Eliezer Smoli

Eliezer Smoli was born in 1901 in Rozhyshche

Eliezer Smoli was born on August 15, 1901, in Rozhyshche in Volhynia, then part of the Russian Empire. He began writing poems and stories as a child. As a teenager he went to study at a yeshiva in Odessa.

In 1920 he immigrated to the Land of Israel as a pioneer of the Third Aliyah. He trained as a teacher at the Hebrew teachers' seminary in Jerusalem led by David Yellin. While there he lived with a Yemenite family, which later appeared in many of his stories.

In 1923 he went to Kfar Giladi, where he met Alexander Zaid, a friendship that shaped his books about the early settlers. He then taught in Nesher, where he insisted on teaching children in nature, and later in Kfar Yehezkel. In Tel Aviv he taught at a school for workers' children, in the class of Yitzhak Rabin.

In 1936 he published Bnei HaYoreh, written as a pupil's diary of a year in that class. From 1936 to 1942 he studied natural sciences at Berlin University. He received the Israel Prize in 1957 and died on March 30, 1985.