(1890-1931) —her name is usually spelled “Rahel” out of an unhelpful deference to Hebrew orthography— a Zionist of the second Aliyah, she created a new poetic idiom out of spoken street Hebrew—her contemporaries were still writing in the “King James Hebrew” they’d learned in the cheder. Though not traditionally religious, her love of the land and her sense of this all-redeeming moment in Jewish history suffuse her work with mystical force. It would be fair to say that Rachel didn’t practice Judaism, she perfected it. She shows us in her poetry a transfigured world, deepened with meaning, where even accidents reveal a pattern in the fabric of her days.