Ryvel was the pen-name of Raphaël Lévy. Born in 1898 in Tunis into a family of Galician origin that had lived for a time in Austria and then had settled in Gibraltar and Tunis around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lévy was educated at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) school in Tunis, then earned his teacher’s certification at the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO) in Paris. He became an AIU teacher and eventually the director of AIU schools in Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, he created the Popular Jewish University where he gave lectures on literary topics.

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