Biography
Sasson Somekh was born in Baghdad to a secular Jewish family. In 1951, Somekh and his family immigrated to Israel in the wake of growing pressures on the Jews of Iraq to leave the country. He did not know Hebrew at the time, but started learning it in earnest in order to achieve his goal of becoming a translator of Arabic poetry into Hebrew. His first translation was published in 1954 in Ner, a journal published by Ihud ("Unity"), an association dedicated to the advancement of Arab–Jewish reconciliation established by Judah Magnes.
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