Hanina Karaczewski was born in Petrovka, Bessarabia. Before immigrating to Palestine in 1908, he lived in Warsaw and worked as a military band conductor. Karaczewski moved to Tel Aviv where he received teaching posts at several institutions, including the Herzlia Gymnasium, where he remained for over eighteen years. While teaching there, he established a youth choir and orchestra as well as a 200-member choir for adults. Karaczewski's songs and arrangements were published posthumously in the collection Zelilei Hanina (1927). Several of his songs gained wide popularity, and are included in what is considered the corpus of early Palestinian-Israel folk songs: Ha’yarah be-keshet; El rosh ha-har; and Al Sefat Yam Kinneret.
