Avraham Even-Shoshan

Avraham Even-Shoshan was born in 1906 in Minsk

Avraham Rozenshteyn was born in Minsk, in the Russian Empire, on 25 December 1906. His father, a writer and Zionist activist, ran the reformed cheder where he first studied. He later attended a public high school and studied Talmud at a yeshiva.

At 16 he joined the Zionist youth movement HeHalutz HaTzair and was active in it underground. In April 1925 he immigrated alone to the Land of Israel. He first worked as a shoemaker and farmer with the Ein Harod group.

He moved to Jerusalem and studied at the teachers college headed by David Yellin, earning his teaching certificate in 1928. He also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He changed his name to Even-Shoshan, a translation of Rosenstein, and taught in Beit HaKerem for 20 years.

Starting in 1946 he compiled HaMilon HeHadash, which became known as the Even-Shoshan Dictionary in 2003. He also wrote the Even-Shoshan concordance and co-wrote the Bialik concordance. He received the Israel Prize in 1978 and the Bialik Prize in 1981, and he died in Jerusalem in 1984.