Letter to Y. H. Brenner

Born Zalman Yitsḥak Aronson in Liady (today in Belarus), where his father was a rabbi and the head of the Liady yeshiva, Zalman Anokhi received a traditional education and spent some time in the Musar movement, which demanded intense self-abnegation as the basis of true piety. Moving to Gomel to explore secular studies, he met the budding Hebrew modernists Yosef Haim Brenner and Uri Nisan Gnessin and the idiosyncratic then-Nietzschean religious philosopher Hillel Zeitlin, who encouraged his turn to secular literary creativity. In 1903, he began publishing stories that explored questions of doubt and faith in traditional Jewish life in Hebrew and Yiddish journals, including Ha-Shiloaḥ, Literarishe monatsshriftn, Dos yidishe folk, Der fraynd, and others, under his pseudonym Anokhi, meaning “I am.” Particularly popular with readers were his monologues in the voice of Reb Abba, a Hasidic Jew who relates to the world and its challenges with deep and harmonious faith. Quite unlike his most famous character, Anokhi himself was drawn in this period to Russian anarchism and deeply concerned for the health and future of the new, modern Jewish literature and culture he took part in. In 1924, Anokhi immigrated to Palestine, securing a job at the Tel Aviv Municipality and shifting to Hebrew prose. Some of his Hebrew dramas were performed at the Habima and Ha-Mat’ate’ theaters, including his Hebrew Ha-tavat ha-zahav (Etili, or The Golden Peacock, 1930).