From the Editor

Poetry as a Jewish literary endeavour dates back millennia. David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan and the Sons of Solomon are just two of the better-known examples of this sublime art form to be found in the Bible. Some of the greatest poetry of any civilisation was composed by the Jewish poets of the "Golden Age" in Moslem Spain of the 11th-12th century - such as Yehuda Halevy, Solomon Gabirol and Shmuel Hanagid, to name just three.

In Eretz Israel preceding the establishment of the state, such luminaries as Chaim Nahman Bialik, Saul Tchernikhovsky, Rachel, Leah Goldberg, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Zelda laid the foundations for the modern poetic idiom of the young nation. In the first decades of the state, Natan Alterman, T. Carmi, Amir Gilboa, Avot Yeshurun and others brought their poetic vision to its early struggles, and were succeeded in turn by members of a younger generation, such as Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, Dan Pagis, Yona Wollach, David Avidan and Dahlia Ravikovitch to name but a few. In this issue of ARIEL we turn the soptlight on yet another new generation of poets, some of whom have arleady appeared in these pages, while others will be new to our readers.

Is it High Art, Low Art, or indeed any sort of art at all? The argument rages about the 81 plaster-cast lions that graced (or disgraced according to your point of view), the streets, plazas and malls of Jerusalem over the last 12 months or so. At the initiative of the municipality and with the backing of the Peugeot automobile company, each lion was entrusted to a different artist - some well-known, others less so - for them to exercise their artistic imagination. A final auctioning-off of the lions brought in more than 300,000 dollars - most of which is earmarked for children at risk in the city.

The lions were an immediate attraction for thousands of Jerusalem's children, who played on them, vied with each other as to whom had seen the most and compared notes on them with each other. (You may see some of the lions on the back cover of this edition of ARIEL.) Art or not, for the children (and their parents) it was a welcome and charming refuge from the current strains and pressures of life in the capital. And if that is not a worthy aim of art, I don't know what is.

Asher Weill
Jerusalem, November 2002