Yehoshua Tan Pai

Yehoshua Tan Pai (2 July 1914 - 13 March 1988), was born in Kishinev, Serbia. He was a Hebrew poet, journalist, dictionarist as well as an author and editor of children's stories.

Biography

Yehoshua Ten-Pi was born Shia Budeshtsky (Ши́е Буде́штский) in Chisinau, to Saul-Yehezkel and Manya (née Brill) Budeshtsky, a religious family. He studied at the Magen David Hebrew Gymnasium founded by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Tsirelson. He immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1934 and joined Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair in Magdiel. He initially worked in Mandatory Palestine as an orchardist, farmer and construction worker and continued to work in the vicinity of Magdiel. It was during this period that he wrote his first book of poems, published in 1937. Later he moved to Tel Aviv and participated regularly in Davar's literary supplement. From 1937 to 1938 he stayed in Paris to complete his studies, where he fell in love with the French language, and later became best known as the author of the famous dictionary, the Ten-Pai Dictionary of French.

Upon his Aliyah to Eretz Israel, he changed his name to "Paytan, because he saw himself as a poet from an early age. He later changed the name Payten to Ten-Pi – anagram, the same name in the reversal of syllables. He worked as a teacher at the Kfar Vitkin school and later in Kfar Yehoshua. In 1942 he joined the editorial board of Haaretz newspaper in Tel Aviv and left it three years later. He then founded the small publishing house "The Library of Hours", in which he published mainly children's books, originals and translations. Among his publishing projects are the weekly "Echo of Jerusalem" and the children's animated weekly "Mickey Maoz" for which he did not ask a lisence to publish. In his Mickey Mouse weeklies, he'd combined Mickey Mouse with stories on Israeli children and their adventures.