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Shlomo Kalo is an Israeli prolific author and thinker, poet, composer and medical microbiologist who published more than 77 books, fiction and nonfiction. Some of his works are translated and published in 17 countries.
Shlomo Kalo was born on the 25th of February, 1928, in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the age of 12, Kalo joined the anti-Fascist underground in Bulgaria. Aged 15, when Bulgaria was under Nazi occupation, Kalo was imprisoned in an improvised concentration camp in Somovit. Aged 18, in 1946, he won a prize in a poetry competition and went to Prague, where he studied medicine at the Karl University, worked as a freelance journalist and wrote short stories. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Shlomo Kalo joined the MAHAL ("Foreigner Volunteers": individuals outside Israel who volunteered to fight together with the Israeli forces during its war of independence) and trained as a pilot in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia. In 1949, at the age of 21 he immigrated to Israel. In 1958 he was awarded M.Sc. in microbiology by the Tel Aviv University. For 26 years and until his retirement in 1988 he worked as the regional director of medical laboratories at the General Health Services, Kupat Holim Klalit, in Rishon-leZion. His first book in Hebrew, a short stories collection was published in 1954 by "Sifriyat Poalim". In 1969, a sharp turn in his life occurred and was described in his autobiographic novel "Erral". It affected his life, thoughts and literary activity ever since. He experienced a moment of enlightenment while riding the bus on the way to work at the Kupat Holim Klalit HMO. Kalo said of this revelation, that 'suddenly the world melted. Everything was filled with light and the faces around became eternal. They went through the time dimension, in leaps of years." A group formed around Shlomo Kalo, known as "DAAT" (Hebrew acronym, meaning knowledge, standing for "know yourself always"). Assaf Inbar, an author praised for his book on kibbutizm, wrote in his essay 'the Fall of the secular state': The group's symbol, "Y," was composed of a "V" grafted onto an "I," meaning "victory over the ego." In order to liberate themselves, like Kalo, from bondage to the ego and from selfish desires, the group's members practiced sitting in silence, abstained from sex and constantly intoned: "absolute purity." In a way similar to other spiritual guides who preach that "the truth does not lie in books," Kalo published a steady flow of books at the rate of one or two a year. The DAAT group, which upon its founding in 1979 numbered only four pupils, would over the years gain additional adherents, among them the singers Rivka Zohar and Shoshik Shani, the actor Shlomo Bar-Abba and the journalist Odetta Schwartz-Danin. But Kalo's many books, which spread around the country like ripples from their center in Jaffa, influenced even individuals who never met their author.' Shlomo Kalo is married to Rivka Zohar-Kalo, a prominent Israeli singer, who performs and records, among others, songs he has written (music and lyrics).
During the 1960s two more literary works of his were published by "Am Oved" to much acclaim of readers and critics. In 1969 he established a publishing house named DAT Publication, from which he retired after a few years, though he chose to publish most of his following titles with this house. During the 1970s he translated into Hebrew the classical writs of Far-Eastern schools such as: Patanjeli's Yoga verses, The Bhagavadgita, Budha's Dhamapada, Tao-Te-Ching and more. During these years and mainly during the 1980s Kalo published original nonfiction titles addressing philosophical, moral and spiritual topics (two out of his seven volumes of discourses were published in this decade). Few other titles were literary fiction with a philosophical line ("The Self as Fighter", "The Gospel of the Absolute Free Will" and the novel "As the Scarlet Thread"). much of his music and songs were written in this period.
During the two decades that followed Kalo continued to write prolifically and in a variety of genres and styles. in the 1990s his first titles written in a newly introduced genre "The documented stories" were published ("Forevermore" and "Moments of Truth") and one of his best selling titles, an historical novel titled "The Chosen" was printed in first edition. During these two decades translation rights of some of his books were sold in 17 countries. In 2009 the Israeli Newspaper Ha'aretz reported that rumours were persistent that not only Amos Oz but also Shlomo Kalo had been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Prof. Gershon Shaked (Hebrew University) maintains in his study Modern Fiction (Indiana University, 2000; p 102-3) that Kalo's book The Heap marked 'two turning points in Hebrew Literary History; the beginning of modernist fiction in Israel, and the advent of Sephardi and Ashkenazi authors who wrote about the immigrant Sephardic community. The Heap,' prof. Shaked continues, 'has a special place in the history of Hebrew fiction because it is a neo-modernist social protest of an immigrant author.' The novel is constructed around a number of immigrants who, reflecting on their existential crisis, 'embody the archetype of human failure'.
36 out of Kalo's 77 books were published during the years 2000-2009.
1988 was the year when the extensive media exposure of Shlomo Kalo's contemplative and spiritual lifework began. Since that time, messages and solutions to a variety of issues have been both aired by national TV and radio channels, and widely covered by the press.
Few years later, Kalo broke all ties with the media and almost always refused to interview requests saying his words and ideas are mistakefully quoted by the media.
During the Kosovo Crisis in 1999 Shlomo Kalo was the most prominent Israeli intellectual who publicly protested against US and NATO military attacks on Yugoslavia.
Some of Kalo's titles in English translation:
Titles in various Fiction Genres:
Titles in various Nonfiction genres
Poetry:
Biographical literature
Languages of translations:
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Greek, Malayalam, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian / Rumanian.
DAT Publications' archive
Shaked, Gershon; Miller Budick, Emily: Modern Hebrew fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. – ISBN 978-0-253-33711-5. S. 184
Royle, Nicholas: 'The Dollar and the Gun' . In: Time Out, 23 Juli 2003, S. 58
