Moshe Sharett was born in 1894 in Kherson (Ukraine). He moved to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with his family in 1908, making their first home in the Arab village of Ein Sinia; the experience left him with a command of Arabic and Arab customs.

Sharett and his family moved in 1910 to Jaffa, where they became one of the founding families of "Ahuzat Bayit," the earliest nucleus of the city of Tel Aviv. Moshe was a member of the first graduating class of the