Elisheva Bikhovski

Elisheva Bikhovski
Елишева Биховски
A severe, unsmiling 48-year-old woman in gingham short-sleeved blouse, with lace at the neck and two toggle buttons on the front.
Elisheva Bikhovski in Israel – 1936
Native name
ז'ירקובה-ביחוֹבסקי ,אלישבע
BornElizaveta Ivanovna Zhirkov
(1888-09-20)20 September 1888[1]
Spassk, Ryazan, Russia
Died27 March 1949(1949-03-27) (aged 60)[2]
Tiberias, Israel
Resting placeKvutzat Kinneret cemetery
Pen nameE. Lisheva
Occupationwriter, translator
LanguageHebrew, Russian, English, Yiddish
CitizenshipRussian Empire, Israel
Years active1907 to 1949
SpouseSimeon (Shimon) Bikhovski
ChildrenMiriam Littel

Elisheva Bikhovski (Russian: Элишева Быховская; born Elizaveta Ivanovna Zhirkov, Russian: Елизавета Ивановна Жиркова); 20 September 1888 – 27 March 1949) was a Russian poet, writer, literary critic and translator, often known simply by her adopted Biblical Hebrew name "Elishéva" (Hebrew: אֱלִישֶׁבַע). Her Russian Orthodox father, Ivan Zhirkov, was a village teacher who later became a bookseller and textbook publisher; her mother was descended from Irish Catholics who had settled in Russia after the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). Elisheva wrote most of her works in Hebrew, and also translated English and Hebrew poetry into Russian.

On the death of her mother in 1891,[3] she moved to Moscow with her aunt, an older sister of her mother, where she lived surrounded by the English language and culture. Though not culturally Jewish, she became the classmate of Jewish girls who introduced her to their culture and traditions, and she began to write poetry in 1907. Not at first differentiating between Hebrew and Yiddish as the “language of the Jews,” she began studying Yiddish — which, she wrote, because of its kinship to other European languages, especially German, she found easy to understand.[3] She learned the Hebrew alphabet from a Hebrew grammar book owned by her brother, the philologist and Esperantist Lev Zhirkov (1885–1963), a specialist in Persian and Caucasian languages.[2] She studied both Russian and English literature, graduating from a grammar school for girls and in 1910 becoming certified as a teacher at a progressive school of Stanislaus Shatsky's and Alexander Zelenko's Children's Work and Play Society through courses that trained preschool and elementary teachers according to the system of the innovative German educator Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852).

  1. ^ Goldman, Shalom (20 September 2017). "Elisheva Bikhovsky, One of the Greatest Poets in the Modern Hebrew Language, Wasn't Jewish". Tablet Magazine. Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  2. ^ a b Yaffah Berlovitz, "Elisheva Bichovsky Archived 2022-03-07 at the Wayback Machine" in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 1 March 2009, Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 7 August 2016.
  3. ^ a b Элишева, Как я учила Иврит Archived 11 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine, (Russian translation by Zoya Kopelman of “How I learned Hebrew” from the Elisheva Archives, Genazim, Tel Aviv), Лехаим (Lechaim), October 2007. Retrieved 7 August 2016.