His father was originally from Chisinäu, Bessarabia and was fluent in Yid- dish, Russian and Romanian. After arriving in Palestine, which was then in the last years of the British Mandatory Regime and in which the modern Jewish state of Israel was founded in May 1948. Pagis chose his own Hebrew name Dan. He ne- ver mentioned his first name. He studied in the pedagogical framework called Hevrat Noar (Youth Society) in the Merhavia kibbutz, where he met the poet Tuvya Ruebner, anative of Slovakia, who became his good friend. He thenstudiedat the Kibbutz Seminary (HakibutzimSeminar) in Tel Aviv. Between 1951 and 1955 he taught at theGat Kibbutz Elementary School. In 1956he moved to Jerusalem, where he studied Hebrew and English literature at the Hebrew University. At the same time he worked as a teacher of Hebrew literature at the Rehavia Gymnasium in the capital, and con- tinued his academic career. From 1976 he became a member of the teaching staff of the Hebrew University as a researcher of Hebrew poetry in the Iberian Middle Ages, eventually becoming a professor. The literary scholar Nili Gold has described Dan Pagis as an example of a writer whose work reveals the influence of "Mother Tongue" oral and written culture on their Hebrew writing. She has situated Pagis in this way among a group of Hebrew-language writers that includes Yoel Hoffman, Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, and Aharon Appelfeld.