The Hebrew poet, translator, and physician Saul Tschernichowsky (1875-1943) was one of the fathers of modern Hebrew poetry.

Saul Tschernichowsky was born in Mikilovka in the Crimea. He was educated in a small town where liberal religious attitudes prevailed. At the age of five he studied Russian, and at 7 he took up Hebrew. Even as a youth, he was well read in the works of modern Hebrew literature, as well as in Russian literature. He soon mastered English, French, and German. In 1890 he went to Odessa and studied in a private business school. There he met literary critic and editor Joseph Klausner, who later published accounts of their first meetings. In 1894 he began translating Longfellow's Hiawatha and Evangeline. Two years later he completed his studies at the school, having mastered both Greek and Latin. It was then that he translated the poetry of Anacreon and the Symposium of...