Yitzhak Lamdan (‎ 7 November 1899 – 17 November 1954) was a Russian-born Israeli Hebrew-language poet, translator, editor and columnist.

Biography

Itzi-Yehuda Lubes or Lobes (later Yitzhak Lamdan) was born in 1899 in Mlynov, Russia (now Mlyniv, Ukraine). Born into an affluent family, Lamdan lived in Mlynov until the outbreak of WWI in 1917 and the civil wars that followed. During this period, he was uprooted and wandered through Southern Russia with his brother before joining the Red Army. In 1920, after his parents’ home was destroyed and his brother was killed, Lamdan immigrated to Mandatory Palestine as part of a socialist youth group in what has come to be known in Zionist history as the Third Aliyah. In 1927, he published a Hebrew epic poem called "Masada: A Historical Epic" about the Jewish struggle for survival in a world full of enemies, in which Masada, as a symbol for the Land of Israel and the Zionist enterprise, was seen as a refuge, but also as a potential ultimate trap. The poem was hugely influential, creating the seed for what became the Masada myth, but the latter aspect was left out in its mainstream Zionist reception and interpretation. According to literary scholar and cultural historian David G. Roskies, Lamdan's poem even inspired the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Awards and recognition

From 1954 until 1983, the Ramat Gan Municipality, in conjunction with the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel, awarded the annual Lamdan Prize in his memory, for literary works for children and youth.