Erez Biton (
Hebrew: ארז ביטון; born 1942 in
Oran,
Algeria) is an Algerian-born Israeli poet of
Moroccan descent. He is the 2015 recipient of the
Israel Prize for Hebrew Literature and Poetry, among other literary awards.
Biography
Erez Biton was born in
Oran in a
Moroccan Jewish family. His family fled
Algeria in 1948, and made
aliyah to Israel.[1] He grew up in
Lod.[1] At the age of 10, he lost his vision and his left hand to a stray
hand grenade that he had found. The following year he went to school at Jerusalem's Institute for the Blind. He earned a B.A. in
social work from the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an M.A. in psychology at
Bar-Ilan University.[2] Biton is married to Rachel Calahorra Biton and the couple have two children.
Career
Following his studies, Biton worked as a social worker in
Ashkelon for seven years and as a psychologist in an outlying town. He worked as a journalist and published a weekly column in the Israeli mainstream daily Maariv.[2] His first book, Mincha Marokait (Moroccan Gift), published in 1976, established him as the founding father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel.[3]
(2015) Biton was awarded the
Israel Prize for Literature, the first
Mizrahi Jew to receive it.[4] The prize committee described his poems as being "the epitome of courageous dealings, sensitive and deep with a wide range of personal and collective experiences centered around the pain of migration, planting roots in the country, and the reestablishment of the Mizrahi identity as an integral part of the overall Israeli portrait."