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Shoshana Shababo was born in the agricultural town of Zichron Yaakov in 1910. Her father, Shlomo Shababo, was a teacher at the local elementary school. Born in Safed to a Sephardic family from the old Yishuv, he studied in Paris and Egypt in order to teach Arabic, Hebrew and Bible. After completing elementary school, she moved to Tel Aviv to attend the Levinsky Teachers Training Academy, but did not complete her studies due to severe arthritis, which forced her to return home. She lived in her father’s home from 1929, when she became ill, to 1942 when she married David Karasanti. After her mother died, Shoshana managed the household, as all her brothers and sisters had already married and moved out. During those years, she also realized her dreams as an ambitious young woman – to read, write and have a social life. Shababo stopped writing when she wed in 1942 and never wrote again, until her death in 1992. When asked about these 50 years of silence, she replied, “I was a Canaanite slave to my marriage”. Although she had a happy marriage, she did not know how to combine this with writing and pronounced, “Shoshana Shababo the writer is dead! There is only Mrs. Karasanti!” Prof. Yaffah Berlovitz To all philatelic items issued on February 2023
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