Yonatan Ratosh

Hebrew poet and journalist

Yonatan Ratosh (יונתן רטוש), Israeli poet, was the nom de plume of Uriel Shelach (אוריאל שלח). Born as Uriel Halperin (אוריאל הלפרין) in the Russian Empire in 1908 to a Zionist family. His father, Yechiel, was a Hebraist educator and raised Ratosh and his siblings (including linguist Uzzi Ornan) in Hebrew. In 1921, he migrated to Mandated Palestine to learn at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Adopting the pseudonym of Yonatan Ratosh, he began to write poetry that "tore apart" (Hebrew: ריטש - riṭṭêš) existing conventions of style, language, and culture. In the late 1920s, Ratosh (using his birth name, Halperin) embraced Revisionist Zionism, becoming close friends with Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Avraham Stern. A talented writer, Halperin became the editor of the official publication of the Irgun, "Ba-Cherev" (בחרב, "By the Sword").
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