Yehuda Karni

Yehuda Karni was born in 1884 in Pinsk

Yehuda Karni was born Yehuda Wolowski in Pinsk in 1884, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Ezriel Zelig Wolowski, was a merchant and public figure, and his mother was Leah. He received both a Jewish and a general education.

He began publishing poems when he was young, first in Hebrew and later also in Yiddish and Russian. He was active in the Zionist movement and served as a delegate to Zionist Congresses for Poale Zion. In 1907 and 1908 he was secretary of the Zionist Center in Vilnius, and in 1908 Bialik published his poem in Hashiloah.

In 1921 he immigrated to the Land of Israel, worked as a clerk in Haifa, and later moved to Tel Aviv. From 1924 he wrote for the newspaper Haaretz and later joined its editorial staff. He is credited with renewing the Hebrew word for cinema, kolnoa, in 1930.

In Israel his poetry turned to the stony landscape of the land, and poems about Jerusalem held a central place in his work. His style was traditional, and he did not join the new trend led by Shlonsky and Alterman. He won the Bialik Prize in 1944 and died in Tel Aviv on January 3, 1949. He was buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery, and streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem bear his name.