lit a candle 4h agoMy mom called me from Tel Aviv this morning just to tell me, before I'd even had coffee. She read It's Me to all of us when we were small, translating it on the fly from Hebrew. 89 years old. That book taught me more about being a kid than anything else on our shelf.
Their story
Yehuda Atlas, one of the writers most closely associated with modern Hebrew children's literature, died on 24 September 2026 at Ichilov Hospital (Sourasky Medical Center) in Tel Aviv. He was 89. The hospital announced his death on behalf of the family, and The Jerusalem Post and Israeli outlets reported it…
Yehuda Atlas, one of the writers most closely associated with modern Hebrew children's literature, died on 24 September 2026 at Ichilov Hospital (Sourasky Medical Center) in Tel Aviv. He was 89. The hospital announced his death on behalf of the family, and The Jerusalem Post and Israeli outlets reported it the same day. No cause of death was made public.
Atlas was born on 12 February 1937 on Moshav Ein Iron in Mandatory Palestine to Esther and Yitzhak, who worked in farming. He attended elementary school in Karkur and high school in Hadera, served in the IDF's Golani Brigade, and for a time was a member of Kibbutz Mizra, working as a counsellor to children at agricultural schools. He studied Middle Eastern studies and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. In the early 1960s he edited the youth paper Bamahane Gadna, then joined Yedioth Ahronoth, where he helped edit the weekend supplements and for years wrote a column on children's books and their authors.
He became a household name with the 1977 collection Vehayeled Hazeh Hu Ani (It's Me), short plainspoken poems that captured a child's everyday world of small worries, mishaps and stubborn feelings without preaching. The book won the Ze'ev Prize for children's literature, sold in large numbers, was set to music, staged and translated, and was followed by sequels including Gam Hayeled Hazeh Hu Ani, Verak Ani Lo, Ani Rotzeh Shepitom and Hayaldah Sheani Ohev. Over decades he also translated dozens of children's and young-adult books into Hebrew, edited the children's paper Philon, and published research volumes on classic children's authors under the title Yeladim Gedolim.
Later work turned toward children at risk, including Yeladim Shel Af Echad (2021). Honours included the Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Prize (1970), the Leah Goldberg Prize, an ACUM lifetime achievement award, the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Writers (2013), a translators' prize (2011), and a lifetime achievement award for children's literature from the Israeli Center for Educational Innovation (2020). His archive was deposited at the Gnazim Writers' Archive at Beit Ariela in Tel Aviv.
The hospital's family statement described him as an eternal child to the end, who acted out of feeling and a wish to help others. He was married (in a second marriage) and was the father of three sons. He lived in Tel Aviv. Generations of Israeli readers grew up with his short poems as part of the soundtrack of childhood.
Biography adapted from Hebrew Wikipedia (יהודה אטלס, CC BY-SA 4.0); The Jerusalem Post (24 Sep 2026); Beit Avi Chai and Hebrew literary lexicons. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“Yehuda was an eternal child until his last moments. In his life, he acted and worked for people out of emotion and a desire to help.”
Family statement released by Sourasky Medical Center / Ichilov Hospital, 24 September 2026
Photos
2by People Forever
Yehuda Atlas outside Beit Ariela Library, Tel Aviv, August 2017
by People Forever
same, my grandmother did the same thing over the phone