Everyone who wrote about him: and what they said. A central gateway to all the testimonies of his generation.
AZR received what few ever do: a series of portraits by the greats of his generation — friends, writers, critics, and leaders. This gateway gathers them all in one place, each voice with the essence of its testimony and its source. Full text on the site = a dedicated document; to be transcribed = a source located at Ben-Yehuda, awaiting incorporation.
A The Closest
R. Binyamin (Yehoshua Radler-Feldman) · neighbor and partner · 1924–1946
"He is the prototype of Bialik's poem on the 'humble of the world'… he vindicates the plain-spoken." The richest portrait.
"The old man does his work" (in admiration, via R. Binyamin); and in "Only Yesterday" (Temol Shilshom), AZR is the librarian who never withheld a book from him (except "heretical writings").
Additional bibliography (secondary, cited in the scholarship, not yet incorporated): Yaakov Fichman, "A. Z. Rabinovitz: For the Seventieth Jubilee" (BeTerem Aviv); Avraham Broides, "AZR" ("Moznaim" 21); Nahum Benari, "On the Passing of AZR"; Shmuel Shapira, "Vision and Prophecy" (at 85). These are recorded as references for the completeness of the catalogue.
Note: AZR himself wrote portraits of his contemporaries — Borochov, Ben-Zvi, Vitkin, Gordon, Ahad Ha'am, and Brenner. These are in "Portraits of the Second Aliyah" and in the dedicated pages, and they complete the picture: the generation looked at him, and he looked at the generation.