A Bilingual Anthology. Rachel Bluwstein Rachel (Rachel Bluwstein, 1890-1931) was born in Russia an emigrated to Palestine in 1909. In 1913, on the advice of Gordon, she journeyed to Toulouse, France to study agronomy and drawing. ", In 2011, Rachel was chosen as one of four great poets whose portraits would be on Israeli currency (the other three being Leah Goldberg, Shaul Tchernichovsky, and Nathan Alterman). In the absence of a Hebrew poetic model, Rahel adopted the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), turning her into a “poetic mother” of sorts.

La vie de Rachel Bluwstein." Jewish Agency for Israel: Rachel the Poetess, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Sent at an early age to serve in the army of Tsar Nicholas, Isser was careful to maintain his religious observance throughout his long years of service. She moved to Petah Tikvah, where she taught agronomy at a school for girls. In order to learn Hebrew thoroughly, Shoshana and Rahel decided to forbid themselves to use Russian. In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, contact between Ottoman Palestine and France was severed and Rahel had difficulty financing the remainder of her stay there. This flat was described in several of her poems.

[13], In 2016, Google Doodle commemorated her 126th birthday.[14]. Encyclopedia Article: Hebrew Song, 1880-2000, Encyclopedia Article: Australia: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Copyright © 1998–2020, Jewish Women's Archive. During her childhood, her family moved to Poltava, Ukraine, where she attended a Russian-speaking Jewish school and, later, a secular high school. It also touches upon the hardships and laments of a pioneer reminiscing of times spent in labouring on the land.

London: 1994; Rahel’s Poems (Yiddish).

[9] Anthologies of her poetry remain bestsellers to this day. Her third book of poetry, Nevo, which she compiled during the final year of her life, was published posthumously by Davar, in 1932. At the age of 19, Rachel visited Palestine with her sister en route to Italy, where they were planning to study art and philosophy. Author: Martine Gozlan. Now unable to work with children for fear of contagion, she was expelled from Degania and left to fend for herself. She often wrote of her longing to be understood, of the feeling of insignificance of a sick woman in a world that revered strength and power, and of the constant tension between the desire to be loved and the fear of the artistically destructive emotional and poetic price of love fulfilled. Nevertheless, she completed her studies, later journeying to Russia where she lived with relatives. Writing poetry all her life, the majority of her poetry is set in the pastoral countryside of Eretz Israel. as sunlight on the dew, as tripping on the tongue. That same year, her children’s book Ba-Bayit u-va-Hutz came out, with rhymes written by Rahel accompanying colorful drawings of animals. They had planned on continuing from there to Europe to progress in their studies, but they were immediately captivated by the Land of Israel and resolved to remain there. It is only in recent decades that the academic world has begun to recognize the sources of Rahel’s poetry, with its elements of a relentless quest, and to explore the tension between her simplicity of expression and the meanings conveyed by this simplicity. Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women. In 1911, after a year in Rehovot, Rahel sought work in agriculture, becoming the first student at the training farm for young women set up by Hannah Meisel at Kevuzat Kinneret. The existence of the book, which was printed in a limited edition by toy seller Reuven Goldberg, was totally forgotten, and it was rediscovered only in the 1970s. O, my Kinneret, Were you there or did I only dream? Sofia Mandelshtam, who was adored by her children, died in 1906, when Rahel was sixteen. http://benyehuda.org/rachel/italian.html. She wrote poems and critical reviews and published her poetry in the Davar newspaper, which became her intellectual home upon its founding in 1925. [6], Rachel died on April 16, 1931 in Tel Aviv, at the age of 40. The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. In Toulouse, Rahel was the only woman and only Jew among her fellow students, until the arrival of Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi. When he was released twenty-five years later, he settled in Vyatka, on the Siberian border. But the idealization of her character has come at the expense of her work. Rahel wrote poetry unencumbered by flowery language. 5 Bograshov Street, where she lived out the rest of her days.