Shaul Tchernichovsky

Shaul Tchernichovsky (Hebrew: שאול טשרניחובסקי) or Saul Gutmanovich Tchernichovsky (Russian: Саул Гутманович Черниховский; 20 August 1875 – 14 October 1943) was a Russian-born Hebrew poet. He is considered one of the great Hebrew poets, identified with nature poetry, and a poet greatly influenced by the culture of ancient Greece.

Tchernichovsky was born on 20 August 1875 in the village of Mykhailivka, Mykhailivka Raion, Taurida Governorate (now in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine). He attended a modern Jewish primary school and transferred to a secular Russian school at the age of 10.

He published his first poems in Odessa where he studied from 1890 to 1892 and became active in Zionist circles. His first published poem was "In My Dream."

From 1929 to 1930 he spent time in America. In 1931, he immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine and settled there permanently.

He married the Russian-born Christian, Melania Karlova, and resisted all demands from fellow Jews in Palestine that she convert to Judaism. Tchernichovsky and Karlova had a daughter together, Isolda.

He was a friend of the Klausner family of Jerusalem, including the child who would grow up to become the novelist Amos Oz, to whom he was "Uncle Shaul."

Shaul Tchernichovsky died in Jerusalem on 14 October 1943.

From 1899 to 1906 he studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, finishing his medical studies in Lausanne. From then on, he mingled his activities as a doctor with his activities as a poet. After completing his studies he returned to Ukraine to practice in Kharkiv and in Kiev. In the First World War he served as an army doctor in Minsk and in Saint Petersburg.