rise of the Zionist movement amongst Jews in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews embraced Hebrew literature and began to dominate it for the first time. The foundations of modern Israeli writing were laid by a group of literary pioneers from the Second Aliyah including Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Moshe Smilansky, Yosef Haim Brenner, David Shimoni and Jacob Fichman. Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934) was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poets and came to be recognized as Israel's national poet. Bialik contributed significantly to the revival of the Hebrew language, which before his days existed primarily as an ancient, scholarly, or poetic tongue. Bialik, like other great literary figures from the early part of the 20th century such as Ahad Ha-Am and Tchernichovsky, spent his last years in Tel Aviv, and exerted a great influence on younger Hebrew writers; the impact of his work is evident throughout modern Hebrew literature. In parallel, a number of Palestinian and Levantine Jewish writers were influenced by the resurgence of Hebrew literature, and adopted Hebrew for their writings. In contrast to the experiences of pioneers such as Bialik, who were Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, the Levantine Jewish writers were educated in Arabic literary traditions, and thus they incorporated many Arabic, Sephardic, and vernacular Palestinian themes and linguistic elements in their writing. Novelist Yehuda Burla, born in Jerusalem in 1886, served in the Ottoman army, and later taught Hebrew and Arabic in Damascus. In 1961, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature. The novelist Yitzhaq Shami was a Palestinian Jewish native of Hebron, and his work—which was written from the perspective of both Arabic-speaking Jews and Muslim Palestinians—incorporated diverse Arabic, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern themes. Shami holds a relatively unique place in Hebrew literature, since his writing is also recognized as Palestinian literature; in 2004 Shami was recognized by the Palestinian Academic Society as one of the important Palestinian writers. In 1966, Agnon won the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels and short stories that employ a unique blend of biblical, Talmudic and modern Hebrew. Literary translators into Modern Hebrew, most notably Leah Goldberg among others, also contributed a great deal to Israeli-Hebrew literature through bringing international literature and literary figures into Hebrew circles through translation. Goldberg herself was also noted for being a prolific writer and pioneer of Israeli children's literature as well. Contemporary era A new generation of Hebrew writers emerged with the establishment of