The Great Madness

Born Avigdor Feuerstein in a small village in Carpathian Ruthenia in the Habsburg Empire, the Hebrew writer Hameiri received both a traditional religious education and a secular education. While still in his teens he became a Zionist and began writing Hebrew poetry. He was drafted at the start of World War I and served for two years in Galicia fighting the Russians before he was captured, at the end of 1916. He suffered torture and imprisonment in Asiatic Russia and was freed only as a result of the Russian Revolution. His experiences in the trenches and in prisoner-of-war camps shaped his early literary output. He settled in Odessa after being liberated and then, in 1921, left for the Land of Israel with a group of writers. He was a prolific writer; his work included novels, poetry, stories, memoirs, feuilletons, satires, and children’s books. In 1927, he established in Tel Aviv the first Central European–style, Hebrew-language satirical cabaret.