Gideon Levy - Biography

Biography

Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv, the son of German Jewish immigrants. Levy’s father, Heinz (Zvi) Leowy, who earned a law degree from the University of Prague, fled the Nazis in 1939. He spent six months on a refugee boat that was turned away from many ports and he was briefly imprisoned in Beirut, until he finally reached Mandate Palestine (later Israel). In Israel, he initially opened a bakery in Herzliya with his sister and worked as a newspaper deliveryman, but later found a job as an office clerk. The family initially lived in poverty, but their lives became relatively comfortable when the German Holocaust reparations arrived. Levy attended Public School Alef. He and his younger brother Rafi would often sing together, notably songs composed by Haim Hefer. During the Six-Day War, the street adjacent to his home was hit by Arab artillery. Levy describes his political views as a teenager as typically mainstream. "I was a full member of the nationalistic religious orgy. We all were under the feeling that the whole project is in an existentialistic danger. We all felt that another holocaust is around the corner."

Levy resides in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv (on the lands of Sheikh Munis), and is a divorced father of two.Levy says his sons do not share his politics and do not read anything he writes.