When the delicate young woman stepped off the boat in Jaffa and swore never to leave the land of Israel, no one dreamt how great her influence on Israeli culture was to be. Her name was Rachel Bluwstein, but she’s known simply as Rachel, and her lyrically personal verse has spoken to generations

The cemetery by Kinneret Village, on the Sea of Galilee, is one of Israel’s loveliest historic sites. The peaks of the Golan Heights twinkle on the horizon, seemingly just beyond reach.

Among the orderly paths and well-trimmed foliage, some of Labor Zionism’s greatest leaders lie forever at rest, their presence silent but imposing. Their predecessors who died abroad – Moses Hess, Dov Ber Borochov, and Nahman Syrkin – are buried here not far from such local heroes as Berl Katznelson, Saul Avigur, and Samuel Yavnieli.

Between the headstones of poet Elisheva Bihovsky and the relatively new monument to Naomi Shemer, a wistful melody wafts through the air. Is the music bewitched? Is it just an echo of the Sea of Galilee’s gentle ripples on the shore, or the whisper of a lost soul?

Soon the hidden loudspeaker becomes evident, but the enchantment surrounding Rahel the poetess’ grave remains, as if she herself were still wondering:

Was it I who bathed in the innocent
blue / Under a peaceful sky / Of my Galilee, my own Galilee? / Was it all a dream? Was it I? (Ra’hel, Flowers of Perhaps [Toby Press, 2008], p. 47)

 

Tradition, Enlightenment, and Zionism

Rahel (Ra’aya) Bluwstein was born in September 1890, during the Sukkot festival, in the town of Saratov, Russia. Her father, Isser Leib, had been conscripted into the czar’s army as a child, but unlike the vast majority of his peers, he’d clung to his Jewish faith and observance. Released from the armed forces after ten years of “re-education” and twenty-five of service, he was blessed with the rare privilege of residing outside the Pale of Jewish Settlement, anywhere in Russia. He dealt in real estate, furs, gold, and diamonds, and at one point even owned a cinema.

After his first wife died, leaving him with four children, Isser Leib married Sonia Mandelstam, the branches of whose large, well-connected family included rabbinic, Enlightenment, and Zionist orientations.

Sonia’s father was the rabbi of Riga, Latvia, and later of a community in Kiev. Her brother, eye doctor Max Emanuel Mandelstam, was the first Jewish medical student to qualify in Russia. President of the fifth Zionist Congress, Mandelstam was a founding member of the territorial movement investigating a temporary Jewish homeland outside of Zion, such as in Uganda. Writer Ossip Mandelstam, executed for opposing Stalin regime, was one of the family’s Hebrew authors, and there were artists, scientists, and lawyers as well.

The Bluwstein home was thus steeped in Jewish tradition but also profoundly Zionist and highly cultured.

Rahel was the seventh of Sonia’s eight children and the eleventh in the household. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Poltava, birthplace of such leading socialist Zionists as Dov Ber Borochov and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Some of the Bluwstein children actually studied with Moshe Borochov, father of the founder of Labor Zionism, and Ben-Zvi’s family of origin, the Shimshis, ranked among their close friends.

As a child, Rahel learned only enough Hebrew to read the prayer book. Like her sisters, she was artistic. She wrote Russian poetry from a young age but seemed more gifted at drawing, dreaming of becoming a painter.

 

Eastward!

Though Rahel and her sister Shoshana belonged to the local Zionist youth movement from their early teens, their parents disapproved of girls’ wandering around a town seething with revolutionary fervor. They soon left home for good, however, after their mother died in 1906, and their father married Masha Naumovna, whom Rahel experienced as a wicked stepmother distancing her husband from his children. Many years later, wasting away in the land of Israel, Rahel felt that her stepmother abused her control of the late Isser Leib’s fortune to deny his daughter medical care.

Rahel and Shoshana moved to Kiev to live with their elder sister Liza and attend college. The two girls resolved that, after university in western Europe, they’d settle in the land of Israel. In 1909, however, before embarking on their studies, they joined many other young Europeans on an “Oriental tour,” sailing from Odessa to Ottoman Palestine.

Their arrival in Zion changed their plans. As their ship anchored in Jaffa’s picturesque harbor after a fortnight at sea, the sisters raised their right hands, burst into the Zionist anthem, Ha-tikva, and swore – only half-jokingly – never to leave their homeland.

Their first encounter with the Levant was far from pleasant, however, as Arab porters descended on them, competing for pennies by ferrying the young women on crowded boats from ship to shore. Scattered randomly on the quay, the newcomers’ possessions had to be gathered up and transported to Haim Barukh’s inn, where the girls spent their first night in Jaffa.

Their stay might have been uneventful had they not come across the agronomist Hannah Meisel, who told them in a brief exchange that she was hoping to teach Jewish girls agriculture. The meeting soon slipped the elder woman’s mind, but Meisel’s plan came to shape Rahel’s whole career.

Rahel and Shoshana set out the next morning for Rehovot, where they were determined to converse in Hebrew, allowing themselves only one hour of Russian a day. Aside from formal Hebrew lessons, the two frequented the local kindergarten, hoping to pick up the youngsters’ living, breathing, everyday vocabulary.

A third sister, Batsheva, joined Rahel and Shoshana. As this sister was a gifted pianist, their father sent them money to buy a piano, and the trio’s room, generally known as the “Tower,” became the social and cultural center for all the young people in and around Rehovot. Rahel devoted herself to reading the Bible and modern Hebrew poetry, but she also met Noah Naftulski, Benzion Israeli, and Meir Rotberg, founders of the Kevutzat Kinneret commune. In addition, she became romantically attached to a young farmer from Rehovot, Nakdimon Altshuler.