Shin Shalom

Shin Shalom was an Israeli poet, writer, playwright and translator who received the Israel Prize in 1973.

1904 to 1990Hebrew poetry with Hasidic symbolismTranslating Shakespeare's sonnetsThe drama Dan the Guard

Born: 19 December 1904, Parczew
Died: 2 March 1990, Haifa
Occupation: poet, writer, playwright, translator

Shin Shalom was born in 1904 in Parczew

Shin Shalom was born Shalom Yosef Shapira in Parczew, Poland, in 1904. He came from a family of Hasidic rebbes. His grandfather, the Drohobych rebbe, brought the whole family to the Land of Israel in 1922.

In 1925 he and his father joined the Hasidic group that founded Kfar Hasidim in the Zevulun Valley. He later described this journey in his book about the group. He worked as a teacher for some years but stopped because of heart disease, and in 1930 he studied phenomenology in Germany.

He wrote poetry, sonnets, lyrical dramas and prose. His poems draw on Hasidic and Kabbalah symbols, and his drama Dan the Guard was set as an opera by Marc Lavry. He translated all of Shakespeare's sonnets into Hebrew.

From 1961 to 1966 he chaired the Hebrew Writers Association. He died in 1990. A public library in the Neve Sha'anan neighborhood of Haifa is named after him.