Micha Josef Berdyczewski

Micha Josef Berdyczewski
Born	August 7, 1865 Medzhybizh, Ukraine, Russian Empire
Died	November 18, 1921 Berlin, Germany
Pen name	Mikhah Yosef Bin-Gorion
Occupation	Journalist
Nationality	Russian
Ethnicity	Jewish
Genre	Journalism, Novels, Short stories
Literary movement	Modern Hebrew literature

Micha Josef Berdyczewski (Hebrew מיכה יוסף ברדיצ'בסקי), or Mikhah Yosef Bin-Gorion (August 7, 1865 – November 18, 1921) (surname also written Berdichevsky), was a Ukrainian-born writer of Hebrew, a journalist, and a scholar. He appealed for the Jews to change their way of thinking, freeing themselves from dogmas ruling the Jewish religion, tradition and history, but is also known for his work with pre-modern Jewish myths and legends. He wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish and German and has been described as "the first Hebrew writer living in Berlin to be revered in the world of German letters".

Berdyczewski was born in 1865 in the town Medzhybizh in western Ukraine, to a family of Hasidic Rabbis. His father was the town Rabbi. In his youth he began to read works from the Jewish Enlightenment, and their influence is noticeable in his works. Berdyczewski was forced to divorce his first wife following her family’s objection to his involvement with secular literature. He then moved to the Volozhin Yeshiva, but there too, his pursuit of unconventional literature stirred anger and objection.

One of his earliest publications was about this period of his life—an article titled "Hetzitz V'nifga" (הציץ ונפגע in Hebrew—literally "peeked and got hurt", meaning "gone to heresy"), published in 1888 in the newspaper Hamelitz. Most of his works from this period were polemic, and his emotional style became his trademark throughout his writing career.

In 1890 he went to Germany and Switzerland, studied at the universities of Berlin, Breslau and Bern, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree. In this period Berdyczewski studied the works of the great German philosophers Nietzsche and Hegel, and was deeply influenced by them. In the ten years until his return to Ukraine he published many articles and stories in Hebrew journals. Up to 1900, the year in which he married Rachel Ramberg, Berdyczewski had published ten books.

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