Jehudit Hendel

Jehudit Hendel was born in 1921 in Warsaw

Hendel was born in Warsaw in 1921 to a Hasidic family, the eldest daughter of Nechama and Akiva Hendel. The family moved to the Land of Israel in 1930 and settled in Nesher, near Haifa. Her father became a bus driver and later served in the management of the Egged cooperative.

She finished the Reali School in Haifa and studied at the Levinsky teachers college in Tel Aviv. She was active in the HaNoar HaOved youth movement and in 1939 joined a group that founded Kibbutz Gesher. After her mother died in 1940, she returned to her father's home in Haifa.

She served briefly in the IDF and took part in the War of Independence. In 1948 she married the painter Zvi Meirovitz, and they had 2 children.

Her first story appeared in 1942, and her first story collection, They Are Different, came out in 1950. Her novel Street of Steps won the Asher Barash Prize in 1954 and was staged at Habima. Her work often dealt with people on the margins, such as Holocaust survivors, new immigrants, the sick and the elderly.

Her husband had a stroke in 1971 and died in 1974, and she later moved to Tel Aviv. In 1984 she published The Other Force, about his life and work. She died in 2014.