Rachel Bluwstein

Rachel Bluwstein was born in 1890 in Kirov

Rachel Bluwstein was born in 1890 in Imperial Russia to Isser-Leib and Sophia Bluwstein. Her maternal grandfather was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Kiev. The family moved to Poltava, where she attended a Jewish school and later a secular high school, and she began writing poems in Russian at 15.

At 17 she moved to Kiev to study painting. In 1909 she came to the Land of Israel with her sister Shoshana on the way to Italy, but the two stayed. They settled in Rehovot, learned Hebrew by listening to children, and later Rachel moved to the women's farm at Kinneret, where she met A. D. Gordon.

In 1913 she went to Toulouse, France, to study agronomy. World War I kept her in Russia, where she taught Jewish refugee children and probably contracted tuberculosis. In 1919 she returned on the ship Ruslan and joined Degania.

After she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, she was forced to leave Degania. She lived in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other places, taught Hebrew and French, and published most of her poems in the newspaper Davar. Her books included Aftergrowth in 1927 and Across From in 1930.

Rachel died in Tel Aviv on 16 April 1931 and was buried in the Kinneret Cemetery. Many of her poems were set to music and are taught in Israeli schools. In 2011 she was chosen to appear on Israeli currency.