Literatureרחל בוימוול

Rachel Boymvol

Rachel Boymvol was a poet, children's author and translator who wrote in Yiddish and Russian, first in the Soviet Union and later in Israel.

1914 to 2000Soviet Yiddish and Russian children's booksYiddish poetry written in JerusalemTranslating Yiddish literature into Russian

Born: 19 February 1914, Odesa
Died: 16 June 2000, Jerusalem
Occupation: translator, writer, poet
Education: Second Moscow State University

Rachel Boymvol was born in 1914 in Odesa

Boymvol was born in Odesa in 1914. Her father, Judah-Leib Boymvol, was a playwright and Yiddish theater director who was killed in 1920 while touring with his troupe. She was injured in the same attack and grew up speaking Yiddish and Russian.

She moved to Moscow with her mother as a child, and her first Yiddish poems appeared in a Komsomol magazine when she was 9. Her first book of children's songs came out in 1930. She studied in the Jewish department of the Second Moscow State University, married the poet Ziame Telesin, and after graduating in 1935 worked in Minsk.

During World War II she lived in Tashkent and began publishing in Russian. After the war she settled in Moscow, where from 1948 she wrote many Russian children's books and translated from Yiddish to Russian. From 1961 she wrote regularly for the Yiddish journal Sovyetish Heymland.

Her son Julius, a dissident, applied to emigrate to Israel in 1969, and she followed in 1971 and settled in Jerusalem. There she published mainly books of Yiddish poetry, and some were translated into Hebrew by Shelomo Even-Shoshan. She died in Jerusalem in 2000.