Avigdor Hameiri

Avigdor Hameiri was born in 1890 in Stare Davydkovo

He was born Avigdor Feuerstein in 1890 in a village near Munkatsch, then in Hungary. His mother died when he was a child, and he grew up in his grandfather's home, where he learned Hebrew. He later studied at a yeshiva and at the rabbinical seminary in Budapest.

As a young man he wrote for Hebrew and Hungarian papers and was active in the Hungarian Zionist movement. From 1910 to 1912 he lived in Berlin and published his first book of poems.

In World War I he served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army and was captured by the Russians in 1916. Freed in 1917, he reached Odessa and joined a group of Hebrew writers around Bialik. In 1921 he moved to the Land of Israel.

He wrote for Doar HaYom and Haaretz and founded several journals. In 1927 he founded HaKumkum, the first Hebrew satirical theater. His war memoir The Great Madness appeared in 1929, and from 1948 to 1958 he was chief stylist of Knesset publications.

He won the Israel Prize for literature in 1968. He died on April 3, 1970, and was buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery.