Zach immigrated to Haifa as a child. At the vanguard of a group of poets who began to publish after Israel's re-establishment, Zach has had a great influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry as editor and critic, as well as translator and poet. Distinguishing him among the poets of the generation of the 1950s and 1960s is his poetic manifesto "Zeman veRitmus etsel Bergson uvaShira haModernit" and Rhythm in Bergson and in Modern (Hebrew) Poetry. Zach has been one of the most important innovators in Hebrew poetry since the 1950s, and he is well known in Israel also for his translations of the poetry of Else Lasker-Schüler and Allen Ginsberg. The literary scholar Nili Rachel Scharf Gold has pointed to Zach as an exemplar illustrating the role of "Mother Tongue" culture, in his case vis-a-vis German, on modern Hebrew literature.