20 Facts About Avraham Shlonsky

Avraham Shlonsky was an Israeli poet and editor born in the Russian Empire.

Avraham Shlonsky was influential in the development of modern Hebrew and its literature in Israel through his many acclaimed translations of literary classics, particularly from Russian, as well as his own original Hebrew children's classics.

Avraham Shlonsky was born into a Hasidic family in Kryukovo.

Avraham Shlonsky's father, Tuvia, was a Chabad Hasid, and his mother, Tzippora, was a Russian revolutionary.

Five-year-old Avraham Shlonsky informed on his mother, leading to her arrest.

In 1913, when Avraham Shlonsky was 13, he was sent to Ottoman Palestine to study at the prestigious Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv.

Tuvia Avraham Shlonsky worked as a warehouse manager and bookkeeper in the Shemen factory in Haifa.

Avraham Shlonsky was a manual laborer, paving roads and working in construction along with other members of the Third Aliyah.

Avraham Shlonsky joined Gdud Ha'avoda and helped to establish Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley.

Avraham Shlonsky married Lucia but conducted a secret affair with Mira Horowitz, the wife of a friend and colleague, with whom he had a child in 1936.

Avraham Shlonsky published his first poem in 1919 in the newspaper Ha-Shiloah.

Avraham Shlonsky contributed to Jewish cultural life with songs for satirical stage productions, as well as the Purim holiday costume balls that were a tradition in early Tel Aviv.

For years, perhaps as a result of this stance, Avraham Shlonsky's poetry was not taught in schools alongside the classic poems of Bialik, Shaul Tchernichovsky, David Shimoni, and others.

In 1933 Avraham Shlonsky founded the literary weekly Turim, which was identified with the "Yachdav" society in which major poets Natan Alterman and Leah Goldberg were members.

Avraham Shlonsky was noted for his sensitive activism on behalf of Boris Gaponov.

Israeli television viewers of the time remember the image of Avraham Shlonsky stroking Gaponov's head in a loving, fatherly manner, as the latter lay on his sickbed.

Avraham Shlonsky particularly lamented the fate of the Jews in a diseased Europe.

Avraham Shlonsky translated many of the world's best known classics: William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Romain Rolland, and others.

Avraham Shlonsky translated Shakespeare from Russian, as he was not a master of English.

When Hamlet tells his mother Gertrude not to sleep with his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father, Avraham Shlonsky uses the consonance min`i dodayikh midodi: "withhold your love from my uncle", where the unusual word dodayikh evokes the Song of Solomon.