[1][2] Rivka Basman was born in Vilkmergė, Lithuania on 20 February 1925,[3] to parents Yekhezkel and Tsipora (née Heyman).
[1] While in school, she and her friends were excited to read the poems and stories of Kadya Molodowsky, a Yiddish woman writer.
[1] Basman started writing poetry at Kaiserwald in order to cheer up fellow inmates.
While there she married Shmuel "Mula" Ben-Hayim[1] and with him engaged in smuggling Jews out of Europe and past the British naval blockade to enter Mandate Palestine.
[5] At her kibbutz she taught children and also joined the Yiddish poets' group Yung Yisroel ("Young Israel")[2] While on the kibbutz she wrote and published her first volume of poetry, Toybn baym brunem (Doves at the Well), in 1959.
[1] Basman Ben-Hayim continued to write poetry and was the head of the Union of Yiddish Writers located in Tel Aviv.