Seymour Levitan was born in Philadelphia in 1936. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 but missed the Vietnam war. He received his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to join the Department of English at UBC, where he taught from 1966 to 1972. In addition to his work teaching English, Levitan also became well-known as a translator and editor of Yiddish poems and stories. Paper Roses, his selection and translation of Rachel Korn's poetry, was the 1988 winner of the Robert Payne Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University. He also helped organize the Jewish Film Festival and the Chelm Film Series.