Avraham Ben-Yitzhak

Who was Avraham Ben-Yitzhak?

Avraham Ben-Yitzhak was an Israeli Hebrew poet.

He was born Avraham Sonne, on September 13, 1883 in Przemyśl, Galicia, a region of Eastern Europe which has changed hands throughout history between Austria and Poland. In his youth, Przemyśl was part of the Austrian Empire, and he moved to Vienna to study. In 1938 he fled to the British Mandate of Palestine after the German occupation of Vienna. He died in 1950 in Israel of tuberculosis. He had only published eleven poems in his lifetime. These, and a few more, were rediscovered after his death.

He was a friend of Elias Canetti, who wrote a profile of him in the April 7, 1986 edition of The New Yorker. He was also a friend of James Joyce and rumored to be romantically attached to Leah Goldberg. Most of all, his friends remembered him for his long silences.