Yiddishkeit: Elazar Benyoëtz

Elazar Benyoëtz was born in 1937 as the son of Austrian Jews in Wiener Neustadt (Austria), moved to Palestine before the outbreak of WWII and eventually grew up in Israel.

In 1959 he took the exams to become a rabbi and, in 1964 moved to Berlin where he lived until 1968, where he created 1964 the Bibliographia Judaica. 

Benyoëtz wrote his first volume of poetry in Hebrew, his essays and "Aphorismenbände" (since 1969) almost exclusively in the German language. His works received many prices: the Adelbert of Chamisso price in 1988, the Order of Merit in 1997 and in 2002 the Joseph Breitbach Price of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.

The name "Ben yo etz" means "Son of the Councellor".