1. Rachel Bluwstein Sela was a Hebrew-language poet who immigrated to Ottoman Palestine, in 1909.
17 Facts About Rachel Bluwstein
1. 2.
Rachel Bluwstein began writing poetry at the age of 15.
3.
At the age of 19, Rachel visited Ottoman Palestine, with her sister Shoshana, en route to Italy, where they were planning to study art and philosophy.
4.
Later, Rachel Bluwstein moved to Kvutzat Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where she studied and worked in a women's agricultural school.
5.
Rachel Bluwstein returned to Palestine on board the ship Ruslan and for a while joined the small agricultural kibbutz Degania, a settlement neighbouring her previous home at Kinneret.
6.
Rachel Bluwstein spent the rest of her life traveling and living in Tel Aviv, eking out a living by providing private lessons in Hebrew and French, and finally settled in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Gedera.
7.
Rachel Bluwstein died on 16 April 1931 in Tel Aviv, at the age of 40.
8.
Rachel Bluwstein is buried in the Kinneret Cemetery by Moshavat Kinneret in a grave overlooking the Sea of Galilee, following her wishes as expressed in her poem If Fate Decrees.
9.
Naomi Shemer was buried near Rachel Bluwstein, according to Shemer's wish.
10.
Rachel Bluwstein is known for her lyrical style, the brevity of her poems, and the revolutionary simplicity of her conversational tone.
11.
Rachel Bluwstein's writing was influenced by French imagism, Biblical stories, and the literature of the Second Aliyah pioneers.
12.
In some poems, Rachel Bluwstein expresses identification with Biblical figures such as Rachel Bluwstein, her namesake matriarch, and Michal, wife of David.
13.
Rachel Bluwstein wrote a one-act comic play Mental Satisfaction, which was performed but not published in her lifetime.
14.
Rachel Bluwstein was the first Jewish woman poet in the British Mandate of Palestine to receive recognition in a genre that was practiced solely by men.
15.
Rachel Bluwstein's poems are included in the mandatory curriculum in Israeli schools.
16.
Poems by Rachel Bluwstein have been translated to English, German, Czech, Polish, Esperanto, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Basque and Slovak and French.
17.
In 2011, Rachel Bluwstein was chosen as one of four great poets whose portraits would be on Israeli currency.