Yehuda Litani

Yehuda Litani was born in 1943 in Jerusalem

Yehuda Litani was born in Jerusalem in 1943. His father, Chaim (Henryk) Leitaizen, ran a goldsmith workshop and came from Poland in 1939. His mother, Nechama, came from the Pat family of Jerusalem, which owned Cafe Pat on HaNevi'im Street.

He studied Oriental studies at the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia. From 1961 to 1964 he served in the Intelligence Corps unit later known as Unit 8200. He then lived in New York, studied advertising and worked as a code decoder at the Israeli consulate, and later studied Middle East studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In the early 1970s he was spokesman of the Israeli military government in Judea and Samaria. He joined Haaretz in 1973 and reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the territories until 1985. He then worked as Middle East editor at The Jerusalem Post, and in the following decade he edited a weekly Arabic magazine on Channel 2.

He translated Irish poetry, including Seamus Heaney's Station Island, and wrote Irish Mythology with his wife Livna. In 2000 he published a cookbook with Naim Araidi. He had 3 children and died at his home in Hod HaSharon on January 12, 2022.