Literatureנתן גורן

Natan Goren

Natan Goren was a Yiddish and Hebrew writer, journalist and critic, a Hebrew educator and a Zionist activist in Lithuania and in the Yishuv.

1887 to 1956Yiddish and Hebrew journalismHebrew education in LithuaniaEditing the Hebrew paper Netivot

Born: 1 January 1887, Vidzy
Died: 26 February 1956, Tel Aviv
Occupation: journalist, writer
Education: Vytautas Magnus University

Natan Goren was born in 1887 in Vidzy

Natan Goren was born Eliezer Natan Greenblatt in January 1887 in the small town of Vidzy, in the Kovno province of the Russian Empire. His father Asher was a teacher and shopkeeper. He studied in a heder and in yeshivas in Slobodka, where he secretly read philosophy and literature.

At 16 he moved to Vilna, where he was drawn to the revival of Hebrew. In 1904 he joined Poalei Zion and was arrested 3 times between 1906 and 1908 for revolutionary activity. He later passed exams to earn a teaching certificate.

He began publishing in 1909 and moved to Odessa in 1910, writing in Yiddish and Hebrew for many papers. In 1917 he joined the staff of the Hebrew daily Ha'am in Moscow and married Nehama Dmitrovsky. He later taught in the town of Pochep.

In 1921 he returned to Kovno, taught in Hebrew high schools and led the Hebrew teachers' union of Lithuania. He edited several papers, including Netivot, where Leah Goldberg's first poem appeared. He died in Tel Aviv on 26 February 1956.