Shlomo Hillels

Shlomo Hillels was born in 1873 in Bar

Shlomo Hillels was born in 1873 in the town of Bar in Podolia, in the Russian Empire, to a family of craftsmen. As a child he moved with his father to Soroki in Bessarabia. He studied in a cheder and took general lessons from private tutors.

He taught in a reformed cheder before he was certified as a teacher in 1901. He then taught at and ran a Hebrew school in Markulesti. In 1903 his story "Life Against Life" took third place in a literary contest run by the newspaper Hatzofeh.

After World War I he set up and ran the emigration office of Ukrainian Jews and the Joint's schools, and later supervised the Tarbut school network. In 1923 he founded and edited a Yiddish weekly. He moved to the Land of Israel in 1925 and taught at Mikveh Israel.

In 1935 he became the first director of Beit Bialik. From 1939 to 1946 he was on an educational mission in the United States, where he edited and published works on education and Hebrew literature. His novel "Har HaKramim," about Jewish villagers in Bessarabia, first appeared in 1931.

Back in Israel he was active in the Writers' Association. He won the Kugel Prize for literature in 1952. He died in Tel Aviv in 1953, and his collected works came out that year in 6 volumes.