Bronya Kutzenok was born in what is now the Ukraine in a small village called Starovitzky. Her family were Hasidic Jews. She changed her surname when she married a man called Meir. They changed their surname again in Israel to Peli. In the Ukraine she started a school that had 400 children in one year. Bronya and Meir left the Ukraine in 1921 and went to Tel Aviv in Mandatory Palestine.