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Erez Biton

ארז ביטון

Erez Biton was born in 1942 in Oran, Algeria. He spent six months in a transit camp in France before his family came to Israel and was sent to an immigrant camp in 1948. When he was 10 years old, Biton lost his sight and his left hand when a grenade he found in the fields near his home exploded. In 1953, he was sent to a school for the blind in Jerusalem. After earning a BA in social work and an MA in psychology, he worked for seven years as a social worker in Ashkelon and as a psychologist in an outlying town. He was one of the spiritual leaders of the struggle of Mizrahi Jews.

Biton has served as chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association, wrote a weekly column for the dailyMaariv and currently edits the Hebrew literary journal, Apirion. His poetry has earned a number of literary awards, including the Miriam Talpir Prize (1982), the Prime Minister’s Prize (1988), the Yehuda Amichai Prize (2014), the Bialik Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2014) and the Israel Prize for Literature (2015).

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