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Rachel Blaustein's Kinneret, A Child's Poem of Israel
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July 1, 2010 |
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Sitting on the edge of the pebbly shore of Kibbutz Ein-Gev, I realize that this is no ordinary kibbutz, and this is no ordinary shore. This is the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Well, not really a sea, but a manmade lake Israelis call the "Kinneret." The name, Kinneret, comes from a poem called, "V'Ulai" by the early Israeli poet, Rachel Blaustein. It was written in 1923, while Rachel was living a lonely life in a small, one-room apartment in Tel-Aviv. She was dying of tuberculosis, and the poem recalls her heady youthful days at Kibbutz Degania, on the south shores of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), between 1909 and 1913.
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