Bluwstein, Rachel

She was born in the family of the cantonist , later the Vyatka merchant Isai (Iser-Leib) Iosifovich Bluvshtein (1833, Poltava - 1923, Tel Aviv) and Sofia Emanuelovna Mandelstam. She grew up in Poltava , where she studied at a Jewish school with teaching in Yiddish and Russian, took the first private Hebrew lessons; there she met V.G. Korolenko . ^[5] From the age of 15 she began to write poetry in Russian. After graduating from school, Rachel, together with her younger sister Shoshan, went to study in Kiev (Rachel - painting, Shoshan - literature and philosophy).

In 1909, at the age of 19, she left for Eretz Yisrael and settled in a moshav on the shore of Lake Galilee . Here she, like other pioneers, was engaged in agricultural labor and studied Hebrew.

Shortly before the First World War, Rachel left Palestine . Due to military restrictions, she was not able to return, and she fought a war in Russia, where she worked as a teacher in a shelter for Jewish orphans. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, in 1919 , Rachel returned to Palestine on the Ruslan ship , and settled in the kibbutz Degania .

Around the same time, Rachel began to write poetry in Hebrew. They were distinguished by elegiac mood, colorful biblical language and were imbued with love for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel . In verses, Rachel often resorted to metaphors and appeals to the great ancestors of the Jewish people. She wanted to be called only by name. Feeling a deep spiritual connection with the biblical Rachel , she wrote in one of her poems: " Her voice sounds in mine ."

Soon, Rachel fell ill with tuberculosis and was forced to leave work with her children. She became weaker and weaker, but continued to write and translate verses from Russian, French and Yiddish to Hebrew. Many of her poems were shifted to music and became the national songs of Israel.

Rachel died in Tel Aviv in 1931.

• Sister - music teacher and pianist Vera Isaevna Dillon (Blyuvshteyn-Dillon), wife of the conductor W.M. Goldstein , with whom she founded the first music school in Harbin in 1925 (their daughter - pianist Ella Goldstein ).
• R.I. Blyuvshtein on the maternal side is the niece of philologist Joseph Emelyanovich Mandelstam and ophthalmologist Max Emelyanovich Mandelstam (1839-1912), head of the Department of Eye Diseases at the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kiev ; the great-granddaughter of the writers V.O. Mandelstam and L.I. Mandelstam . The son of her cousin A.S. Kannegiser was the poet Leonid Kannegiser . Second cousins ​​- physicist L.I. Mandelstam , biologist A.G. Gurvich and petrochemist L.G. Gurvich (1871-1926).

• Streets in Jerusalem , Petah Tikva , Ashkelon , Haifa , Ramla , Tel Aviv are named after Rachel Bluvshtein. A “poetess” is usually added to her name to distinguish from the foremother Rachel (Rachel). There is Rachel Street in Rehovot, on this street is the house where the poetess lived.
• In 2017, the Bank of Israel issued a new banknote of 20 shekels with the image of Rachel Bluwstein and quotes from her poems ^[6] .

• Rachel - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Rachel, the first in Israel
• Poems
• Dr. Zoya Kopelman, the Jewish Tablets and Russian Verigi (Russian voice in the work of the Hebrew poetess Rachel)
• Dr. Zoya Kopelman, Poetess Rachel
• Translation by Irina Goltsova (Jerusalem) [1]
• We woke the dawn ... [2]
• Rachel's Poems in Russian [3]
• Rachel's poems translated by R. Thorpusman
• Rachel's Poems by Alex Tarn