It is not enough for a man to dwell in the Land of Israel, he must also pray to be free.

People's talk and the stories they tell have been engraved on my heart, and some of them have flown into my pen.

Our days on earth are like a shadow, and the time of our affliction is the length of our days.

As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile.

I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it.

Through a historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities in the diaspora. But I always deemed myself a child of Jerusalem, one who is in reality a native of Jerusalem.

At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.