Yocheved Bat-Miriam

Israeli poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam (born Zhelezniak) was born in Keplitz, Belorussia, to a Hasidic Jewish family. She became associated with the pro-Soviet Hebrew Octobrists and changed her name at the age of seventeen. Bat-Miriam studied pedagogy in Kharkov, Moscow, and Odessa and began publishing poems in 1922. Leading an unconventional lifestyle, she had two children while unmarried. In 1928, she moved to Palestine where she published five collections of poems between 1937 and 1946; she ceased writing after the death of her son in the War of Independence. Bat-Miriam received the Bialik Prize in 1968 and the Israel Prize in 1972.