Cotranslators, Herbert J. Levine and Rabbi Reena M. Spicehandler, bring an English translation of an early twentieth-century Hebrew poet to life in their new collection, Woman on the Margin. Elisheva Bikhovsky was a Russian-born non-Jewish writer who emigrated to Palestine in 1925 with her family, where she fell in love with Judaism and Jewish culture. In this collection, English translations of her poems are placed side by side with the original Hebrew. The book features English translations of a handful of short fictions and an excerpt of Elisheva’s novel, Byways, which was the first novel written in modern Hebrew by a woman.
In the introduction to the collection, the cotranslators state, “Elisheva’s adopting the Jewish people as her own was extremely flattering to the intellectual elite of the Hebrew literary revival.” Her “perspective as an outsider helped her to see a ‘special light’ in the Jewish tradition that was hidden to those closer to it.” Elisheva writes about the awe of simple traditions, like lighting Shabbat candles. In her short stories, she often writes about romantic desire and relationships between Jews and those outside their faith, a progressive idea for her era. Most of the Jewish content comes from conversations with female family members about potential interfaith marriages. Elisheva’s characters have a desire to be closer to Judaism through Jewish rituals. This sentiment seems to reflect Elisheva’s own experiences and desires, despite never converting to Judaism.
Elisheva creates characters fascinated by the importance of education in Jewish culture, specifically in the story “Whims.” Elisheva also addresses topics of antisemitism through instances of blood libels and pogroms in her short stories.
The poems in this collection are divided into two sections: Poems from Russia and Poems from the Land of Israel. In her poem “Exile,” Elisheva writes about the yearning of the Jewish people for a homeland:
From far corners of the world, your souls are drawn
To one place where the light of holiness shines,
All your hearts’ pride in the wondrous word, “Homeland,”
Depths of longing in the trembling word, “There.”
Finding a homeland and feeling a bond between people and land are themes across the collection. In a later poem titled “By the Shore of Lake Kinneret,” Elisheva describes the experience of connecting with the land:
No, no, I cannot sing here! Can I disturb
The quiet Beauty from her sleep?
I sit between lake and sky, imagining
That if the end were to draw near
My soul could find its homeland here.
Elisheva’s writings provide readers with layered perspectives, and despite being on the margins in the past, her voice can now be heard in English for an increased readership.
Jamie Wendt is the author of the poetry collection Laughing in Yiddish (Broadstone Books, 2025), which was a finalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. Her first book, Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), won the 2019 National Federation of Press Women Book Award in Poetry. Her poems and essays have been published in various literary journals and anthologies, including Feminine Rising, Catamaran, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, the Forward, Minyan Magazine, and others. She contributes book reviews to the Jewish Book Council. She won third prize in the 2024 Reuben Rose Poetry Competition and won second prize for the 2024 Holloway Free Verse Award through the Illinois State Poetry Society. Wendt holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two kids. Follow her online at https://jamie-wendt.com/ or on Instagram @jamiewendtpoet.
