Eliyahu Porat (Yoselevich) — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Translator and Editor 1906-1966

Born in the town of Zosel, Lithuania, he never received formal education. At the age of six, his father, Rabbi Yosef Yoselevich, began teaching him the Hebrew alphabet and continued with a full religious education. He acquired general secular education and knowledge from private tutors. The family's wanderings made it difficult to obtain a structured education, but the talented child studied diligently. In the city of Semiatycze, Poland, he joined "HaShomer HaTzair" and in 1926, he went for training. In 1928-1929, he was elected to the movement's secretariat and was a member of its main council throughout Poland. He was called to the capital, Warsaw, to edit the movement's bulletin and postponed his immigration for a year. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1930 and joined his kibbutz members, Ein Horesh, in the moshava Hadera. He worked in construction and agriculture in the moshava and its orchards. In 1932, he settled permanently in Ein Horesh and lived in the kibbutz his entire life with his wife Lola, who immigrated from Belgium. His son is the poet Elisha Porat.

Throughout the years, he worked in the agricultural branches of the kibbutz and also engaged in literary work. His writings were published in the kibbutz newspaper, the movement's press, "Davar," and "Al HaMishmar." With his illness in the late 1950s, he began extensive translation work, in which he found a suitable outlet for his talents. The list of his translations is long. Porat was the first to translate several authors into Hebrew, including the Jewish-American writer Saul Bellow with his book "Herzog" (1965). He also translated "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In total, he managed to translate about forty books from German, English, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish. A selection of his translations includes: "People, Years, Life" by Ilya Ehrenburg (from Russian, Vol. 1 1961, Vol. 2 1962); "Economic History and Marxism" by Ernest Mandel (from French, 1964); "Kings" by Jan Kott (from Polish, 1964); "Philosophical I Believe" by Jona Fink (from German, 1965); "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova" by Arnošt Lustig (from German, 1966); "A Contemporary Dream Book" by Tadeusz Konwicki (from Polish, 1966); "The Child's Conception of the World" by Jean Piaget (from English, 1966). He also translated plays, including: "The Lilac Grove" by Aleksandr Korneichuk (from Russian, staged by director Raphael Zvi in Ein Horesh, 1951) and "The Learned Ladies" by Molière (from French, staged by director Nissan Notovitch Nativ, 1952).

Two years after his death, the book "Man and Landscape in the Kibbutz" was published in his memory, compiling most of his writings, humoristic pieces, feuilletons, memorial notes, and a short chapter dedicated to the memory of his mother.

From: Elisha Porat, Heksherim Lexicon of Israeli Literature