Yocheved Bat-Miriam

Yocheved Bat-Miriam was born in 1901 in Kapličy

Yocheved Bat-Miriam was born Yocheved Zhlezniak in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, to a Hasidic family. Her parents were Nahum, who leased an estate, and Mariasa of the Schneersohn family. She chose the name Bat-Miriam as a young woman, after Miriam, the sister of Moses.

She trained as a teacher and studied pedagogy in Kharkov, then at the universities of Odessa and Moscow. In those years she took part in the Hebrew Octoberists, a Communist literary group. She published poems in the Hebrew press while still in the Soviet Union.

In the late 1920s she moved to the Land of Israel, and her book Merahok collected her early poems. She published several more books of poetry and translated works from Russian. Her poetry is noted for its longing for the landscapes of her native country.

She never married but had two children: a daughter, the geneticist Mariasa Bat-Miriam Katznelson, with the poet Shimon HaBoneh, and a son, Nahum (Zuzik), with the writer Haim Hazaz. Zuzik, a Palmach member, was killed in 1948 in the fighting for Jerusalem. After his death she wore only black and wrote no new poems.

She died on 7 January 1980 and was buried in the Kiryat Shaul cemetery. Streets in Tel Aviv and Beersheba are named after her.