There Are Many Riddles in Life

The Hebrew and Yiddish writer Jacob Steinberg was born in Ukraine and at age fourteen moved to Odessa and then later to Warsaw, both centers for Hebrew literature at the turn of the century. He published stories and poems in Hebrew initially but from 1909 began writing extensively in Yiddish. However, when he settled in Tel Aviv in 1914, he stopped writing in Yiddish. He translated (and revised) many of his earlier Yiddish stories into Hebrew, including “The Blind Woman.” The style of the Hebrew poetry he wrote in Palestine was unique: he was the only Hebrew poet living there who employed Ashkenazi pronunciation and stress. He also was known for his landmark essays on Yiddish and Hebrew writers.