac Leib Goldberg (1860-1935), philanthropist and Zionist, left his wealth to KKL-JNF with instructions to use it for advancing Hebrew culture. KKL-JNF has been managing the fund for 80 years.
The Yitzhak and Rachel Goldberg Foundation Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, January 2, 2019, in the presence of the prizewinners, the judges, leading members of Israel’s literary community, and senior KKL-JNF officials.
At the start of the event, KKL-JNF’s Elisha Mizrachi, who was the master of ceremonies, called on the audience to rise for a minute of silence in tribute to venerated Israeli writer Amos Oz who had passed away a few days earlier. Dr. Tamar Hess from the Department of Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem spoke of her research into the works of Amos Oz and read from his seminal work “A Tale of Love and Darkness.”
Next up at the podium was KKL-JNF World Chairman Danny Atar, who greeted the audience and told them that he was very pleased to be present because the event was an important part of KKL-JNF activity.
“From the beginning of time, the Hebrew language brought tidings to humanity, such as the Bible, the Books of the Maccabees, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the state-of-the-art autonomous car application and other hi-tech wizardry. The strength of the Nation of Israel is not embedded in raw materials or hardware but rather in its spirit and its soul. Yitzhak Goldberg, the Litvak [a person from Lithuania], understood this long before the creation of our state. He devoted his life to Zionism and put all his resources into developing the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel. He was one of the people who proposed creating a Jewish National Fund and was the first person to donate money towards that cause.”
Indeed, KKL-JNF’s first plot of land was given to the newly established fund in 1903 by none other than Yitzhak Goldberg, who purchased it in order to grow olive trees in Israel. He also purchased the first plot of land on Mount Scopus in order to build the Hebrew University. Among his many other philanthropic endeavors for Hebrew language and culture, he co-founded two Hebrew newspapers – Ha’am (‘The People’) and Haaretz (‘The Land’), which today is Israel’s oldest and most prestigious daily newspaper.
Relli Kariv, a great-grandchild of Yitzhak and Rachel Goldberg, spoke on behalf of the family. She said that Yitzhak Goldberg was Lithuanian Jewry’s representative at the first Zionist Congress in 1897 and contributed much of his resources to the Zionist cause.
“When my great-grandfather passed away in 1935 he left his wealth to KKL-JNF with clear instructions that it must be also be used to support Hebrew writing and Hebrew culture. My family and I want to thank KKL-JNF for managing the fund for over 80 years. These prizes are an important but small part of what the fund does. Other activities are donating literary books to school libraries in Israel’s peripheral regions, and awarding study grants to students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technion, and the Herzliya Gymnasium.”
Kariv thanked the judges for their contributions. She told them that they rank amongst some of Israel’s elite founding fathers who also took part in the literary prize awards, such as David Ben Gurion who was head of the Jewish Agency at the time; Menachem Ussishkin, the fourth chairman of KKL-JNF; Dr. Yehuda Leib Magnes, founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and poet Shaul Tchernichovsky.
Zvika Nir, Chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel, told the audience that every literary prize-giving ceremony is a festival because of the emotions involved.
“There is always great suspense amongst the participants, followed by joy and also some disappointment. I would just like to put on record that I am sorry that the Ministry of Culture and Sport and the Education Ministry do not do more to promote the Hebrew language and Hebrew literature. And paradoxically because of this, we understand the greatness of Yitzhak Goldberg, who, by 1935, had already realized the importance of investing in these fields.”
The competition was divided into works of prose and works of poetry. One of the judges of the prose section, Professor Dror Burstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and also a winner of the Yitzhak and Rachel Goldberg Foundation Literary Prize in 2014, read excerpts from the winning books. Before starting to read he said, “I have no doubt that it’s more important and more rewarding to read books than to hear explanations about them”.
Elli Hirsch, who was a judge of the poetry section, is a poet, a poetry critic, and teaches creative writing in the Department of Literature of Tel Aviv University. Hirsch said that the three winners of the poetry section are all women, each of whom is very different from one another but also similar. “They are different but each one’s writing is intense and powerful. Not one of them comes to encourage us by dwelling on nice things. They all concentrate on the dark aggressive side of our existence here in this land, each from her own point of view.”
The awards to the winning writers were presented by KKL-JNF Resource Development Division Executive Director Ronnie Vinnikov together with Relly Kariv.
The prize recipients for prose were:
Dorit Peleg for her book “The Essential Art”.
Dr. Gali Mir-Tibon for her book “The list of Mothers”.
Dr. Oded Menda Levy for his book “I Remember”.
The prize recipients for poetry were:
Hedva Harcavi for her book “Migo”.
Shulamit Apfel for her book “Imagine Being a Star”.
Bakol Serlui for her book “The Light a Drawn Dagger”.
On behalf of the prize recipients, poet Hedva Harcavi thanked the Goldberg family and KKL-JNF for their support of modern Hebrew writers.
“Poets tell the truth and only the truth. Each poem is an island of truth in the ocean of anarchy that exists in each one of us. There is no creativity without an inner life. There is no creativity without freedom.”
Elisha Mizrachi closed the event saying, “I have no doubt that Yitzhak and Rachel are both sitting up there tonight and smiling.”