Elisheva Bichovsky

Elisheva (Bichovsky) (1888-1949) was born in Russia to a Christian family. Her father was the village schoolteacher. After her mother’s death, Bichovsky’s mother’s English family in Moscow raised her. She graduated in 1910 as a teacher. Starting in 1907, she lived in a Jewish environment and became interested in Judaism and Hebrew language, which she began to study in 1913. In 1920, she married Shimon Bichovsky and under his influence she began to write in Hebrew. In 1925 she and her husband immigrated to Eretz Israel. Bichovsky began to write poetry in Russian in 1907 and nearly 200 of her poems were published. Her first book was published in Moscow in 1919. She wrote stories as well, and translated English poetry into Russian. After her involvement with the Hebrew language she translated Hebrew writers into Russian. She published her first work in Hebrew in 1921. From that time, her stories and poems were almost all published in Hebrew journals of the time.