Literatureדבורה בארון

Devorah Baron

Devorah Baron was a Hebrew writer, editor and translator, called the first Modern Hebrew woman writer, and the first recipient of the Bialik Prize.

1887 to 1956Early Modern Hebrew women's fictionShort stories of shtetl lifeHebrew translation of Madame Bovary

Born: 4 December 1887, Uzda
Died: 20 August 1956, Tel Aviv
Occupation: translator, literary editor, writer

Devorah Baron was born in 1887 in Uzda

Devorah Baron was born in 1887 in Uzda, near Minsk, then in the Russian Empire. Her father, Rabbi Shabtai Baron, gave her a religious education unusual for girls at the time. She studied Hebrew, Torah, Midrash and Mishnah.

She began publishing stories as a teenager in Hebrew newspapers such as Ha-Melits. She completed high school and received a teaching credential in 1907. Her engagement to the writer Moshe Ben-Eliezer ended.

In 1910 she immigrated to the Land of Israel and became literary editor of Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir. She married its editor, Yosef Aharonovitz, and they had a daughter, Zipporah. In 1915 the family was exiled to Alexandria by the Ottoman authorities and returned after World War I.

Her first book, Stories, appeared in 1927, and she won the Bialik Prize, the Ruppin Prize and the Brenner Prize. She later withdrew to her home and did not leave it, not even for her husband's funeral in 1937. She kept writing and translating, including Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, until her death in 1956.