Background
Bronya Kutzenok (later Bracha Peli) was born in Starovitzky, a small village in Russia, now Ukraine to a family of Hasidic Jews.
Bronya Kutzenok (later Bracha Peli) was born in Starovitzky, a small village in Russia, now Ukraine to a family of Hasidic Jews.
She was the driving force behind the publication of Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and is credited with starting Israel"s annual Hebrew Book Week. She was the eldest of seven children. Her father, Shmuel Kutzenok, was a wealthy lumber merchant who supplied timber for artillery wagons to the Russian army.
Her mother, Sarah, ran the village general store.
Early on, she became proficient in Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew. In 1905, when she was about to study at a Gymnasium in Kiev, pogroms against the Jews erupted, disrupting her plans.
She waited two years to complete her secondary education and study economics. In 1926, Peli opened a stall in Tel Aviv to sell books cheaply, which led to the inauguration of an annual event.
Today Hebrew Book Week is a national 10-day event.
The last volume was published in 1996. Bracha Peli died in 1986.
