Yemima Avidar-Tchernovitz

Yemima Avidar-Tchernovitz was born in 1909 in Vilnius

She was born in Vilna in 1909 to Bella and Shmuel Tchernovitz and grew up in a Zionist home where Hebrew was spoken. Her father was a writer and editor known by the pen name Sfog. The family moved to Kiev, Moscow and Warsaw, and she came to the Land of Israel in 1921.

She studied in Jerusalem at the Lemel School and the Hebrew Gymnasium, then finished the Herzliya Gymnasium after the family moved to Tel Aviv in 1925. In 1931 to 1932 she studied education in Berlin and Vienna, and later at the Levinsky teachers' seminary in Tel Aviv.

From 1932 to 1945 she was a kindergarten teacher and principal in Tel Aviv, and Chaim Topol was among her pupils. She took part in youth programs on Kol Yerushalayim radio, adapted plays for a children's theater and sat on the editorial boards of Hed HaGan and Dvar HaPo'elet. Her children's books are early examples of stories about groups of friends and the everyday lives of children.

She married Yosef Avidar, later an IDF general, and they moved to Jerusalem in 1953. She joined him during his posts as ambassador in Moscow from 1955 to 1958 and in Buenos Aires from 1961 to 1964. She died in Jerusalem in 1998.