Yitzhak Lamdan

Yitzhak Lamdan (Hebrew: יצחק למדן; ‎ 7 November 1899 – 17 November 1954) was an Israeli Hebrew-language poet, translator, editor and columnist.

Yitzhak Lamdan was born in the Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1899. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1920, during the Third Aliyah.

In 1927, he published a Hebrew epic poem called "Masada: A Historical Epic" about the Jewish struggle for survival in a world full of enemies, in which Masada, as a symbol for the Land of Israel and the Zionist enterprise, was seen as a refuge, but also as a potential ultimate trap; the poem was hugely influential, but the latter aspect was left out in its mainstream Zionist reception and interpretation. According to literary scholar and cultural historian David G. Roskies, Lamdan's poem even inspired the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

From 1954 until 1983, the Ramat Gan Municipality, in conjunction with the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel, awarded the annual Lamdan Prize in his memory, for literary works for children and youth.

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