"War and love are central themes in the versatile Israeli author Yehuda Amichai’s work. Yet the most central theme in his collected oeuvre, perhaps, is his ongoing dialogue, not to say, argument with G-d. The Greek concept of Agon personifies a conflict, struggle, or contest between two characters, in this case the poet and G-d. In other words, we meet in Amichai’s poetry a mixture of conflicts or troubles. The conflicts of war, the struggles of love, and the troubles of our relationship with G-d, who can seem so cruelly absent when we feel we need G-d the most. Oftentimes, the brutality of war is contrasted with the idyllic peaceful realities of childhood. Amichai grew up in a Jewish Orthodox family in Germany and often contrasts his war experiences with his childhood and his memories of his mother and father. The family emigrated to what was then the Palestine Mandate under British command in 1936.
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