January 12: Poet of Desire

Robert Friend, a “poet of desire” (Gabriel Levin’s phrase) who wrote about his gay sexuality before the Stonewall era began, died on this date in 1998 in Jerusalem. Born in 1913 into a poor, Yiddish-speaking family in Brooklyn, Friend studied at Brooklyn College, Harvard and Cambridge before moving to Israel in 1950. He spent thirty years teaching English and American literature at Hebrew University while translating into English some 800 works by more than forty poets writing in a range of languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. Friend was the key English translator for the Israeli poets Leah Goldberg, Rachel, and Gabriel Preil. He had no life partner but was devoted to a large family of cats with whom he lived on Jabotinsky Street in Jerusalem.

“He put his ideals into practice by loving men across the border line. Few Israelis, even Sabras, had his understanding of the Palestinians.” —Gabriel Levin