Yoram Kaniuk

Novelist and journalist Yoram Kaniuk was born in Tel Aviv to a culturally well-connected family, involved with such prominent figures as Chayim Nahman Bialik. At age seventeen, Kaniuk joined the Palmach, and his later writings often drew on his experiences in the military. He spent the 1950s in the United States, where he met and married Miranda Baker, a Christian woman. In 2011, as part of his long-standing criticism of organized religion, Kaniuk won the right to change his Israeli identification from Jewish to no religion. The case characterizes Kaniuk’s contrarian public persona, a quality that finds expression in his writing as well. Of the twenty-nine books he published, several were adapted for film in Israel.