Idiom by Rachel (1926)

4. Idiom By Rachel (1926) I know embellished sayings galore, Endless flowery phrases, Walking jauntily - trotting With a haughty glance. My heart is for the innocent idiom –like an infant Humble like dirt. I know uncountable words – Therefore I hush. Does your ear hear even in silence My lowly idiom? Will you treasure it like a brother, As a mother in her lap? Translation by Rachel Korazim and Michael Bohnen Biography: Rachel Bluwstein Sela (1890 –1931) was a Hebrew-language poet who immigrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1909. She is known by her first name, Rachel, or as Rachel the Poetess. Rachel was born in Saratov in Imperial Russia, the eleventh daughter of her parents and granddaughter of the rabbi of the Jewish community in Kiev. During her childhood, her family moved to Poltava, Ukraine, where she attended a Russian-speaking Jewish school and, later, a secular high school. She began writing poetry at age 15. Two years later she moved to Kiev and began studying painting. At the age of 19, Rachel visited Palestine with her sister en route to Italy, where they were planning to study art and philosophy. They decided to stay on as Zionist pioneers, learning Hebrew by listening to children’s chatter in kindergartens. They settled in Rehovot and worked in the orchards. Later, Rachel moved to Kvutzat Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where she studied and worked in a women's agricultural school. In 1913 she journeyed to France to study agronomy and drawing. When World War I broke out, unable to return to Palestine, she returned instead to Russia where she taught Jewish refugee children. In Russia she suffered from poverty and strenuous labour, as well as the reappearance of her childhood lung disease. It may have been at this time that she contracted tuberculosis. Lonely, ill and famished, she had only one hope left: to return to Palestine. In 1919, after the war, she boarded the first ship to leave Russia to Palestine. (Rachel, continued - page 2) There she joined the small agricultural kibbutz Degania. However, shortly after her arrival she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, then an incurable disease. Now unable to work with children for fear of contagion, she was expelled from Degania and left to fend for herself. She 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 moved to a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Rachel died in Tel Aviv, at the age of 40. She is buried in the Kinneret cemetery in a grave overlooking the Sea of Galilee, following her wishes as expressed in her poem If Fate Decrees. Alongside her are buried many of the socialist ideologues and pioneers of the second and third waves of immigration. Literary career Rachel's early work was in Russian but she switched to Hebrew. Most of her poems were written in the final six years of her life. She is known for her lyrical and musical style, the brevity of her poems, and the revolutionary simplicity of her conversational tone while conveying deep feeling. Most of her poems are set in the pastoral countryside of the Land of Israel. Many express her feelings of longing and loss, a result of her inability to realize her aspirations in life. In several poems she mourns the fact that she will never have a child of her own. Her lighter poetry is ironic, often comic. Her writing was influenced by French imagism, Biblical stories, and the literature of the Second Aliyah pioneers. Rachel was the first Jewish woman poet in Palestine to receive recognition in a genre that was dominated by men. Anthologies of her poetry remain bestsellers to this day. Many of her poems were set to music, both during her lifetime and afterwards, and are widely sung by Israeli singers. Her poems are included in the mandatory curriculum in Israeli schools. In his foreword to the 1994 edition of Flowers of Perhaps, the acclaimed Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai stated: "What may be most remarkable about the poetry of Ra'hel, a superb lyric poet, is that it has remained fresh in its simplicity and inspiration for more than seventy years." 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). .

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