Trakhtenbereg was born in Ekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire (nowDnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) in 1895 When she was eight, her mother died giving birth to her thirteenth child and at the age of fourteen she lost her father, Yitzhak, as well, and so she, along with her grandmother and brother, had to support the family. In 1912 she graduated from high school, and went on to study Economics and Social Sciences at the University in Ukraine. In 1913, shaken by the Beilis trial, she became interested in Zionism an in 1915 she joined the “Youth of Zion” (later to be merged into Hashomer Hatzair). In 1917 she joined the Zionist Socialist Party and married Yisrael Idelson (later Yisrael Bar-Yehuda), a senior party member. For their Zionist activism they were banished to Siberia. That year she also gave birth to the couple's only daughter, Rebecca. In 1924, thanks to an intercession by Maxim Gorki's wife, their banishment was converted to deportation to Eretz Israel
