A new 20-shekel bill features a well-known Israeli poet Rachel Blyuvshteyn on the background of palms and Lake Kinneret. There are also a few lines from her poem "My Kinneret native, were you - was it, or is this my dream?".

Its popularity is a small sad poem due to the composer Yehuda Charet, who wrote music to him after the death of Rachel. The song "Kineret Shelley" became one of the most performed and beloved lyric songs in Israel.

Rachel (Raya) Blyuvshteyn was born in 1890 into the family of a wealthy merchant, a former cantonist soldier, and his second wife, Sophia Mandelstam, who belonged to one of the most intelligent Jewish families in the Russian Empire.

Childhood and adolescence Raya held in Poltava. The girl studied at a Jewish school, where she began writing poems and being interested in Zionism. Gradually came the realization that her place on the Jewish land was celebrated by Vesti.

In 1909, Rachel left the Russian Empire - as she thought, forever. The girl, along with her sister Shoshana, boarded a ship in Odessa, which brought them to the port of Jaffa. Later they were joined by a third sister - Bat-Sheva.

Three sisters settled together in Rehovot. It was necessary to live, earn, and they were arranged to work in a kindergarten. There they performed what later each new wave of aliyah will do - they learned Hebrew from children in the kindergarten. To improve the language, the sisters promised to communicate in Russian only from sunset to sunrise.

In 1911, Rachel moved to the other end of the future country - to Lake Kineret. She settled on a farm in a commune of 14 young women who studied together in the agricultural business.

Senior comrades noticed a capable girl and sent her to study in France, so she returned to the Jewish land by a graduate agronomist.

Rachel graduated with honors from the University of Toulouse and planned to return to Kinneret. But here in her life there was a tragic fracture. Before returning to Eretz -Israel, Rachel decided to visit her family in Poltava. She did not take into account the changing situation in Europe: the First World War broke out, and it was impossible to leave for Palestine.

Forced to stay in Russia, Rachel devoted herself to working with Jewish refugee children. At the same time, she fell ill with tuberculosis for the first time. In 1916 her mother died of this disease.

Only after the war, in December 1919, Rachel managed to return to Eretz-Israel. She sailed to the Jewish homeland on the ship "Ruslan" - the famous ship that brought the color of the Jewish intelligentsia of Odessa to Eretz Israel. Many passengers of that ship became the founders of Israeli culture.

Finally, many years later Rachel's dream came true: she began to live and work as an agronomist in the kibbutz Dgania on the shore of the Kinneret. In my free time I wrote poetry.

And then he let me know about tuberculosis. The disease worsened. Rachel has lost weight, terribly coughed. Work in the field could no longer. Became a teacher, but voices began to be heard in the kibbutz that it is dangerous that tuberculosis can catch pupils.

Rachel had no choice but to leave Dgania and move to the center of the country.

Lonely, seriously ill, in a modest apartment in Tel Aviv, she will write her best poems, filled with sadness over the past happy years. From every line, sadness sang through unfulfilled dreams to live and love near the shore of the Kinneret.

The poem "My Kinneret's Native, Have You Were, Or Was It My Dream?" Was published in the second collection of poems by Rachel.

In 1931, Rachel died. She was only 40 years old.

Yehuda Sharett, second brother of the Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, was acquainted with Rachel, and he loved her poems. He learned about the death of the poetess when he was studying in Germany. When he received the mournful news, a sad melody came to him immediately. She became music to his favorite poem.

And Rachel's dream of "living and loving at the shore of the Kinneret" was realized after death. The poet is buried next to the lake. The grave became a place of pilgrimage for admirers of her talent. On the tombstone there is no name, but only a poetic pseudonym, under which everyone knows it in Israel - Rachel.