Isaac Spivak

Isaac Spivak was born in 1886 in Orhei

Isaac Spivak was born in 1886 in Orhei, in Bessarabia, then part of Russia. His father Asher grew tobacco. As a boy he studied in a heder and a yeshiva, worked in a bookstore and later learned bookbinding.

He helped open a school in the farming colony of Dombrovitsa and later taught in Calarasi. He took teacher training courses in Grodno and qualified as a Jewish teacher in 1910. He later ran a city school in Odessa.

In Odessa he joined a circle of Hebrew writers and, on Bialik's advice, translated children's books by Jules Verne and Thomas Mayne Reid. During World War I he was among the teachers who founded the Sifri publishing house.

He moved to the Land of Israel in late 1919 and taught at the Ahad Ha'am school in Tel Aviv. In 1929 he moved to the Lemel school in Jerusalem and studied at the Hebrew University. He headed the Kohelet publishing house until 1948 and wrote history textbooks with partners.

After retiring he lived in Ramat Gan. He died in 1977 and was buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery.