The Maccabaean

Naphtali Imber, the Hebrew poet and "beloved vagabond," the author of the immortal Zionist song, "Hatikvah," died on Sinchas Torah, at the Har Moriah Hospital, New York, after a struggle with disease that lasted for months. Cheerful to the last, though at times irritable, Imber gave up the struggle without a murmur of complaint and welcomed the Angel of Death, whom he had often mocked, with a gesture of weariness.

The life of Imber began in a small town in Galicia, but his wanderings were as extensive as the goluth. He was as well known for his eccentricities in San Francisco as in London, in Chicago and Boston, as in New York, and the early period of the Jewish renascence in Palestine also knew the quaint, half-Asiatic, erratic being, who always spoke of being inspired by the Muse of Hebrew poetry, but who was reckless of the life he had been entrusted with.

He was not a refugee or an alien anywhere, yet he was never a part of any community, Jewish or otherwise; for he always attached himself to the border elements, the restless, the unconventional, the individualists, who declined to assimilate, wherever he sojourned. He bore himself with a childish, elfish air, as if he were listening to a Mysterious Voice, that told him esoteric secrets, but he never revealed any of his secrets. He always played pranks with learning, conventions, respectability, but managed to keep a certain air of grandiose conceit, which could be depended upon, on occasion, to check the unpleasant revelation of coarseness.

He was the author of Hatikvah, the Zionist song, but he wrote that at an early age, and ever since he went about collecting toll with a certain majesty for

having written that lyric. He did not consider it his best poem; he always spoke of his Mishmar Hayarden as being much superior to Hatikvah; but he loved the praise showered on him for having given the Jews their national song. He attended all Zionist affairs with the air of a tatterdemalion king, expecting homage. He used to be a silent witness to his own glory at Zionist conventions; in recent years, however, he struggled to speak at every opportunity, but unfortunately for him, speeches are prose and he was a poet.

He was born in Galicia over fifty years ago; three years ago he claimed that the Jewish people owed him a jubilee celebration. He left his Galician home at an early age, after a stormy, unruly childhood, and never returned to his parents; probably never saw them again.

He wandered from Galicia to Vienna, where he was received by a number of Jewish scholars, who had heard of his precocious gifts as a Hebrew poet. He was petted, provided with spending money, this child, until the longing to wander overcame him, and he left by slow stages and arrived in Constantinople. In Constantinople he met Lawrence Oliphant, then enthused about the rebuilding of Zion, and with him, Imber went to Palestine. Oliphant took a great fancy to Imber and was about to adopt him, it is said, as his son, when he died, and Imber was left in London without a patron. Imber always spoke of Mrs. Oliphant as his mother. He alternated from sentiment to cynicism.

In London, Imber was a free lance, doing any sort of work that came to his pen, jesting, wasting opportunities, meeting admirers, and having a good time of