Born and educated in Russia, Rahel (Bluwstein)'s early poems were written in her native language. She came to Eretz Yisrael in 1909 and was greatly influenced by the early halutz (pioneer), A.D. Gordon. In 1913, she went to France and then returned to Russia where she was a teacher, eventually returning to Eretz Yisrael in 1919 to become a member of Degania, the first kibbutz, where Gordon lived. She contracted consumption there, and references to her impending death are found in her later poems.

Rahel generally wrote simple, sensitive lyrics filled with symbolism. Her love of the countryside and nature is expressed in much of her work. Many of her poems have been put to music.

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Rachel's grave, beneath a palm tree planted on the lake shore, has become an important pilgrimage site for those who recite or sing her poems.

Rachel Bluwstein was born on September 20, 1890 in Saratov, on the Volga River in Northern Russia. Her father, a former soldier in the Czar's army, was a rich merchant known for his piety and his generosity. Her mother, born into a long line of rabbis, was an educated woman. Rachel spent her childhood and youth in Poltava, in the Ukraine, where she learned Hebrew with a tutor, wrote her first verses in Russian, and became interested in painting.

In 1909 she and one of her sisters visited Palestine for what she thought would be a short visit before she returned to her studies in Europe. In Jaffa, she met Hannah Maizel, one of the first pioneers who had decided to created an institution where young women could learn agricultural techniques. The two sisters first moved to Rehovot, little more than a small village or moshava at the time, determined to learn Hebrew and spending only one hour a day speaking Russian for the ordinary tasks of every day life, and to recite poetry.

A year later, Rachel decided to find Hannah Maizel who was a salaried worker in an olive grove at the foot of Mount Carmel. Under her leadership, Rachel began to work in agriculture, seeking both self-realization and salvation in working the land, 'playing the shovel and painting on the earth.' In April 1911, Hannah and her students moved to Kinneret; Rachel is generally considered to be the first student in her agricultural school.

Rachel literally fell in love with the landscapes and personalities around Kinneret, including Gordan who lived in the country's first kibbutz, in Deganya, whom she called grandfather and to whom she dedicated her first poems in Hebrew. Similarly, she dedicated her love poems to Robashov, a young pioneer who later became president of the State of Israel under the name Zalman Chazar. She considered herself destined to collect the echoes and memories preserved in the vestiges of abandoned sites around the lake.