Lev Hakak

Hakak resides in Beverly Hills, California. In 2016, he was one of 24 Beverly Hills residents who submitted an application for an appointment to fill a vacancy on the Beverly Hills City Council after councilmember William W. Brien resigned. However, Hakak withdrew his application prior to the interview.

Hakak has been a Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at UCLA since 1974. He is the author of several scholarly books on Hebrew Literature. His first scholarly volume, published in 1977, focused on poets Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, Amir Gilboa, Natan Zakh and Shlomo Zamir. In 1981, he was one of the first scholars to analyze Mizrahi Jews in Hebrew Literature. His 2009 book, The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Literature in Babylon from 1735-1950, is about Jewish poetry in Iraq.

Hakak graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in Hebrew Literature and Political Science in 1967. He attended graduate school at Tel Aviv University in 1968-1970, and he earned a PhD in Modern Hebrew Literature from UCLA in 1974. His thesis was entitled Modes of Organization in Modern Hebrew Free Verse.

Hakak began his career as a poet in the early 1960s, when he published two poetry collections. In 1977, he published his first novel, The Ingathered. His work challenges the canon of Hebrew literature. He has published articles in The Huffington Post.

Lev Hakak was born in 1944 in Israel. His parents were Iraqi Jews who experienced pro-Nazi antisemitic sentiments in Iraq in the 1940s and emigrated to Israel in 1951-1952.