Meir Wieseltier

Meir Wieseltier was born in 1941 in Moscow

Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941. During World War II his family moved to Novosibirsk in Siberia, and his father was killed serving in the Red Army in Leningrad. After his mother was arrested in 1945, he lived with his eldest sister and her husband, who took him to Poland, then Germany, and to Israel in 1949.

In Israel he lived briefly at Kibbutz Ramat HaShofet and then in Netanya, before moving to Tel Aviv. He began law studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during his army service, but later studied English literature and general history. He then spent several years in Europe taking courses in literary history.

In the early 1960s he joined a group of young poets known as the Tel Aviv Poets. He co-founded and edited literary magazines and was a poetry editor at Am Oved. He published 13 volumes of verse, known for political protest poems, love poems and city poems, and translated English, French and Russian works, including 4 Shakespeare tragedies.

He was a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of Haifa, later professor emeritus. He died on March 30, 2023, and was buried in Yarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva.