No Balm in Gilead: A Personal Retrospective of Mandate Days in Palestine 9780773573598

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Genesis
Chapter 2: On The Land - 1932-1933
Chapter 3: Meandering - 1933
Chapter 4: Stumbling Into A Career - 1933-1934
Chapter 5: Strange Encounters - 1934-1936
Chapter 6: Rude Awakening - 1936
Chapter 7: Medical Myths In A Modern Milieu - 1937
Chapter 8: A World Closing In - 1938-1939
Chapter 9: Mostly Music
Chapter 10: War's Distant Rumble - 1939-1940
Chapter 11: Near The Eye Of The Hurricane - 1941-1943
Chapter 12: On His Majesty's Service - 1942
Chapter 13: After North Africa - 1943-1945
Chapter 14: Canadian Interlude - 1946
Chapter 15: The Alien Virus - 1946
Chapter 16: Point Counterpoint - 1947
Chapter 17: Close Call
Chapter 18: Full Circle
Chapter 19: Exodus
Glossary

Citation preview

NO BALM 1N

GILEAD

NO BALM IN

GILEAD

SYLVA M.GELBER

@ Carleton University Press Inc. 1989

ISBN 0-88629-104-6 (paperback) 0-88629-113-5 (casebound) Printed and bound in Canada Carleton General List Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Gelber, Sylva M., 1910No balm in Gilead ISBN 0-88629- 104-6 1. Palestine-History-1929- 1948. 2. Gelber, Sylva M., 1910I. Title.

Distributed by: Oxford University Press Canada, 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada. M3C 1J9 (416) 441-2941 Cover Design: Aerographics Ottawa Acknowledgements Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. Effort has been made to locate owners of copyright of several photographs, but due to the length of time which has elapsed since publication, it was not successful.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Old Testament Jeremiah VIII, 22

For friends and colleagues who shared these years-though not necessarily these perceptions

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Foreword Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15

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Genesis On The Land - 19321933 Meandering - 1933 Stumbling Into A Career - 1933-1934 Strange Encounters 1934-1936 Rude Awakening - 1936 Medical Myths In A Modern Milieu - 1937 A World Closing In 1938-1939 Mostly Music War's Distant Rumble 1939-1940 Near T h e Eye Of T h e Hurricane - 194 1- 1943 On His Majesty's Service1942 After North Africa 1943-1 945 Canadian Interlude 1946 The Alien Virus - 1946

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13 29 41 53 79 97 113 121 137 153 167 185 199 207

Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Glossary

Point Counterpoint 1947 Close Call Full Circle Exodus

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waited for over forty years before

writing No Balm in Gilead. I had hoped that the book might amear at a time when Deace had been achieved in the former British dindated territory thin called Palestine. That hope still frustrated, coupled with the approach of my own 80th year, persuaded me to wait no longer. To the extent that it has been possible, I have endeavoured to sharpen my memory by keeping an eye on the public record. Unfortunately, my own personal documents were destroyed in the last year of my sojourn in Jerusalem in circumstances described in the book. For the inestimable help received from old friends and colleagues who do not choose to be named, I wish to express my deep appreciation. I also would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of a number of individuals who examined and improved the original text. I owe much to my congenial editor, Diane Mew, who managed to reduce an original lengthy manuscript, without destroying the tempo of the ongoing story. To her I extend my thanks for a job well done, a job that will undoubtedly be appreciated by the reader. Additional assistance came most unexpectedly when I showed the manuscript to Gordon Robertson, former Secretary to the federal Cabinet. Not only did he offer his enthusiastic moral support but also took the trouble further to correct and improve the text. It was a gesture beyond the call of friendship that was much appreciated. For his critical analysis I was grateful for the contribution of Professor John Sigler, former Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. Professor Sigler is well known for his expert knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs. His support was deeply appreciated.

Without the dynamic enthusiasm and energetic encouragement of Professor Naomi Griffiths, former Dean of Arts, Carleton University, this story might have remained unpublished. Her belief in the book gave me the confidence to persevere. I acknowledge with thanks her unfailing and continuing help. From the day I began No Balm in Gilead, during the several years of drafting and correcting, researching and checking, typing and retyping, I have had the benefit of the skills and support of my secretary, Miriam Lemoine. She has aided me with good humour and without complaint. I am more indebted to her than I can adequately express. Sylva M. Gelber Ottawa 1989

hen I first came to Palestine

in 1932, the country had been under a British civil administration in accordance with a League of Nations Mandate bestowed on His Majesty's government almost a decade before. One of the principal terms of the Mandate required that the Mandatory take such measures as necessary to secure the establishment of a Jewish National Home, having regard to the historical connection to Palestine of the Jewish people. In pursuing this objective, nothing was to be done that might prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities.

The Mandatory was directed to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine and to encourage close settlement by Jews on the land. AJewish Agency was to be established as an advisory body in matters of concern to the Jewish community. Absent from the Mandate was any provision for a parallel Arab Agency, although a subsequent offer for the establishment of such a body was declined by the Arab leadership in the early days of the British administration. Initially the Arabs also declined to participate in a representative body that might be established in order to carry out the Mandate's requirement that community self-governing institutions be secured. On the other hand, the Jews at first had been ready to participate in a legislative council. But in short order, both the Jews and the Arabs changed their respective positions, the Jews declining to participate while the Arabs demanded the establishment of a selfgoverning institution. As a result of the deadlock, during the three decades of the British Mandate, no legislative council was ever established.

The story of the relationship to the Holy Land of each of the three communities directly affected by the Mandate, the Jews, the Arabs and the British, is long and complex. The Jewish ties to Palestine date back to biblical days and the years of the rule of the Jewish kings. Ever since the Babylonian exile from their homeland, and the later destruction of the City of David by the Romans, through the years of persecution in the Diaspora, the Jewish people sustained the hope of their return, repeating the traditional prayer-Next Year in Jerusalem. It was only in the wake of widespread pogroms in Eastern Europe and the blatant anti-semitism of the Dreyfus affair in France, that the ancient Jewish prayer for a return to Zion was translated into a political movement for the achievement of that goal. The Zionist movement was born in the latter days of the nineteenth century. As early as 1903 the British government offered to establish a homeland for the Jews in Uganda. But that offer was declined on the grounds that the Jewish historical connection was not with Africa but with Palestine, the ancient Land of Israel. With the outbreak of the First World War and the alliance of Turkey with the German foe, the British, seeking support for their cause, initiated talks with the Zionists. In 1917 as the British forces were nearing Palestine, during the campaign in the defence of Suez, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour expressed His Majesty's Government's readiness to view with favour the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, Within weeks of what became known as the Balfour Declaration, British forces entered Jerusalem. This was not the first occasion when men of war from England had set foot on the soil of the Holy Land. As a Christian nation deeply imbued with a reverence for the Christian holy places, Christian crusaders from England along with their European coreligionists, had mounted crusades to the Holy Land beginning at the end of the eleventh century. In bloody battles, they wrested the holy places of Christendom from the hands of Moslem conquerers who then occupied the land. These European Christian fundamentalists managed to hold sway in the Holy Land off and on between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, following which Moslem rule again prevailed. The initial Moslem conquest of Jerusalem had preceded the crusades by several hundred years. Late in the seventh and early in the eighth centuries, Arabs had broken out of the Arabian Desert and occupied vast areas of the East includingJerusalem. There they had constructed on the very site of the former Jewish Temple, a

magnificent mosque beside the Dome of the Rock. It was from here that the Prophet Mohammed was said to have taken flight on his magic steed on his journey to heaven, thus bestowing on the site a special reverence. Jerusalem now became the locale of yet another Holy Place, this time a Moslem sanctum. With the decline of the Arab empire and following the end of the crusades, Jerusalem became the target of numerous invasions. By 1517 the Ottoman Turks had occupied extensive areas of the Mediterranean and the Near East including Palestine. The Turks continued to rule that land with an iron hand until Allenby entered Jerusalem in 1917. Throughout the period of the Turkish occupation, conditions in the area had vastly deteriorated and the inhabitants lived in dire poverty and neglect. By the First World War, the Arabs throughout the area of Ottoman rule were ready candidates for rebellion against the Turkish oppressor. Britain, at war with Turkey, sought their co-operation, encouraging them to rebel against their overlords. In 1915 the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon entered into correspondence with Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca, in which he gave an undertaking on behalf of the British government, to support the establishment of sovereign Arab states in Arab populated areas of the yet-to-be liberated portions of the Ottoman Empire. The terms of the British undertaking set out in the McMahon correspondence did not clearly define the precise territories to which the promise of sovereignty applied. One area of what was then a province of Syria was specifically to be excluded from the British promise of eventual sovereignty. Britain maintained that the excluded area was, without naming it, the area known historically as Palestine. The Arabs on the other hand contended that Palestine was among the Arab populated areas of the Ottoman Empire promised eventual independence. They claimed that they had fulfilled their part of the wartime undertaking, having rebelled against the Turks. They protested that Britain, having accepted the Mandate and thereby undertaken to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine, had reneged on their promise to the Arabs insofar as Palestine was concerned. In an effort to meet at least some of the Arab concerns, the British, in conformity with an article of the Mandate referring to the territories lying between theJordan River and the eastern boundary of Palestine, set apart a considerable portion of the mandated area. They appointed one of the sons of Hussein as Emir, a title for a ruler or prince, and named the territory Trans-Jordan. Although

this area was to come within the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner for Palestine, it being mandated territory, the terms of the Mandate which referred to the establishment of a Jewish National Home, would not apply to Trans-Jordan. During the first decade of the operation of the Mandate commencing at its inception, Arab resentment against the Jews became manifest. There were bloody attacks on Jewish settlements, culminating in 1929 in widespread violence triggered by an incident at one of the common holy sites in Jerusalem, the west wall of the ancient Jewish Temple, adjacent to the area of the Holy Mosque of Islam. By late 1932, however, when I first arrived in the country, there was relative calm in the land.

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was born on the campus of the

University of Toronto-well, not exactly. Eighty years ago, however, that was the site of our family's first home where my mother gave birth to all but one of her children. My father was wary of hospital delivery rooms fearing there might occur some mixup of the newborn. In later years when he disapproved of my lifestyle, I used to tease him, asking whether he might now have appreciated such a switch. My father had immigrated to Canada as a teenager from a small town in Austria. Like so many others from Eastern Europe, he had immediately embarked on an independent career as a modest entrepreneur, travelling through the small towns of Eastern Ontario, returning each weekend to Toronto where he and his elder brother established the firm which was soon to become Gelber Bros., woollen merchants. He was already a busy member of the Toronto Jewish community when he sought a wife from one of the established Jewish families of Montreal. My mother had been born and brought up in Montreal, the second daughter in a large family consisting of seven girls and one boy. Her father had emigrated from Lithuania and had settled in Montreal shortly before my mother was born in 1880. My grandfather was an active member of the Montreal community, his activities extending beyond those of the rather segregated Jewish congregation of that city. After mamage my parents set up home in Toronto. By the end of the First World War, the family had moved to another area now known as the Annex, to a home which remained ours until my father's death at the age of ninety some sixty years later. During our early years my four brothers and I attended a

public school just around the corner. As high school years approached, however, the boys, one by one, entered Upper Canada College and I was enrolled in what was then known as Havergal Ladies College. In sending me to this private school, my mother had hoped that I might learn to conform to the refinements which hitherto had seemed to elude me. I had always played hard and competed with my brothers, and showed little inclination to accept the role of a young, well-bred lady. It was during my Havergal years that I became conscious of the social gap which separated me from my fellow students because I was Jewish. I cannot recall any occasion on which I was invited to visit the home of a school friend. Nor, indeed, can I recall feeling free to invite one of them to visit mine; I would not risk possible rejection. Whether I chose it or not, my social life had to be sought within the bosom of the Jewish community. Not unexpectedly, therefore, &wish influences, even beyond those of a relatively orthodox home, became more and more significant. Equally significant for me at that time, was the enthusiasm for a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, promised by the British government-in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration. Although I had been but a child at the time, I could still remember that day when Toronto Jewry, like that of other Jewish communities of other Canadian cities, celebrated that historic Declaration. I recalled how our whole family piled into my father's Page automobile, a touring car sufficiently large to accommodate our growing family. A large Union Jack and an equally large Zionist flag bedecked the back of the open vehicle, as we drove downtown to join an assembling crowd. I may not have understood the significance of the celebration, but I still remembered it as a happy day. During my early teens I studied Hebrew with my brothers and had learned, along with them, all of the liturgy associated with their bar mitzvahs. Although I did not learn much of the Hebrew language from our Hebrew teacher, a staunch Labour Zionist, I did learn something of the Palestine pioneers, the chalutzim; and of the dream the Labour Zionists had brought to the Promised Land. As a counterbalance to these influences, I was studying the New Testament in our Religious Knowledge class at Havergal, with our head mistress, Miss Wood. She had asked my mother whether I should be excused from this subject because of my religious affiliation, but my mother opted for my participation along with the other girls. It was a decision for which I was grateful in later years, when my New Testament

knowledge gave me a greater understanding of the significance of the Holy Land to the other religious communities. It was also during those years that I was permitted to go to Camp Modin, one of the few Jewish summer camps in the United States; there was not then a single similar camp in Canada. Modin, described by its founders as the Camp with the Jewish Ideal, was situated in Maine, on a small lake near a town appropriately named Canaan. The Modin directors were eminent in the field of Jewish education, bearing names that will occur from time to time in my story, in circumstances very different from those of my camping days. Dr. A. M. Dushkin was the Director of Jewish Education in Chicago at that time. He was a modest and mild man who had met his wife, Julia Aaronson, some years before in Palestine. Another Modin director was Dr. I. B. Berkson whose wife, Libby, was the business brains behind the whole camp enterprise. The Berksons too had already established some roots in Palestine, although, at that time, they were still living in the United States. There was something special about Modin at that time, in that it attracted an unusual circle of Jewish American intellectuals. Among the people with whom I came in contact were many who were to make their names, not only in the Jewish community but in the broader creative fields of the cultivated world. Within the world of Zion, they were leaders and figures who appeared prominently in the history of their times. Many of them reappeared in differing circumstances throughout my early life. Many of them remained good friends and all of them made a deep impression on me. The Modin directors and their colleagues fired me and my friends with their stories of the great romance to be found in the e of co-operative living building of a new society in ~ i o n , t h romance as practised in the kibbutz, the ideal of sharing with others both the soirows and joys of everyday life, all predicates on the ultimate goal of a Homeland hewn out of barren desert. Our youthful passion was ignited by the image of the builders of that land, of the dreamers draining the swamps, of the exuberant youth singing and dancing the night away under the light of the Middle East moon, of the watchman with his rifle slung over his back, surveying the scene from his perch on the back of an Arab steed. The directors of Camp Modin were young and they were idealistic. The picture they painted of t v new Homeland and the challenge they described could not but arouse a tremendous enthusiasm in an adolescent in search of a cause. My years at Havergal failed to have the effect my mother had anticipated. But she hoped that the more mature environment of

the university, particularly membership in a sorority, which implied certain social responsibilities, might influence me. So I entered the University of Toronto as a first-year Arts student, a rather na'ive and immature girl. For me, the university appeared to hold the promise of a freedom from discipline. I was under the illusion that at the university I would no longer be required to pursue studies which did not interest me. Although I did abide by my mother's wishes tojoin a sorority, I was hardly a disciplined member of that society; within a few months I had turned in my sorority pin, leaving the group over a matter of a great principle of which I now recall nothing. It did not take me long to discover that a first year Arts student at the university was obliged to complete certain subjects among which were a number that held no particular interest for me and for which, quite obviously, I had no particular talent. I soon discovered, however, that there were lectures on subjects I found more interesting, such as a class in mass psychology for fourth-year students, given by a certain Professor Ketchum. One of his students began to take me with her to his lectures. The subject-matter fascinated me and I continued to attend Ketchurn's classes on a regular basis. Why my presence was never challenged, I cannot say. I soon began to attend several other courses for more advanced students. Thus, while assiduously attending lectures where I should not have been, I was failing to attend those lectures where I should have been. As the year rolled on towards examination time, I suddenly realized that I would have to do some very serious swotting to catch up sufficiently to pass the final examination. I was quite prepared to face that ordeal, if only to leave the boring first year behind me. At the same time, however, the fact of my failure to sign the attendance rolls, prompted me to seek out an interview with Mr. McAndrew, the Registrar. I discussed with him the problem I faced as a result of my unorthodox freshman behaviour, although I assured him of my readiness to study hard and to make every effort to pass the examinations. Mr. McAndrew listened with great sympathy. However, he said that he could not deviate from the existing regulations with regard to attendance. In the circumstances of my case, he said that even if I attained first-class honours in each of my subjects, I could not be considered to be eligible to enter the second year. I was appalled at what I considered to be a lack of understanding. I saw no point in swotting for examinations which would be of no practical value in

terms of moving on with the rest of the class. T o the discomfort of my family,I abruptly called a halt to my university studies. Thus it was that the springtime of 1929 found me with time weighing heavily on my hands. I went off to camp that summer, determined to use all of my powers of persuasion to gain permission from my parents to apply for admission to Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City. New York, I believed, offered all that Toronto then lacked, particularly as regards the thespian arts to which I was becoming addicted. During my unorthodox year at University College, I had been active in a number of extracurricular activities, including the Debating Society and the University Players Guild. My greatest interest lay with the Hart House Theatre Players where I occasionally managed to land small parts in such ambitious plays as Peer Gynt, directed by Edgar Stone. My application for admission to Barnard was sent in late; any application submitted at a date so near to the beginning of the academic year would probably have had a particularly poor chance of acceptance. But the letter I received in reply from the Dean of Barnard, Virginia Gildersleeve, struck a blow which undoubtedly affected subsequent directions of my life. She wrote that the lewish quota at ~ a r n & dwas already filled; I might reapply the foliowing year. It was my first conscious brush with discrimination on religious grounds. I had always accepted social segregation as normal; that was the way things were in Toronto at that time. But the fact that there was in existence in North America quotas for Jewish students, which I had assumed to be a state of affairs confined to Eastern Europe, was for me traumatic. My failure to have my application considered at Barnard did not deter me from continuing my campaign at home, to be allowed to go to school in New York. I learned that it was possible to register for credit courses leading to a degree at Columbia University, without any reference to Barnard. Thus, in September 1929, I set off alone for New York, clutching an American student visa in my hand, and harbouring a tremendous sense of hope in my soul. That I was allowed to set out by myself at that time and at that young age reflects my mother's abiding faith in me, for she was as Victorian in her background as was the middle-class Toronto community in which she lived. She faced considerable criticism for permitting me to go alone, even from members of her own family. One of my uncles warned her that her only daughter was a "Bohemian," a term not intended to encourage her to give me such a free

rein. But she persevered in her determination to allow me as much freedom as she felt I could handle. This was not my first trip to New York, nor was I without friends some of my friends came from highly in that metropolis. ~ortunat;l~, respected families; I had visited their homes on a number of occasions and some of them had visited me in Toronto. Thus, my teenage venture without benefit of parent or adult chaperone had a ring of respectability which blunted the censure of those who prophesied the worst. With the help of one of the student services at Columbia University, I rented a room with a family living near the university. It was only a few blocks from International House where another Toronto friend, a graduate student older than myself, had been accepted as a resident. For most of that winter, therefore, I was a regular visitor at International House and made friends with a wide variety of people of diverse cultural backgrounds. When I registered at Columbia, it was only for courses which interested me, intentionally avoiding those that might, perhaps, have been good for me. Among my courses was one in history, one in English and another in the history of music and music appreciation. After the first semester at Columbia, I also registered for some courses at New York University, since as a registered student there I was able to participate in the activities of the Washington Square Players, a little theatre associated with the university. There, I signed up for a course in theatre production, given by an old-style actor named Summerville. He was a great admirer of Maurice Schwartz, the Director of the Yiddish Art Theatre, which was still thriving in New York at that time. My ambition for a career in the theatre was never matched by profitable action. I was easily discouraged by the few rebuffs I experienced. One of these was at the Civic Repertory Theatre, a company formed by Eva Le Gallienne. I used to slip into the 12th Street theatre by a back door during rehearsals, to watch Le Gallienne direct. 1 wanted very much to gain entry into this group since I believed, and still do believe, that no apprenticeship can provide training equal to that of a good repertory theatre, where the skills of the trade are learned through the wide variety of roles available to the actor. At the Civic Repertory Theatre they produced a new play each week. While performing the current production they would be rehearsing for the following week. They were a hard-working, devoted band of idealists.

After considerable hesitation, I wrote a letter to Eva Le Gallienne, seeking an interview. I made the unfortunate error of confessing that I had been watching rehearsals for some time. Le Gallienne herself may never have seen my letter, for I received a reply from her secretary. She scolded me for my impudence in attending rehearsals uninvited and wrote that, in the circumstances, no interview could be granted. That was my one and only attempt to break into professional theatre in New York. It was not until the end of that academic year that I learned the extent to which my New York sojourn was to be affected by the Wall Street debacle that had taken place the previous autumn. Like millions of others, my father's hitherto successful self-made business career was, for the first time, in serious trouble. Until now, I had taken for granted that family financial support would depend only on our ability to persuade my father to give his blessing to the project. On my return home I was stunned by the news that I could no longer continue to study away from home. It never occurred to me that I may have had some saleable abilities, nor indeed did I have any idea as to how to look for ajob. So much for a protected, middleclass upbringing! Once more I went to visit the registrar at the University of Toronto, bringing with me my transcripts from Columbia and New York Universities. Mr. McAndrew pointed out that while I had successfully completed a number of valuable courses, these were not the prerequisite courses for the first year pass Arts course at University College. He was prepared to allow me to register, but only as a first-year student. He was not prepared to allow me any credit whatsoever for my academic year in New York. Once more I left his office without becoming a full-fledged undergraduate of the University of Toronto,

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During that year I submitted a sample of my writing to the editor of a newly established Toronto publication, the Jewish Standard. Its editor, an American, Meyer Weisgal, was determined to make a showpiece of the Standard regardless of cost. He was a well-known character in the Anglo-Jewish journalistic world. He firmly believed that if as unlikely a city as Manchester could produce the respected Manchester Guardian, then dull Toronto could exceed that level of excellence with his weekly Standard. Weisgal was a rather homely man with a wild shock of hair and a booming voice. He swore in a way I had never heard before. But, at the same time, he had a certain charm which may explain why he

ultimately became one of the greatest fund-raisers and entrepreneurs associated with Jewis h and Zionist activitiesin the international arena. He offered me, without pay, the job of writing a column of theatre criticism for the Standard. To ensure that I would be taken seriously, I decided to use a pseudonym. My reviews in the Standard that year bore the byline VASYL, a more than obvious scramble of my first name which, for reasons that are no longer clear to me, I thought to be frightfully clever. My experience as a columnist for the Standard was relatively short-lived. It was, of course, my first in the field of journalism. I can recall my horror when I discovered that editors frequently chop whole paragraphs from copy. On one occasion, I burst into Weisgal's office to protest the deletion of a couple of paragraphs from copy I had submitted. I can still hear his booming voice, shouting after me as I left his office; one would think, he shouted, that I had raped you. Such crudity hardly soothed my wounded sense of pride. But it was not my column in the Standard that brought me a real sense of satisfaction; it was my production of a play at Hart House Theatre in January 1931. The play, which I chose to produce for a university group of Jewish students, the Menorah Society, was one on a Jewish theme and based on Eastern European folklore. The Dybbuk is one of the classics of the Yiddish theatre and it had never before been produced in English in Toronto. I did not know Yiddish, nor had I ever seen any production of the play. In fact, I knew little of the subject-matter and can recall going to the public library in order to do some research, to acquire material that would help to give me a sense of the period dealt with in the drama. I felt no compunction whatsoever in taking on the role of producer, the role of director including director of music, and the role of the leading actress. Among those who participated in the production, quite apart from friends and relations, were several people who subsequently made their careers in the theatre. In a review of the play in Saturday Night, Hector Charlesworth paid me the compliment of saying that I "not only staged the play with impressive settings but acted the role of the girl Leah with remarkable skill, sincerity and power. The role is a very severe test for an actress..."He then spoke of my vocal resources and the dramatic significance of my personality which, he said, gave profound interest to some of the scenes. The amazing reception accorded our performance gave me my first real taste of the meaning of audience approval. It also frightened my parents out of their wits, for if there was

.. . ..-%.s . Amusing reminiscences of early production in 1951, with Can.d ci'tan actress Marilyn Lightstone backstage, following her performance of the same role (note same costume and wig), produced by John Hirsch in Toronto, Sept. 1974. ~

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anything they were determined their one and only daughter would not be, it was an actress. Undoubtedly, Charlesworth's review so worried my parents that when I suggested that I be allowed for one year to go off to Palestine, they felt a sense of relief rather than a sense of outrage, which might well have been the case in other circumstances. It is difficult to say, in retrospect, whether I could have made a career in the theatre had opportunities been available to me at that time. The fact is, the Depression was in full bloom; and opportunities in professional theatre in Toronto were virtually non-existent. I did some occasional radio drama in Montreal with Rupert Caplan; and participated in a few radio plays in Toronto. On several occasions I obtained some solo engagements singing Negro spirituals and blues on the radio. Yet none of the varied activities that came my way while living at home made up for the loss of the independent life I had tasted in New York. I was restless, a restlessness which was beyond my father's comprehension, but which sparked considerable sympathy and understanding in my mother. She had always imbued in me the ambition to be capable of standing on my own feet. Presumably she took for granted that my brothers would come by such an ambition as a matter of course, but she went out of her way to foster a similar goal for her only daughter. I cannot say what it was, other than his deep concern at the direction of my theatrical ambitions, that eventually persuaded my father to allow me to go to Palestine. It was to be a trip of a number of months only, presumably the length of an academic year. It may have been my father's hope that in that environment I would fmd a nice, clean-cut Jewish boy to marry. Although my father contributed to Zionist causes, he did not share my uncle's active participation in the Toronto Zionist organization. Within the Jewish community in Toronto, Zionism was far from universally popular, or even socially approved in some quarters. In fact, the Toronto Zionists were merely one small segment of the Toronto Jewish community. Few if any of the Reform Jews, including some members of my own family, had any sympathy with the concept of a Jewish National Home. Indeed, many of them viewed my passion with a certain aloofness. Thus, at the time when I was fired by the dream of a Jewish National Home, it was the dream of a relatively small band of devoted Zionists who saw my ambition to spend a year in Palestine as a commendable goal. In the autumn of 1932, I sailed on one of the large Italian luxury liners, the Vulcank, bound for Naples. There I was to transfer to one of the small Lloyd Triestino ships which regularly sailed the

Eastern Mediterranean. My initial glimpse of the Middle East came when we called at Alexandria. There I temporarily left the ship, travelled to Cairo by train and, after a day of sightseeing, picked up the ship again at Port Said. We anchored the following morning off the quay at Jaffa. Almost at once we were surrounded by small fishing boats which ferried us to the dockside. It seemed to me that even by Middle Eastern standards, the arrangements at Jaffa were primitive. None of my few acquaintances then visiting Palestine had been notified of my arrival so no one met me. But I was just as glad to be on my own when I first set foot on Palestine soil. Outside of the Customs shed, I found a line of gharries, one of which I hired for sixty piastres to take me into Tel Aviv.

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ON THE LAND 1932-1933

y first impression of Tel Aviv

was surprisingly mixed, for I had unrealistically anticipated something more than the aesthetically ugly town it then was. Its modest lide houses and dreary shops reflected more of the Eastern European shtetles from which the pioneer builders had come than the hopes and dreams of those who had erected them. Still, none of Tel Aviv's depressing aspects dampened in any way my youthful enthusiasm and excitement. This, after all, was the first all-Jewish town, first settled only a couple of decades before. It was for me a symbol of the rebuilding of the new Homeland. Its situation on the expansive and beautiful shoreline of the Mediterranean fully compensated for its less attractive features. I had set my heart on proceeding immediately to Jerusalem, for that place had always been the object of my journey. Before I left, however, I felt obliged to fulfil a promise given to my uncle in Toronto, to call on one of his old Zionist colleagues who lived in Tel Aviv, Shoshanah Persitz. I was rather reticent to do so for, in spite of my outward appearance as a young lady of somewhat bold demeanour, I always felt intimidated in the presence of persons of prominence. Nevertheless I decided to get the matter done with as soon as possible. Without knowing anything about her, I telephoned Madame Persitz, who immediately invited me to join a small dinner party at her home that evening. I discovered that my host was a personality of formidable dimensions. She appeared to me to be what I had always envisaged as a member of the Russian aristocracy. Perhaps

this was not surprising since her father had been a well-to-do literary figure in Moscow where she was raised. There, she and her husband in cooperation with her father, had established a publishing house which, in the early twenties, Madame Persitz had moved to Tel Aviv. When I first met her, Shoshanah Persitz was a widow, responsible for a family of three small children. Quite apart from managing the Omanut Press, she also held an elected post as a municipal councillor in the Tel Aviv municipality, responsible for education. Not surprisingly, among the guests at her table that night was the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, a man whom I can hardly recall, for while his presence in other circumstances might well have deeply impressed me, I was too overwhelmed at the presence of a second guest, whom I knew to be a giant of Hebrew literature, Chaim Nachman Bialik. Whatever was I to do in such company? I had read Bialik's poetry in translation. But more often, I had sung his songs in their original Hebrew, although I did not then understand the beauty of the language. Never in my most extravagant fantasies did I ever expect to find myself in the company of this, the greatest living Hebrew poet. For some reason or other, I had expected the man who had penned such passionate poetry would have something of the appearance of an aesthete. I do not know why a bald-headed poet seemed a little incongruous; nor can I imagine why I should have been surprised that he lacked the appearance of an underfed genius. In fact, Bialik's appearance was that of a man who suffered none of the pangs about which he sang in his written works. But if I was struck dumb by the presence of Bialik, I was equally benumbed by the overwhelming matriarchal mien of our hostess. I can still see Shoshanah Persitz, a large figure of a woman, reigning over her table, carefully guiding the conversation from one of her guests to another. Most of the talk was, of course, in Hebrew which gave me an excuse to keep a respectful silence. But every once in a while, my hostess would direct a question to me in English, to which I would reply, most uncharacteristically, in brief monosyllables. This then was my first introduction to social life in the Yishuv; it was hardly a typical occasion. For a short time, I continued to maintain a friendly relationship with the Persitz family; and subsequently was to have professional dealings with both the mayor and other officials of the Tel Aviv municipality. But now, I was anxious to leave Tel Aviv and proceed on my way to Jerusalem. It was about noon on a sunny November day when I climbed down from the rather decrepit bus which had brought me to the

Egged Bus Station on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. I embarked on this part of my journey with a great sense of anticipation. I do not recall how much I was aware of various landmarks along the way on that first trip, although a few strong impressions still remain. My first sight of the extensive orange grovesjust beyond Jaffa, and the oasis of cultivated lands of the old Jewish Agricultural School of Mikve Israel, must have impressed me, for the image still lingers. For some reason, I also recall my first glimpse of the monastery at Latrun. Here, in later years and particularly during the Second World War, the Trappist monks would provide us with some of their homemade brandy, the best in the country at that time. But my remembrance of the Latrun Monastery on my first journey to Jerusalem may have been due to its proximity to Bab el Wad, the Gateway of the Valley, for it was at that point that the road began the steep climb up the hills of Judaea. The radical change in the terrain further elevated my spirits, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on our long-suffering bus, for it began tu creep at a veritable walking pace as we ascended the hilly slopes. Here the hills seemed grim and bare, showing the effects of years of soil erosion. But while I had not been prepared for the devastating barrenness of the stony slopes, I was even then entranced by their stark beauty. Here and there on the way up it was evident that some efforts had been made to plant small trees, efforts which were particularly marked in the hills surrounding an early Jewish settlement, a settlement that was to have more significance for me than I could have guessed; these were the hills of Kiryat Anavim. T o understand my sense of disappointment and disillusionment at my first sight of Jerusalem, I should explain that the main road into the city then consisted of the old Jaffa Road which, until 1936, was little more than a cobblestone street. After passing the village of Liftah, Jaffa Road straggled through a partly built-up area, consisting of structures that appeared to be more than ready for demolition. Most of these buildings dated back to earlier Turkish times and had remained virtually untouched since then. There were, of course, some buildings that were obviously of a later vintage, including the large rather ugly building which housed the Diskin Orphanage standing at the very entrance to the municipal area. But even the Mahne Yehudah Market, that in later years developed a certain attractiveness, struck me then as dirty and decrepit. The bus unloaded in the business and commercial centre of the Jewish section of the town; I was quite unprepared for the shoddy appearance of the area. There were scruffy shops and a general air

of neglect about the place. I piled my bags into a gharry and headed for the Pension Friedman, where the Dushkins, my friends from Camp Modin days, were staying. I knew that I would be unable to spend more than a few days there, for I was determined not to make use of a letter of credit with which I had been supplied by the family. I was determined to remain financially independent, although by what means I certainly had no idea. From year to year, this determination was reinforced, even in circumstances that I now feel were less than rational. Pension Friedman was a rambling old Arab-style house in a culde-sac. The establishmentwas reserved almost exclusively for permanent residents, only a few rooms being set aside for short-term guests. Since the Dushkins were permanent guests, and apparently were held in high esteem by the proprietor, they were able to persuade Mrs. Friedman to take me in for a few days. It soon became obvious that Mrs. Friedman herself was the pension boss in every sense, although there was a husband lurking somewhere in the shadows. He was something of a plain man, who could not have made much of an impression .on me, for my recollection of him is rather hazy. But I do remember the impression made on me by Mrs. Friedman who, within the first few minutes of my arrival, delivered a rather lengthy lecture on the troubles of a housewife in a water-starved Jerusalem. Mrs. Friedman explained to me that until the rains came, and they were not yet due for a few weeks, water was in short supply, placing on her guests a severe responsibility. In a pension, it was not easy to control the amount used, and guests were often wasteful. Whenever possible, Mrs. Friedman said, the same water was used a number of times as, for example, using the second-hand bath water to wash the floor. One night shortly after my arrival at the pension, there was an electricity failure. Mrs. Friedman supplied her guests with one candle for each room. The rooms were large and the light of the single candle was extremely dim. It was equally dim in the bathroom when I entered to complete my nightly toilette. In the faint light, I noticed that the bathtub was full of the most inviting warm water. The temptation was great. I locked the door, undressed quickly and jumped into the tub. As quietly as I had performed my ablutions, so quietly did I dress and leave the bathroom. Unfortunately, my troubled conscience gave me no peace. After breakfast the following morning, I told Mrs. Friedman that I had a confession to make. I explained the great temptation offered by that

beautiful tub of water and revealed that I had made so bold as to jump into it. Mrs. Friedman did not seem to be particularly concerned. She assured me that I need not worry. Her husband, she said, had already bathed earlier! The question of water in Jerusalem, I soon learned, had been a matter of much concern to Jerusalemites throughout that year. The unfortunate members of the Jerusalem municipality and particularly the Jerusalem Water Board, who were blamed for the state of affairs, had been threatened with public demonstrations. The basic supply of Jerusalem water then came from Solomon's Pools situated some four kilometres south of Bethlehem. These waters were held in a reservoir in one of the quarters of Jerusalem. Some private homes had underground cisterns which stored rain water run off from the roof tops, so that these people were not too badly off. In the newer buildings in the city, however, water was stored in tanks built on the flat roofs. Here, the precious water was not too easily protected. Frequently, long-suffering landlords had had to cope with youngsters who enjoyed using the roof tanks as swimming pools. During the whole of that first year I spent in Palestine, there was a serious deficiency in the season's rainfall. Water was being supplied only once every four or five days, and most of the private cisterns and reservoirs were still almost empty, even at the end of the rainy season. The perennial lack of water, and its unhappy side effects, remained a constant feature of life in Jerusalem. Only after the construction of a pipeline from the coastal plain, bringing waters up the Judaean Hills from Ras el Ayn by means of pumping stations, did water cease to be a subject of continuing aggravation and concern. During those first light-hearted days of comfortable living at Pension Friedman in Jerusalem, I might easily have lost sight of my original plan, to establish a children's theatre. For I was thoroughly enjoying the novelty of my first taste of strange and faraway places. Furthermore, being surrounded by English-speaking friends, both old and new, I still had no language problem in this foreign land. But suddenly I realized that it was precisely because of my ignorance of local languages, and my inability to communicate with people other than those who spoke English, that my world in Palestine was going to be severely limited. Furthermore, if I were to find a place for myself in a profession or in some other activity which would make it possible for me to earn a living, I would have to take some drastic action to remove myself from the carefree environment into which I had fallen. Not least of my considerations, of course, was the fact

that my money supply was almost as low as the water in Jerusalem cisterns. By chance at that time, there was among the permanent guests at the Pension Friedman a portly gentleman of infinite charm, Joshua Gordon. He was curious about my background, for there were then few single, young Canadians among the youthful, starry-eyed tourists in Jerusalem. He was ready to listen to me talk endlessly about myself and my ambitions, as I assume most young people are inclined to do; and he reacted sympathetically, though critically, to my ambition of finding a place in the theatre. I did not know at that time, nor indeed for some years later, that Gordon had in earlier years worked in the theatre in Berlin under Max Reinhardt. It did not take Gordon long to persuade me of the utter futility of my project, although he made it clear that this was not because he doubted my qualifications. But I would certainly have to acquire a knowledge of Hebrew if I were fully to participate in the life of the Jewish community. It was Joshua Gordon who set me off on an entirely different course. He convinced me that before I considered anything else, I must learn the Hebrew language. The easiest way to learn a foreign language, said Gordon, was to live in an environment in which that language, and that language alone, was spoken. As long as I remained in Jerusalem, so long would I not make the effort to learn another language. As it happened, Joshua Gordon was a liaison officer with the Jewish Agency, and had many connections with the agricultural settlements around the country. He offered to enquire as to whether a settlement in which none of the members was familiar with the English language, would be prepared to take me in as a worker. His favourite spot was Geva in the Jezreel Valley, but he doubted that they could accommodate me at that particular time. In the meantime, there would be no difficulty in finding a temporary spot for me at Givath Brenner, a kibbutz not far from Rehovoth. Within a few days the matter was settled. Gordon would try to find a suitable kibbutz in which I might live on a long-term basis, while I would set out immediately for Givath Brenner for the time being.

I took leave of the Dushkins, who approved of my plans, and set off by bus to Rehovoth. According to Gordon's arrangements, I was met by one of the members of the kibbutz who had come to fetch me in a rather decrepit, mule-driven cart. The chap was most friendly and helpful, but it took some time for us to find some means

of communicating, for my early Hebrew studies had left virtually no mark. My companion saw that there was no use in trying to get through to me in Hebrew. He then switched to Yiddish, with which of course, I was even less familiar. But then shyly, he began to try his luck with a variety of English words, some mispronounced, some difficult to understand, but certainly their origins lay in the English language. We seemed to be getting along surprisingly well. I asked him where he had learned his English. He said that he had never studied nor used the language. However, he was a faithful reader of a Yiddish newspaper published in New York. Whenever he found a word in that paper whose roots were not German or Hebrew, nor inded any of the Slavic languages with which he was familiar, he assumed they were English. Thus, he had amassed a respectable English vocabulary. Only a language like Yiddish, so rich in idioms and homey phrases, could have been so flexible as to provide a universal instrument for communicating. When we got to the kibbutz, I was taken to my sleeping quarters where I was shown to a cot, one of about a dozen others lined up in a row in a barn-like barrack. Overhead, flying among the beams, were pigeons galore, not the least bit worried about the destiny of their droppings. None of this caused me the discomfort, however, that came with the knowledge that my roommates were men as well as women. It was not the prospect of sleeping in a bed next to a member of the opposite sex that bothered me so much as the problem of how in the world was I to find some way of dressing and undressing with some degree of privacy. I soon managed to master the art of garment-pulling, both on and off, underneath the covers. Nobody else seemed to be in any way plagued by the same kind of Victorian hang-up. My first meal at Givath Brenner was also more traumatic than I was ready to admit at the time. When we came into the dining hall, I found that we were each supplied only with one simple chipped enamelled tin plate. I watched my neighbours carefully, to see how they would handle the uncut loaf of bread which was set down in the middle of the table beside a single knife. Next to it was a bowl full of whole, pickled herring. No individual cutlery was in sight. Each member, knife in hand, would clasp the bread close to the bosom just below the chin, and slice off a hunk. Having hacked off his own piece, the eater handed the remaining loaf and the knife to his neighbour who repeated the operation. In spite of the apparent

danger, I felt that I could manage this particular procedure with relative ease. But when it came to the herring, I knew I was lost. For each of my neighbours in turn, picked up a herring by the tail in his fingers, held it high above his head which was thrown back as far as he could get it. The whole herring was then lowered into the mouth. Only the backbone of the poor fish then emerged, as the arm returned to its upright position. While I recognize today that such a feat is virtually impossible, it is still my recollection that that was how the hemng was consumed by all on that occasion. I was determined to try, and try I did. Hastily, I was impelled to exit from the dining hall, to seek out an isolated corner behind the barn, there to disgorge what my queasy stomach refused peacefully to accept. I might add that this fastidiousness was happily overcome in record time. What I found less easy to adjust to, and this during all the years I spent in Palestine, was the tenacity of Palestine flies. I was first introduced to these in the dining hall of Givath Brenner. The normal Canadian fly as I recalled it, was a rather timid fellow, most amenable to the persuasion of an approaching swat to take to his heels, or whatever it is that the fly possesses as an equivalent. Canadian flies did not stick to you in the face of obvious threat; Palestinian flies refused to budge. I did not stay at Givath Brenner very long. Gordon had arranged for me to go to Kiryat Anavim, a settlement near Jerusalem, where only one member spoke any English and he worked in Jerusalem. I left Givath Brenner that autumn of 1932, long before it became the largest collective settlement in the country, long before it established its own intensive farming and industrial enterprises, long before its membership numbered well over one and a half thousand; and long before it was the first labour settlement to set up a Tourist Rest Home. The arrangements that Gordon had made for me necessitated my returning to Jerusalem where I was to report at the central office of Tnuvah. Tnuvah was a co-operative association affiliated with the General Federation of Jewish Labour, the Histadruth. Its main function was to market the agricultural produce of most of the Jewish settlements. Each morning, a truck loaded with milkcans left Kiryat Anavim for Tnuvah, bringing into town not only its load of dairy products, but also the members of the settlement who were responsible for the administration of the co-operative. At nightfall, the same truck, carrying empty cans, provided transportation for the members back to the settlement,

It was on this truck that I was to be conveyed to my newly arranged place of work. In the following weeks and months, I was frequently tempted to climb aboard the truck into town, to rejoin fellow human beings with whom I could converse. For I soon discovered the world of silence into which one is rapidly transported when language becomes a barrier to communication. But these things I did not foresee in the excitement of my first ride on the settlement truck. Kiryat Anavim was relatively small, tucked snugly into the rocky hills of Judaea, within easy reach of Jerusalem. It had been settled shortly after the Russian Revolution, its original members having come from Odessa. They were typical pioneer idealists, workaholics, for whom physical labour was the weapon for salvation. The site had been chosen at the instigation of an agricultural scientist who wished to test the potential which might be found to exist, in the apparent dead, rocky soil of the area. He thought in terms of afforestation, of planting trees and developing a fruit-growing industry. He hoped that the barren soil could be reclaimed, while at the same time devising methods for hill farming. The place was obviously chosen without regard to security, being exposed at it was on all sides. One could spot Kiryat Anavim from miles down the road, if only because the hills immediately adjacent to the settlement were already becoming green, while the rest of the hills remained bare, There were a number of small villages in the vicinity, most of them hostile, except for Abu Ghosh. One of the classic stories which the settlers told and retold concerned the Mukhtar of Abu Ghosh who, at the time of Arab disturbances some three years before, had offered to bring his children to the settlement. He told the settlers that he wished to leave the children in their care as a gesture of his determination to safeguard the security of the kvutza. During the days of my sojourn at Kiryat Anavim, Abu Ghosh was still a friendly place. The original code of work accepted by the founders of Kiryat Anavim imposed a heavy toll on its members. In fact, by the time I reached the kvutza many of them, particularly the women, were already physically broken by the severe physical hardship demanded by their dream. Large boulders and rocks had had to be removed without benefit of any mechanical equipment and such heavy work had taken its toll. Initially, it had been intended to establish the settlement merely as an experiment; at that time there were proposals to move the kvutza to the fertile Jezreel Valley. But the planners had

T h e authot-'s "barracV3 at liiryat Anavim 1032-33.

not calculated the extent of the tie which inevitably grew between the settlers and their land, harsh though it was. They did not agree to any such move.

I arrived at Kiryat Anavim after dark, on a rainy December night. The pathways were muddy, and the ghostlike shadows thrown by the kerosene lamps did little to enhance the atmosphere. The members who greeted me and escorted me to my quarters endeavoured unsuccessfully to communicate with me, as had my previous comrade at Givath Brenner. Unlike him, however, they had little experience in reading the New York Yiddish press, and therefore had not picked up even a few words in English. Sign language soon became the order of the day, a frustrating exercise when contemplated on a relatively long-term basis. The barrack in which I was to be housed was divided by wooden partitions and a cot was allocated to me in a small area which I shared with an attractive, applecheeked girl named Tamar. She was the young sister of three brothers who were important personalities in the kvutza affairs. All of them had played a key role in the establishment of Tnuvah. Our barrack quarters were, of course, primitive. My mattress consisted of a sackcloth bag filled with straw. On occasion, partic-

ularly when I turned over, a single sharp strand of straw would poke through the sackcloth, and it was not long before I was covered with stab wounds in almost every part of the anatomy. There was, of course, the same water famine at Kiryat Anavim as there was in Jerusalem; the intention to build a water pipeline from Ras el Ayn was merely an announcement of good intentions that spring. In the kvutza, water needed for personal use was relegated to second place, other needs such as those of the cow shed being given higher priority. Every Friday afternoon, however, we were each entitled to receive one "pach" of hot water, an old tin can which had the capacity of approximately four or five gallons. Originally the can had held gasoline, but when empty it became an essential commodity for a wide variety of purposes. In fact, as I was later to learn, there were whole districts consisting solely of huts made out of the flattened tin of those gas cans. These huts were all too frequently inhabited by relatively large families. Our single tin can of hot water could, of course, be used in any way we saw fit. With the help of one of the more ingenious members of the group, I had my can fixed to two poles at a height of about six feet, fixed in such a way that it was capable of being swung from one side to the other by simply pulling on an ordinary piece of cord attached to the upper side. This side of the can had been wellpunctured so that when I stood beneath it and pulled the cord down, a shower of water descended upon me. Naturally, before putting this apparatus into its full functioning position, I had disrobed and had carefully rubbed soap generously over my less than hygienic body, being careful not to moisten the soap too much lest I waste some of the precious water. Since Kiryat Anavim was in every respect a most conservative community, this particular operation was performed at a spot behind the shack, beyond the view of any observer. Kiryat Anavim at that time did not yet know the luxury of indoor plumbing, nor indeed of outdoor plumbing. A number of outdoor privies were situated at a fair distance from the living quarters, for these were the days before such amenities as chemical toilets might have been available in such circumstances. On cold wintry nights, the walk from our hut to the privy, along a muddy, slippery path, to the echo from the opposite hill of the cry of hyenas, seemed to me a torturous route indeed. Even the privy itself, consisting merely of a hole in a primitive floor, differed from anything I had ever seen, even in the rural areas at home. Had I travelled in Europe, of course, I might have been less surprised at the contraption. The trick,

I soon learned, was to balance well on one's haunches, in the manner in which the Arabs rested for hours, smoking their nargilahs outside the village cafes. Family life at Kiryat Anavim was both strong and warm, the settlers having been living together as a community of some sixty members, for a number of years. Each family had at least one room to themselves which husband and wife shared with their children. There was a community kindergarten to which the children were brought each morning and where they spent the day in the care of one of the members of the settlement who was a trained kindergarten nurse. At the end of each day, one or both of the parents would pick up their child who, by this time, had already been fed its evening meal. The hour or two between the end of the work day and the adult dining hour was devoted exclusively to the children by the parents. The whole of the Sabbath day was, of course, similarly shared. The arrangement that the children live with their parents distinguished the kvutza, which was a relatively small community, from the larger kibbutz, where children were housed apart from their parents. Both the kibbutz and the kvutza were self-governing co-operative agricultural settlements, based on socialist ideological principles of shared labour, shared benefits and shared responsibilities.They both believed in the redemption of the land through their own work, no outside labour being permitted. An elected Secretariat was responsible for the general administration of settlement affairs and for the allocation of individual duties. The primary difference between the kibbutz and the kvutza as I saw it when I moved from Givath Brenner, a kibbutz, to Kiryat Anavim, a kvutza, seemed to lie in the different attitudes towards the matter of individual privacy and to a lesser extent to the right of individual members to retain certain personal possessions. In this regard the kvutza was more flexible, having greater regard to personal considerations. In the course of the whole period of my stay at Kiryat Anavim, I cannot recall a single instance of domestic or family conflict whatsoever. I do not wish to imply that this settlement was made up of people who were something other than human. But they were particularly close in their family relationships and were working so hard and so long that there was little strength left at the end of the day for the irritations that so frequently are the prelude to domestic friction.

During the first few days of my sojourn at Kiryat Anavim, some efforts were made to judge my various capacities, so as to assign me to work where I was likely to be most useful. My domestic talents, of course, then as now, were nil. However, as a starter it was decided that I would work in the laundry along with the number of older women, although these viewed me at first with some suspicion. Naturally, the laundry was not equipped with anything faintly resembling a washing machine, but rather consisted of a number of large tubs, some washboards and a few hand wringers. The bulk of the wash consisted of men's overalls, often covered with dung from work in the cowbarns. My proficiency with this category of laundry was particularly poor. T o make matters worse, a visitor arrived one day from Toronto, at the request of my family. An old friend had come to visit Palestine and had been directed to Kiryat Anavim where she came upon me in the midst of my laundry chores. She relayed to the folks at home a description of my activities. I learned subsequently that the family was not impressed. My days in the laundry were soon substituted by an assignment to the kitchen. The advantage here was that, for the first time, there was an opportunity for my co-workers to try to communicate with me. Somehow there was greater tranquillity while preparing vegetables, and it was in the kitchen that I began to make a little more progress in the acquisition of Hebrew. I never suffered again the same complete absence of language as I did in those early days at Kiryat Anavim. My kitchen colleagues persuaded me that the task of finding the means of communicating was not insurmountable, although my slow acquisition of the Hebrew language could hardly be viewed by the kvutza as a contribution to their economy,justifying my board and keep, however modest that may have been. The chores in the kitchen could not have been particularly onerous for while I cannot recall the details, I do recall the modesty of the menus prepared. Vegetables and fruit when in season were, of course, served as much as possible. In season there would be sliced boiled eggplant prepared for lunch; fried eggplant for supper; and cold left-over eggplant for breakfast. Tea was a staple food for these Russian-born workers, and a large samovar was always kept on the ready. As the rainy winter days retreated, I began to find the kitchen confining. Happily, my days there were numbered, less by my ineptitude than by the needs for hands in the vineyards. The vineyards of Kiryat Anavim were even then well known throughout the country. The work in the vineyard had to be under

way by the time the sun rose in the morning. We would get up before dawn, and at breakfast prepare some snack to take with us to the fields, for we would not come back until the light failed with the setting sun. One of my favourite snacks consisted of two huge hunks of bread between which I wrapped a large hunk of halva, a confection made of ground sesame seed, nuts and honey. I would hide my snack under a rock in the vineyards, all too frequently to find that the crows enjoyed the halva as much as I did. Since I was busy all morning with my chores, they had a real advantage over me and it was only on rare occasions that I found my lunch pack intact. My job in the vineyards was, of course, that of an unskilled worker, but the spirit was willing. Besides, there was much work to be done in those early months of the year. I soon learned how to prune vines and to attend to new cuttings. I was intrigued with the methods of grafting new cuttings and was constantly inquiring as to the whys and wherefores. I did not particularly relish the clearing up of the vineyards, any more than I relished routine domestic chores. Thus, when we started ploughing in that rocky soil, I enjoyed the change in tasks. The plough, a hand-held, single-bladed contraption, was hauled along behind a couple of old mules. It had to be guided along as it tickled whatever soil there was, and constantly had to be redirected from amongst a pile of rocks. The blisters I once had known in the days of tennis were mere trifles compared to those I can still remember from the effort to hang on to the old plough at Kiryat Anavim. These hills of Judaea on sunny days in the winter months comprise for me some of the glories of that part of the world. My fondest memories of days in the vineyards were of the romantic, unrealistic dreams the surroundings inspired, for by that time spring had begun to be felt across the land. That certain itch which stirs the soul of youth gave me sufficient courage to implore the responsible authorities to allow me to switch to yet another job: taking the cows up to the top of the hills. I thought it would be romantic to sit on some rock, as the cows leisurely meandered hither and yon, to listen to the shepherds on the adjoining hills playing their primitive flutes. I was delighted one day when I was told that I could escort the cows up to the hills at the back of the settlement. For this mission, I was to be left unsupervised, to be completely on my own. Jobs at the kvutza were numerous and membership was small; it was not possible to allocate two persons to a job that, in normal circumstances, could well be carried out by one. Furthermore, the kvutza was not designed to be an apprentice-training oper-

ation for middle-class idealists from abroad. From my own point of view, I welcomed the prospect of solitary responsibility, although admittedly I knew nothing about the idiosyncrasies of the cow. And so it was that one bright morning I reported to the cowbarn where I received some casual directions as to the route to follow up the scraggy hills. Although these hills had benefited from the settlers' tree-plantings of years before, they were still rough and barren, offering little nourishment for a hungry herd of ninety cows. I had no particular difficulty in persuading the herd to ascend the hills, although I myself did not find the climb to be as easy as I had anticipated. Nevertheless, when we reached a point where most of the cows seemed to be happy, I sat down to drink in the joys of pastoral magnificence. My rapture was to be short-lived, for almost from the beginning, my cows began to stray in all directions and I began to chase. As the day proceeded, my herd seemed to diminish. I would start chasing a few cows in one direction, only to lose a few more in the oppositie direction. I begged, pleaded, all to no avail. I did not know where the straying cows were going, but I felt it to be my bounden duty to stay close to those cows which still remained within my immediate view. By sundown, I found myself preparing to descend to the kvutza, with only seven or eight cows, the few faithful still in my charge. I was scratched and torn, bruised in body and soul, disconsolate at the loss of my charges. As I descended the hills and entered the area of the kvutza, I found about half of the settlement standing in a group gazing up the hill, awaiting my return. It seems that my disappearing herd had slowly wandered back to the barn, unescorted and unattended. As their numbers had increased, so had the consternation of settlers, for there was no sign of the disconsolate cowhand. By the time I was spotted, virtually the whole herd had wandered home. I never again got the opportunity to try to capture my dream of playing shepherd in the hills of Judaea. During the months I spent at Kiryat Anavim, I managed to acquire some proficiency in conversational Hebrew. Unfortunately, it was never sufficient for me to pursue lengthy conversations with the settlers on political matters, on matters of kvutza policy nor indeed even on the broader concepts of Zionist philosophy. I found my inability to communicate a heavy burden, for I always relished a good debate on world affairs as well as purely domestic ones. The lack of a newspaper that I could read and easily understand bothered me considerably. The settlers themselves were avid newspaper readers

and the Hebrew press was always there for the asking, but it was with difficulty that I could read it at all, let alone fully understand what I managed to decipher. Obviously, if I wanted to know about the goings-on in the world outside of Kiryat Anavim, I had no choice but to learn to read the Hebrew press. I can remember distinctly my sense of utter frustration, sitting in the dining hall at Kiryat Anavim on a rainswept wintry day, with the Hebrew newspaper Davar spread out in front of me, trying to measure the significance of the story datelined January 30, 1933, reporting that the aged President of the German Republic, old FieldMarshall von Hindenberg, had appointed Adolf Hitler to be Chancellor of the German Reich. Only a few weeks before, it had seemed that the situation in Germany was improved. On a weekend in Jerusalem, I had seen an editorial in the Palestine Post under the heading "Better Days for Germany," which read in part: "Not only is a measure of peace secured for home affairs, but Germany's relations with the other European powers... show promise of entering a happier stage than they have known for many years.. ." Obviously, portentous events were underway, events hardly foreshadowed by the infant English newspaper in Jerusalem. And I was unable to discuss these with anyone for lack of linguistic competence. Slowly but surely, nevertheless, I managed to acquire some competence in conversational Hebrew, and was also learning to read the language. I would happily have remained in Kiryat Anavim except for an unforeseen physical disturbance which began to be of some concern to me. Little wonder that with the acute change in my lifestyle, I experienced something of a hormone rebellion. In the course of a few months, I had gained some forty pounds in weight. I was obviously in need of some kind of medical attention. My cousin, Edward Gelber's father-in-law, Dr. Jacob David, was a medical practioner living in Tiberias. I was persuaded to consult with him. I departed from Kiryat Anavim to visit the David home in Tiberias in the spring of 1933, fully determined to spend the rest of my life in a kvutza.

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MEANDERING 1933

erhaps it was because of the

adolescent years I had spent dreaming dreams of the Galilee-singing. love songs to and about the Kinnereth and devouring romanti&Gs of the early Jewish settlements in that area-that I was not unprepared for the beauty which suddenly spread out below us, when our decrepit bus came to the point of its descent into Tiberias. Or perhaps it was because of the girlhood years I had spent at Havergal, exposed for the first time to New Testament studies-studies which, incidentally, had often sparked a measure of debate from this biblical neophyte-that the whole setting of the Sea of Galilee held for me an extra dimension. But whatever it was, as I looked down from the Galilee hills along which we had been driving, to the Sea which lay far below, I understood for the first time something of the mystical tinge of this place, a mysticism that coloured the history, traditions, legends and lore so deeply reflected in both Judaism and Christianity. The setting itself exuded mysticism in its every material aspect. I suddenly knew that once more I had lost my heart to a geographic location which neither time nor place could dim. I cannot say the same for the town of Tiberias. When we finally pulled up to the bus stop, we found that we were in a small, bedraggled, poor, neglected town, where it was apparent that eastern Jews and Arabs intermingled to such an extent that it was often difficult to tell one from the other. I was glad to find that the David home was a civilized abode, although it was a far cry from the villa which my cousin's wife apparently had remembered it to be. It was fairly

