Portrait of Haifa in 1948: The Poet, the Bay and the Mountain

Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century’s (and Israel’s) leading poets. Historically, Amichai belongs to the group of writers who founded “Israeli literature” in the 1950s and early ’60s, and were dubbed the “Generation of the State” because they were the first authors to publish in the State of Israel after it was established. Amichai and his peers rebelled against their predecessors’ grandiose, ideological verse and proclaimed that “understatement” and individualism would be two of their guiding principles. While doing research for my book, Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet (UPNE, 2008), I discovered 100 love letters that Amichai sent from Haifa to New York during 1947–1948. These are both a literary account and a historical testimony of great value. Amichai’s portraits of Haifa during those months have never been discussed. In this article, I describe the way the letters bring to life Haifa’s magnificent landscapes and the struggle of the Jewish city from Amichai’s unique point of view.