On the death of her father in 1917, Elisheva returned to Ryazan, the city of her birth. With that year's fall of the Russian monarchy, she witnessed street demonstrations “in celebration of freedom”, which had been forbidden under the former regime. In one of these demonstrations, she participated with a group of Jewish youths, marching in an orderly way under the new national flag singing "Hatikvah", a modified version of which eventually became Israel’s national anthem.