Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

May 14, 2020

To the Hebrew Poet Nathan Alterman, a Jew at a U.S. Political Convention Is Akin to an Old Man at a Nursery School

I like Ike, but does Ike like me?

The poet, essayist, and playwright Nathan Alterman (1910–1970) was read widely in Mandate Palestine and Israel in his own day, and remains so today. In 1952 he came to the U.S. to observe the presidential campaigns of Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson and even composed a poem about the two parties’ conventions, which he found to be exotic and even amusing. He focused his attention on the political habits of the Jews he met there, writes Shalom Carmy:

SaveGift