Yoel Hoffmann

Yoel Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Brașov

Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Brașov, Romania, to a Jewish family. As a small child he came with his parents to the Land of Israel. His mother died soon after, and his father placed him in an orphanage until he remarried.

He attended Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv and served in the Israeli Navy. As a young man he spent two years in a Zen monastery in Japan, studying Japanese and Chinese texts. He earned a master's degree in philosophy at Tel Aviv University in 1969 and later studied at Kyoto University for his doctorate on Buddhism and David Hume.

In the 1960s he settled in Safed and taught at a high school there. He later became a professor at the University of Haifa, teaching literature and philosophy. He also translated haiku into Hebrew.

He began writing fiction in his forties. His prose uses short lines, numbered chapters and wide use of brackets, and several of his books appeared in English. He won the Bialik Prize and the Prime Minister's Prize.

He was married to Varda for 37 years and they had 3 children, divorcing in 1997. He later married Nurit, and from 2010 he grew close to Hasidism. He died in 2023 and was buried in Safed.