[2][3] His father, a Breslov Hasidic Jew, was a timber agent and the family spent long periods of time in the forests around Kyiv.

Hazaz was introduced to the works of the great Hebrew poet, Hayim Nahman Bialik in Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Russian translation.

In 1918 Hazaz published his first poem, "On Guard" ("על המשמר") in the central Hebrew literary journal of those days, HaShiloah, and received much encouragement from its editor, Joseph Klausner.

He lived in Turkey for almost two years among the young Jewish pioneers who made their way to British Mandate of Palestine, teaching Hebrew at the Hakhshara farm near Istanbul.

For some reason, the two other volumes of this great work, describing the life of a rural Jewish family in Ukraine on the eve of the 1905 revolution and based on his childhood memories, were never published.

In 1951, Hazaz married Aviva Kushnir (née Ginzburg-Peleg, 1927–2019), his right-hand in his endeavors as an author and public figure, and an impressive intellectual in her own right.

In its variety of characters and plots, in its nuances, colors, shades and sweeping topics, this is the broadest narrative ever created by a single Hebrew author, and it bears the unmistakable imprint of traditional Jewish literature.