Hillel Halkin (born 1939) is an American-born Israeli translator, biographer, literary critic, and novelist who has lived in Israel since 1970.

Biography

Hillel Halkin was born in New York City two months before the outbreak of World War II. He was the son of Abraham S. Halkin, then a professor of Jewish literature, history, and culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and his wife Shulamit, a daughter of Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan. In 1970, he made aliyah to Israel and settled in Zikhron Ya'akov. He studied English literature at Columbia University. Halkin is married to Marcia and is the father of two daughters.

Literary career

Halkin translates Hebrew and Yiddish literature into English. He has translated Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman, and major Hebrew and Israeli novelists, among them Yosef Haim Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Shulamith Hareven, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and Meir Shalev. Halkin won a National Jewish Book Award in 1978 for his first original book Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist's Polemic (1977). He expressed why American Jews should immigrate to Israel. Halkin's second book, Across the Sabbath River (2002), is a work of travel literature in which he goes in search of the truth behind the mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes. He became increasingly interested in the Bnei Menashe— who began to immigrate to Israel from India in the late 20th century—and helped to arrange DNA testing for the group in 2003 in Haifa. Since then, he has written A Strange Death: a novel based on the local history of Zikhron Ya'akov, where he resides. His intellectual biography of Yehuda Halevi won a 2010 National Jewish Book Award. In 2012, Halkin published his first novel, ''Melisande! What Are Dreams?'' The critic D. G. Myers described it as a "unique and moving study of marriage, a love letter to conjugal love." In 2014, Halkin published a new biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Halkin writes frequently on Israel and Jewish culture and politics. His articles have been published in Commentary, The New Republic, The Jerusalem Post, and other publications. He is a member of the editorial board of the Jewish Review of Books. Halkin is the author of the Philologos column, originally in The Forward, and later in Mosaic. The American literary critic, Edward Alexander, identified him as the author of the column. Mira Sucharov of Canadian Jewish News claimed that "Philologos" is Halkin's pseudonym. Halkin later admitted to being the author.

Published works

Books

Translations