Woman on the Margin

Selected Poetry and Fiction of Elisheva
Levine, Herbert J. and Spicehandler, Reena M. 

One of the gifts of feminist scholarship has been efforts to recover the work of women whose writing has fallen into the shadows. With a new translation of a selection of her poetry and fiction from Hebrew into English, literary scholars Herbert Levine and Reena Spicehandler have revived the complex figure of Elisheva, who had been widely read and admired in Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. A Gentile born and raised in Russia by Anglophile parents, Elisheva (an expert linguist) fell in love with Palestine and Hebrew. Elisheva incarnates a unique intersectional identity, expressed beautifully in her literary output. This volume makes an important contribution to a revised canon and will make a fascinating and creative addition to courses on Hebrew literature; gender in the Jewish experience, and women’s and cultural studies.
Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of Jewish Studies, Professor of English, Northeastern University

 Elisheva, a fascinating early 20th century boundary-crossing, bridge-seeking multicultural and multi-lingual writer of both poetry and prose, has – at last – been gracefully, sensitively, translated into English in this landmark volume by Herbert Levine and Reena Spicehandler.  In an era in which "outsider" voices are at last being heard, the voice of Elisheva, a Russian-British-Christian in pre-state Israel, is a first among equals. What a pleasure to read this book!
Miriyam Glazer, Emerita Professor of Literature American Jewish University

Woman on the Margin reintroduces a strong literary and feminist voice into English after a hiatus of almost a century. Russian-born Elisheva Bukhovsky was a Hebrew writer and a Gentile who emigrated to Palestine with her husband and daughter to become a part of the Jewish national revival.  Like most Hebrew writers of her generation, she did her creative work in a language not hers by birth. She was one of the first poets to write in the idiomatic language of the Yishuv, the Hebrew-speaking Jewish settlement in Palestine, while also making the poems musical through rhyme and meter. 
This book, highly suitable for classroom use, presents her best poems in the original Hebrew and in English translation. In her fiction, she explored relationships between Jews and Gentiles in Russia, told through the lens of male-female relations in courtship and marriage. In her stories and in her novel Byways, excerpted in this book, she adopted the viewpoints of both Gentiles and Jews in a modernizing Russia, where friendly relations between them were possible, but where deep mutual understanding remained absent.
This book, highly suitable for classroom use, presents her best poems in the original Hebrew and in English translation. In her fiction, she explored relationships between Jews and Gentiles in Russia, told through the lens of male-female relations in courtship and marriage. In her stories and in her novel Byways, excerpted in this book, she adopted the viewpoints of both Gentiles and Jews in a modernizing Russia, where friendly relations between them were possible, but where deep mutual understanding remained absent.
In our increasingly multicultural world, we have much to learn from her pioneering work. The arc of her career also offers a fascinating case study of what was generally seen at the time as a secular conversion to the Jewish people.

250 pages  7 illus
Copyright: 15/04/2026