Yocheved Bat-Miriam Explained

Yocheved Bat-Miriam (he|יוכבד בת-מרים; ru|Иохевед Бат-Мирьям; pen name of Yocheved Zhlezniak) (5 March 1901 – 7 January 1980) was an Israeli poet. Bat-Miriam was Born in Belorussia to a Hasidic family. She studied pedagogy in Kharkov and at the universities of Odessa and Moscow. During this period, she participated in the revolutionary literary activities of the “Hebrew Octoberists”, a Communist literary group, and one of her earliest poem-cycles, a paean to revolutionary Russia entitled Erez (Land) was published in the group's anthology in 1926.^[1] She is unusual among Hebrew poets in expressing nostalgia for the landscapes of the country of her birth. Yocheved migrated to British Palestine, later to be called Israel, in 1928.^[2] Her first book of poetry, Merahok ("From a distance") was published in 1929. In 1948, her son Nahum (Zuzik) Hazaz from the writer Haim Hazaz died in the 1947–1949 Palestine war. Since then she never wrote a poem again.

Selected works

• 1929:^[3] Merahok ("From a distance").
• 1937: Erets Yisra'el ("The Land of Israel").
• 1940:^[4] Re'ayon ("Interview").
• 1942: Demuyot meofek ("Images from the Horizon").
• 1942: Mishirei Russyah ("Poems of Russia").
• 1943: Shirim La-Ghetto ("Poems for the Ghetto").
• 1963: Shirim ("Poems").
• 1975: Beyn Chol Va-Shemesh ("Between Sand and Sun").
• 2014: Machatzit Mul Machatzit : Kol Ha-Shirim ("Collected Poems").

Awards

• In 1963, Bat-Miriam was awarded the Brenner Prize for literature.^[5]
• In 1964, Bat-Miriam was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.^[6]
• In 1972, she was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.^[7]

See also

• List of Bialik Prize recipients
• List of Israel Prize recipients

Further reading

• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, 2nd new edition, by Stanley Burnshaw, T. Carmi, Susan Glassman, Ariel Hirschfield and Ezra Spicehandler (editors), published 31 March 2002, .
• A Language Silenced : The Suppression of Hebrew Literature and Culture in the Soviet Union, by Jehoshua A. Gilboa. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, published 1982, /
• And Rachel Stole the Idols : The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Women's Writing, by Wendy Zierler. Wayne State Univ. Press, published 2004, / .

External links

• Translation of a portion of Bat-Miriam's Cranes from the Threshold

Notes and References

1. Web site: Zierler. Wendy. Yokheved Bat Miriam (Zhelezhniak). Jewish Women's Archive.
2. [Ben Gurion University of the Negev]
3. Zierler 2004: 330 notes 1932 according to the yiddish translation (Merahok. Ben-Ari, R. Habimah. Tel Aviv 1932); cf. Gilboa 1982: 308.
4. Zierler 2004: 330 notes 1949.
5. Web site: Conversation with Member of Hebrew Writers Association (in Hebrew). Davar Newspaper, 17 December 1963
6. Web site: List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933-2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20071217143811/http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf . December 17, 2007 .
7. Web site: Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1972 (in Hebrew).