Rachel Boymvol

Boymvol was born in Odessa, Russian Empire on March 4, 1914.[6][7][3] She was the daughter of Judah-Leib Boymvol, a playwright and Yiddish theatre director who was murdered in 1920 by anti-Bolshevik Polish soldiers during the Polish-soviet war.[6] He and members of his touring Yiddish theatre were pulled off the train at Koziatyn which was then under Polish control; he and troupe members Epstein and Liebert were killed in front of their families.[8][9][3] Rachel was also injured in the attack and remained bedridden for several years after.[10][2] Rachel grew up in a culture fluent in both Yiddish and Russian and showed an aptitude for rhyming and storytelling from a young age.[6] She began to write at age six; at around this time she and her mother relocated to Moscow.[10] Her first Yiddish poems were published in a Komsomol magazine when she was nine.[3] Her first published book was a book of children's songs entitled Kinder-lider, published in 1930 with the support of Shmuel Galkin.[2][11] She then studied in the Jewish department at the Second Moscow State University; she met her husband, Ziame Telesin, while in Moscow and they were married there.[12][3] After they graduated in 1935 they were sent to work in Minsk, where she quickly became well-known as a children's literature author.[6][2][10]

During World War II, she went with her family to Tashkent, except for her husband who enlisted in the Red Army; it was during the war the she began to publish in Russian.[3][12][2][7] She later wrote, "The Bolsheviks saved me from death, and I was a fervent Bolshevik. I drew five-cornered stars, but also six-cornered, Jewish ones, because the Bolsheviks loved Jews and would give us a country that would be called Yidland. In my head was a confusion that would last many years..."[13] After the war she settled in Moscow, and starting in 1948 she published many poems, children's songs, and stories in Russian, as well as translating from Yiddish to Russian, including a novel by Moshe Kulbak in 1960.[14][4][2] Her dozens of books and pamphlets of Russian-language children's songs and short stories became very popular, with some reaching a circulation of a million copies.[5][3] From 1961 onwards, she became a regular contributor to the Yiddish-language journal Sovyetish Heymland, both in original pieces and in translations of Soviet poetry.[6][15]

Boymvol's son Julius, who was a dissident, applied to emigrate to Israel in 1969.[2] His parents decided to follow him, and in 1971 Rachel was allowed to emigrate to Israel. She left as part of a large wave of Soviet Jewish writers who settled in Jerusalem, which also included Meir Kharats, Yosef Kerler, and Dovid Sfard.[16][17][18] Her husband was able to follow her there during Passover 1972.[12] After arriving there, she lost her main source of income which was writing children's books, and she turned increasingly to publishing books of Yiddish poetry.[4][11] She also continued to publish in Russian, and some of her Yiddish collections were translated into Hebrew during the following decades by Shelomo Even-Shoshan.[6]

• Kinder-lider (1930)[11][19]
• A briv fun di arbeṭndiḳe fun der Sovetisher Gruzye dem firer fun di felḳer - dem groysn Sṭalinen (1936, with Ziame Telesin)[20]
• Bertshik Brud: a kinder maysele un 6 ferzn (1936)[21]
• Oysderveylte dertseylungen (1938)[22]
• Dos tanele (1938)[23]
• Lider (1940)[24]
• Libshaft: lider (1947)[25]
• Skazki dli︠a︡ vzroslykh (1963)[26]
• Pod odnoĭ krysheĭ (1966)[27]
• Gli︠a︡di︠a︡ v glaza: stikhi i poėma (1968)[28]
• Oysgebenkt (1972)[29]
• A mol iz geṿen a helfand mayselekh far ḳleyn un groys (1973)[30][31]
• Fun lid tsu lid (1977)[32][33]
• Dray heftn (1979)[34]
• Aleyn dos lebn (1983)[35]
• Mayn yidish (1988)[36]
• Lider fun farsheydene tsayṭn 1935-1978 (1989)[37]
• Vundervelt (1990)[38]
• Treyst un troyer: hundert naye lider (1998)[39]

• Rachel Boymvol books in the Yiddish Book Center digital library (in Yiddish)