BBorn in Baghdad in 1933 to a secular Jewish family, Sasson Somekh grew up immersed in the Arabic language and the vibrant cultural life of the city's educated middle class. In 1951, at the age of seventeen, he and his family immigrated to Israel.

He arrived without knowing Hebrew and set out to learn it in earnest, driven by a singular goal: to translate Arabic poetry into Hebrew. His first translation appeared in 1954. He earned a bachelor's degree in Hebrew Language and History at Tel Aviv University and a master's in Semitic linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A Bridge Between Worlds

At Oxford he wrote his doctorate on the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, concentrating on the Cairo Trilogy; over the years he and Mahfouz became friends. Returning to Israel, he became a professor of Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University, chaired its department from 1972 to 1984, and held the Helmos Chair for Arabic Literature.

He headed the Israel Academic Center in Cairo, taught as a visiting professor at Princeton, Oxford, NYU and Uppsala, and helped found the Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel. Across his career he wrote ten books and some ninety scholarly articles, and rendered modern Arabic poetry into Hebrew in four anthologies.

"He called himself an Arab Jew, and spent a lifetime honoring the whole world that phrase contained."

At the age of seventy he turned to memoir, writing Baghdad, Yesterday: The Making of an Arab Jew, recovering the lost world of his childhood for a new generation. Honored with the Israel Prize in 2005 and the EMET Prize in 2008, he died in Tel Aviv in 2019.