Yehuda Amichai taught literature in Israel and abroad

Person: Yehuda Amichai
Lived: 1924–2000
Field: Poetry
From: German-born Israeli

The story

Alongside his writing, Yehuda Amichai spent much of his working life as a teacher. After his discharge from the British Army in 1946, where he had served in the Jewish Brigade during the Second World War, he trained at the David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem and became a teacher in Haifa. After fighting in the 1948 war, he studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where one of his professors encouraged him to publish his first book of poems, and he then taught in secondary schools.

For many years he taught literature at an Israeli seminary for teachers, helping to train the men and women who would bring literature into the country's classrooms. He also taught at the Hebrew University, where his students came from abroad, introducing young people from many countries to Hebrew literature and to Israel itself.

His teaching reached the United States too. In 1971 he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the year his second novel, about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published. In 1987 he was poet in residence at New York University, sharing his craft with American students.

For Amichai, teaching was a natural extension of his poetry, which itself aimed to speak clearly and directly to ordinary people. He believed that poetry should reflect everyday life, and his Israel Prize citation praised his synthesis of the poetic with the everyday. The New York Times described him as one of very few contemporary poets to have reached a broad cross-section of readers without compromising his art.

Universities honoured him in return. He received numerous honorary doctorates, as well as an honour citation from Assiut University in Egypt. His influence on younger writers has been lasting: the American novelist Nicole Krauss has said that his work affected her from a young age, and a literary award, the Yehuda Amichai Prize, bears his name. His archive at Yale's Beinecke Library, with its notebooks, drafts and diaries kept over 40 years, offers students and scholars a rich record of his life and work.