"Unusual ability to express": the writer Meir Shalov is laid to rest in Nahalel - voila! culture

Meir Shalov (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

Meir Shalu, one of the most important writers in the history of the State of Israel, is being laid to rest (Friday) in Nahalel Cemetery.

He passed away on Tuesday after several months of battling cancer.

He was 74 years old when he died.

Many writers, artists and statesmen paid tribute to him after his death.

"I think that Meir Shalev succeeded with enormous talent in 'A Russian Novel' to decipher what took place in the working settlement", author Haim Baer paid tribute to him in a conversation with Walla!

Culture on Tuesday.

"He knew Nahalel closely because his mother, Batya ben Barak, is Nahalel's daughter, and his father was a teacher there. He is of two opposites - on the one hand, his father is a Jerusalemite, who was a revisionist, a right-wing person, and his mother is a daughter of Nahalel from the Labor movement. His love of the Bible and Hebrew allowed him To decipher what happened to the Zionist existence, to the pioneering Jewish existence in the Land of Israel.

The dream and its brokenness, and he did it with great talent in his books.

Another book of his, 'The thing was like this', describes the existence of Nahalel through his grandmother."

"I think his children's books are masterpieces," Baer added.

"A lot of books were published and all of them had an unusual ability to express themselves. Wonderful Hebrew. And humor. And winks to the older reader as well. I think he was a very delightful, very interesting writer. I knew him as a person for many, many years. We worked together, we had a common editor, Avraham Yavin, Beam Oved. We would also meet at Avraham's place together. I corresponded with him in the last two or three months. In the last conversations he had a realistic observation of his situation, without self-deception. The cultural and literary world has become much poorer now with his departure. Much poorer. His social and political columns as well They will be missed. Suddenly there is a hole, a void, in the heart of being."

MK Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid), Meir Shalu's cousin, eulogized him in a conversation with Walla! Tarbut: "Although it was expected, the end, but it came quickly."

Meir was first of all a cousin.

We spent our childhood, holidays and meetings with him.

He is both a cousin and a friend.

He was always at the center of the family.

together with him is never boring.

Always with stories, some funny, some less so.

Some of the family stories entered his books.

We are a very family-oriented family.

He will be greatly missed.

One can take solace in the fact that he died in his home, in the place he perhaps loved the most in the world, surrounded by his children and his wife.

And it is also perhaps a consolation that he did not suffer.

Beyond the literary loss, this is a great loss for the family."

More in Walla!

After the criticism, Netanyahu paid tribute to Meir Shalu: "I appreciated his literary skills"

To the full article

Shalov's funeral (photo: Walla! system, Shlomi Gabai)

Shalu was born in July 1948 in Moshav Nahalel, son of poet and writer Yitzhak Shalu and teacher Batia.

In his youth he moved with his family to Kibbutz Ginosar and then to the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem.

He studied at the high school next to the Hebrew University.

In the army he served in the Golani Patrol, and in the Six Day War he participated in the Battle of Tel Fachar.

In November 1967, in the war of attrition in the Jordan Valley, he was wounded by four bullets from the fire of our forces.

He received a bachelor's degree in psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

In 1969, his anti-war poem "On the Opinion of the Boys" was published.

The first books he published were "Lying to Tzim" in 1982 and "Tanach Now" in 1985. In 1988, the first novel from his pen was published, "Roman Russian". After that he published eight more novels, various non-fiction books and children's books. His books won to great success and were translated into about twenty languages.

"Beyond the literary loss, this is a great loss for the family" (Photo: Walla! system, Shlomi Gabai)

Shalev submitted press criticism columns on television, including a satirical column on the TV show "Ali Otala", and hosted the program "Seh Tova" that was broadcast on Saturday evening on Channel One.

In the 1980s, he began to publish a regular journalistic column on Fridays, which began to appear in Haaretz, and after several years moved to Yediot Ahronoth.

Besides his "Russian novel", he published a series of books for adults and children, many of which were translated into foreign languages ​​and won awards in Israel and around the world.

Among his selected works are "Esho", "Khimim Ahadim", "In his house in the desert", "Yona and a boy", "Khimim Ahadim", "Father makes a shame", "Hakina Nachama", "Zohar's dimples", "Aunt Michal" , "Roni and Nomi and the bear Yaakov" and many others.

His last book, "Don't Tell Your Brother", was published in 2022.

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