Jacob Levy

Jacob Levy was born in 1894 in Nesolon

Jacob Levy was born in 1894 in Nesolon, a village in Ukraine that was then part of the Russian Empire. His family was religious, and his father brought private teachers to the village to teach him Jewish studies. At 12 he was sent to the Novograd-Volynsky Yeshiva, with the expectation that he would become a rabbi.

He turned to external studies and became a Zionist and a socialist. In 1914 he moved to the Land of Israel with his family's support and left religious life. In Tel Aviv he studied for 2 years at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, where his literature teacher was the writer Y.H. Brenner.

In 1916 he received Ottoman citizenship and was drafted into the Ottoman army. In 1917 he taught Hebrew at the Jewish colony Mesilla Hadasha near Constantinople. After the war he returned to Ukraine, and in 1919 he ran a Hebrew school in Korets.

In 1920 he ran a school for war orphans in Turkey, which led him to a career in education. He then went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne and its Institute of Psychology and Pedagogy. Between 1919 and 1929 he published stories in Hebrew journals, sometimes under the name Aharon Aharoni, as well as professional articles.

Jacob Levy died in 1956.