Spring 1941 "The Joy of the Poor" was released - a great work by Nathan Alterman, which left a deep imprint on the minds of entire generations of poetry lovers, commentators and researchers. The strong impression of it among young and adult readers is associated, among other things, with the unresolved mysteries hidden in it, with the cover of mystery spread over it. For example, the famous critic Dan Miron argued in 1981 that “no explanation has yet been found , capable of resolving in a convincing form the difficulties which it raises,” and therefore “The Joy of the Poor” represents, in his words, “the most difficult object not only among Alterman’s works, but in general in modern Hebrew poetry.” Two years later, Professor Boaz Arpaly also spoke about the “mystery of the title and the components of the text.” And Mordechai Shalev went further, presenting the main problem in an article devoted not to Alterman’s “The Joy of the Poor,” but to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”: “Are modern literary mysteries designed to be solved, or do they deliberately stop at the stage misleading? Are there logical-linguistic equivalents at all that make it possible to define and understand them? Or, by their nature, are they intended to enable the reader to look into a kind of religious world where these categories are irrelevant and any attempt to impose them distorts their very essence? The youth who were captivated by the verses of Nathan Alterman's 1938 book The Stars Out are the same "earth generation" that got their hands on it in 1941. “The Joy of the Poor” is a product of a different time and a changed Alterman (despite the preserved foundations). Poetry, loaded with the language of ancient sources, is mysterious in what is clear in it, and even more so in what is hidden in it. External dangers, horrifyingly obvious. The mystery of the split unity of two people, their interdependence, jealousy and love, saturated with passions, between the “living dead” (poor man) and his wife (aka “daughter”). The poet Chaim Guri asked Alterman about the meaning of the title “The Joy of the Poor.” Alterman replied: “A terrible storm has come, and people are asking themselves the question: what will remain of the spiritual values accumulated by humanity, of art, friendship, love, the relationship between father and son, between man and woman? And here is an attempt to answer this question: what will remain life in the midst of death, oath of allegiance, memory, hope, continuation."