Isaac Dov Berkowitz

Isaac Dov Berkowitz (1885-1967) was born in Slutsk, Belorussia. He studied in a cheder and educated himself in secular subjects. One of his first stories, printed in 1903, won a literary prize in a short story competition held by a Hebrew newspaper. In 1905 he became literary editor of a Hebrew journal, and his articles and stories appeared in most of the Hebrew and Yiddish publications of the day. In 1906, Berkowitz married Sholom Aleichem’s daughter. In 1909 he moved to Warsaw, where he edited the literary page of a Yiddish journal. Several volumes of his collected stories were published in Hebrew and Yiddish from 1910 onwards.

Berkowitz settled in Eretz Israel in 1928, and became one of the first editors of the weekly, Moznayim. He published his translation of the collected work of Sholom Aleichem along with reminiscences of the great Yiddish writer and his generation. Berkowitz was awarded the Tchernichovsky Prize twice for his translations (1944; 1955), the Bialik Prize twice (1952; 1965) and the Israel Prize for Literature (1958).