Leah Goldberg (Hebrew/Yiddish: לאה גולדברג; May 29, 1911, Königsberg – January 15, 1970, Jerusalem) was a prolific Hebrew poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and researcher of Hebrew literature. Born in a Jewish Lithuanian family, her writings are classics of Israeli literature.

Goldberg settled in Tel Aviv where she worked as a literary adviser to Habimah, the national theater, and an editor for the publishing company Sifriyat HaPoalim ("Workers' Library"). In 1954, she became a lecturer in literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1963, she headed the university's Department of Comparative Literature.

With exemplary knowledge of seven languages, Goldberg translated numerous foreign literary works into Hebrew. Her translations from Russian and Italian are of particular note, including Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace - her magnum opus. Her breadth also included completing translations of Chekhov’s Stories (1945), selected poems by Petrarch (1953), Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1958) as well as many other works including reference books and works for children.

Aside an extensive repertoire of translation, Goldberg also wrote profusely in Hebrew works of poetry, drama, and children's literature. Goldberg's books for children, among them "A Flat for Rent" (דירה להשכיר Dira Lehaskir) have become classics within Modern Hebrew children's prose.

Lea Goldberg never married, and lived with her mother both in Tel Aviv and later Jerusalem. Goldberg died in 1970 of lung cancer duly stemming from a copious smoking habit.

Goldberg had a modernist literary style that may superficially look uncomplicated. She writes in a poem about her own style that "lucid and transparent / are my images". Although she sometimes chose to write poems that do not rhyme (especially in her later period), she always respected questions of rhythm; moreover, in her "antique" works (e.g., the set of love poems The Sonnets of Therese du Meun, a false document about the love-longings of a married French noblewoman for a young tutor), Goldberg adopted complex rhyming schemes. A very elaborate style that she sometimes used was the thirteen-line sonnet.

Her work is deeply rooted in Western culture (for instance, the Odyssey) and Jewish culture. Some of her most well known poems are about nature and longing for the landscape of her homeland, although not necessarily Israel as many presume.

Goldberg's intimate relationship with her mother, aspects of Israel, basic objects within nature, as well as loneliness and the breakdown of relationships are common themes in her poetry, with a tragic intonation that some say originates in her own loneliness. An example of these elements are seen in her poem, "Tel Aviv 1935" (תל אביב 1935):

איך יכול האויר של העיר הקטנה
לשאת כל כך הרבה
זכרונות ילדות, אהבות שנשרו
חדרים שרוקנו אי-בזה

כתמונות משחירות בתוך מצלמה
התהפכו לילות חרף זכים
לילות קיץ גשומים שמעובר לים
ובקרים אפלים של בירות

"How did the air of that small city
find a way to bear so many
memories of childhood, lovers shed,
rooms emptied somewhere?

Like pictures blackening inside a camera,
clear winter nights were reversed,
and rainy summer nights across the sea,
and foggy mornings of capital cities."

(Trans. Annie Kantar, With This Night - University of Texas Press, 2011.)

Goldberg received in 1949 the Ruppin Prize (for the volume "Al Haprikhá")^[1] and, in 1970, the Israel Prize for literature.^[2]

In 2011, Leah Goldberg was announced as one of four great Israeli poets who would appear on Israel's currency (together with Rachel Bluwstein, Shaul Tchernichovsky and Natan Alterman. ^[3].

• List of Israel Prize recipients

• With This Night, translated by Annie Kantar (University of Texas Press, 2011).
• The Selected Poetry and Drama of Leah Goldberg, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back (Toby Press, 2005).
• "From Songs of Two Autumns" (poem), translated by Annie Kantar.
• Leah Goldberg in the Lexicon of the Hebrew new literature on net לקסיקון הספרות העברית החדשה
• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (Wayne State University Press, 2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
• "The Shortest Journey (poem) in New Translations (English)

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