spacious, built in what might be best described as a semi-modern Mediterranean style of the period. The house was at the end of a large, beautifully kept garden which Dr. David tended with the same loving care he bestowed on his patients. For the most part, these consisted of Arabs, not only from Tiberias but from other areas both far and near. He was well acquainted b ~ t hwith their language and with their way of life. He viewed himself as their counsellor and friend. Every morning groups would assemble in front of his house, squatting alongside the garden pathway, each patient waiting his turn to enter the surgery. Rarely had a patient come alone, so that the size of the gathering did not necessarily bear any relationship to the size of Dr. David's patient load. Insofar as my own health problem was concerned, Dr. David diagnosed it as nothing more than a reaction to the extreme change I had recently experienced in my lifestyle. He initiated a course of treatment for me, which included a daily injection. Each morning he would hold the syringe in one hand, poised to puncture me in my rear end, while, in the other hand, he would hold a beautiful rose from his garden. He would present the floral offering to me simultaneously with the inevitablejab. In addition to the medication, he also prescribed a series of baths in the healing waters of the Tiberias hot springs. Only a few months before my first visit to Tiberias, there had been launched, with considerable fanfare, the Hamei Tiberias (Tiberias Hot Springs) Company Limited. A development program was planned for a new thermal bath establishment by the shores of the Sea of Galilee, at the site where similar baths had existed since Roman times. The hot springs were reputed to possess mineral ingredients, including radioactive properties, at least equal in quality to those of the more famous spas in Europe. The existing baths, I was told, had originally been built during the Egyptian occupation of Palestine, in the early years of the nineteenth century. Then, before the turn of the century, they had been further extended by the Turkish government. During the First World War, an Arab-Syrian company obtained a concession from the Turkish authorities, a concession which was subsequently ratified by the British administration. In the late twenties, the British sold the concession to a private company which had planned to modernize the old place. But a dispute between the Palestine government and the Tiberias municipality had delayed the completion of the final arrangements. Only three years

before my arrival, the dispute had finally been settled; and shortly before my visit the Hamei Tiberias (Tiberias Hot Springs) Company had finally been launched. It planned to modernize the baths and to replace the old buildings which were still standing. When I first visited them, these buildings, however, were still in their primitive state, Undoubtedly, when Dr. David persuaded me to visit the Tiberias baths, he had had his eye fixed more on its future development than on the existing conditions. He had pointed out that the nomadic Bedouin women who customarily visited the baths would not be present because a religious festival happened to coincide with the period of my visit. He was sure that, in these circumstances, there would be little overcrowding in the less expensive facilities. With full confidence in his counsel, I took the bus which drove along the side of the lake, got off at the site of the baths, and bought a third-class admission ticket. To my astonishment, however, as I entered the bathing area, I found the place packed. The Bedouin women came in all shapes and forms. They assembled around the sides of what looked like a small swimming pool. Almost without exception, each of the women's bodies was tattooed in blue in one area or another. I later learned this served both as an adornment and as a protection against demons. My unmarked anatomy seemed to appear to them to be a source of great amusement. They laughed uproariously and prattled to each other as they poked at me in great glee. They obviously intended to do me no harm, but I was petrified. At first I determined to go through with my bath in the hot springs water as I had been instructed to do. But the conditions became increasingly more primitive. By the time I spied one wellmeaning woman about to administer to her neighbour what to me had all the appearance of an enema, there being no vessel in sight to deal with the aftermath except for the waters in which we were all bathing, I decided I could stomach no more. I escaped from the place and took the first bus back to Tiberias. Egalitarian though I might have considered myself to be, third-class was not for this genteel, Canadian-bred libertarian! My next experience with hot baths was considerably less traumatic. I was referred to a place located somewhere in the Jordan hills, beyond Beisan at the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. The hot springs at el-Hammai may not have been luxurious, but the place was clean and the customers were obviously less earthy than the

Bedouin women at Tiberias. I continued to visit the el-Hammai baths in Trans-Jordan during my sojourn with the Davids. I stayed on with the David family in Tiberias for some four or five weeks while I followed the medical regime prescribed by Dr. David. It was Dr. David's contention on medical grounds, and the contention of his women-folk undoubtedly on social grounds, that I must resume the lifestyle to which I had been accustomed throughout my life. Dr. David was sure that, given the treatment he had prescribed, coupled with an urban life, my hormone disturbance would be overcome, as indeed it eventually was. In order to exert more pressure on me to foresake Kiryat Anavim and my whole rural adventure, he threatened to inform my parents of the injurious effect on my system that he ascribed to my new, unaccustomed way of life. I must, he declared, return to the city. In the face of his threat, 1 saw no alternative but to establish myself in Jerusalem. However, before settling down, I hoped to indulge myself in a little more sightseeing. From Tiberias I headed for Upper Galilee in order to witness the celebrations at Meron, near Safed, marking the occasion of yet another Jewish festival, Lag Ba-Omer. This festival falls within a period of six weeks' mourning for the destruction of the Temple, lasting between Passover and Shavuot. On the thirty-third day, the mourning is lifted. Marriages which are otherwise forbidden, may be celebrated and rejoicing and merrymaking become the general rule. Frankly, until some of my friends told me about this holiday and suggested that the Meron festivities were worth seeing, I knew nothing of these customs, in spite of my rather traditional religious background. I was amazed to find Safed overflowing with visitors. Meron itself was a desolate spot, apparently famous only because it was the location of the tomb of Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai. During the second century, he had had to flee from the Romans and was said to have hidden in a cave in the mountains of Galilee, along with his son. Here, for a period of some thirteen years, they took a stand against the Roman rulers, only eventually to be martyred. They were buried at Meron. Perhaps of even greater significance to the eastern Jewish communities was the attribution to him of the authorship of the Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism, religiously read by eastern Jews. They believed that at his tomb at Meron, the pious might be healed; and that those who suffered misfortune, might find a happier destiny because of their visit. As I ascended the Galilee hills that spring day in 1933 to witness the celebrations, I had no indication as to the veritable orgy I was about to witness.

The scene that greeted me at Meron was one I might have expected to find at some sort of fair in that part of the world. A great gathering of families, predominantly from the eastern Jewish communities, Moroccans, Persians and Buharians, were busy settling down with the household goods they had brought with them, cooking utensils, blankets of sorts, as well as live chickens and sheep. Dominating the overall gathering was a large contingent of Ashkenazic orthodox groups. The variety of the garb of those who had come to celebrate ran the whole gamut from the kapota (long black coat) and shtreimel (the fur-trimmed hat) of the eastern European orthodox Ashkenazim, to the djelaba (the Moroccan-style gown of the Mugrabi), interspersed with the colourful native style of the Buharians. But while their dress differed so extensively from one group to another, their excitement and ecstasy seemed to me to be undivided. In the early dawn of a rather cool morning in the shadow of snowcapped Mount Hermon, a great procession of singing celebrants, men carrying their young sons on their shoulders, began wending its way towards the tomb. The young sons were to play a part in the wild ceremonies about to be played out; their hair, that had been allowed to grow without cutting as a symbol of the mourning period, was ceremoniously cut. Following this, refreshments including wine, were distributed far and wide. As the day wore on, the excitement heightened. The crowds shouted, argued, sang, danced and endeavoured to find a spot in the small courtyard surrounding the burial place. By the end of the day, the dancing and singing took on an element of wild ecstasy. As the darkness deepened and the Middle East moon shone down, bonfires were lit. Into the flames the assembled company tossed all kinds of articles, including scarves, shawls, skullcaps and other more substantial garments such as cloaks, all probably intended as some sort of offering. The pilgrims had brought along some of their womenfolk with them, undoubtedly to ensure that their inevitable hunger would be satisfied; and indeed some of the women were standing beside small braziers which they had brought along. But there were also other women, standing together in groups, clapping and singing along with their menfolk, and generally participating in the festivities. Unlike most traditional religious events, the women seemed to be included in the festivities. My recollection of that, my first initiation into the somewhat orgiastic folk custom of some segments of the Yishuv, was an experience which left me puzzled. I cannot say that I did not enjoy it,

but at the same time, I was taken aback at the uninhibited nature of the celebration. I believe that what troubled me was not the expression of joy of the eastern Jews; I was unfamiliar with their customs and was therefore prepared to discover the unexpected. But I was surprised by the nature of the tradition portrayed by the eastern European orthodox Ashkenazim. As I watched them in their ecstasy, I could not help but recall the jubilation of certain religious sects I had once witnessed in the States. I knew that even among Ashkenazic communities, mysticism and belief in the Rabbinic power to perform miracles was still extant. But I was completely unprepared for the utter abandonment, the uninhibited dancing and singing of the celebrants. Obviously, there was a side to Jewish life about which I was completely innocent. I was first initiated at Meron, After leaving the Galilee, I decided to spend a few days in Tel Aviv before returning to Jerusalem. I stayed with a friend who was living on Ha'Yarkon Street, near the seashore. During the late afternoon of June 16, 1933, we went for a stroll along the sands, enjoying the calm of a springtime dusk. By about nine o'clock we had returned to my friend's home where we spent the evening going over the story of my adventures and updating some of the local gossip. We were quite unaware of the tragedy then being enacted not far from where we sat. We never heard the shot that snuffed out the life of the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, Chaim Arlosoroff. Arlosoroff was a highly respected leader of the Labour Party, the Mapai. He had come to Palestine in the early twenties with an academic background superior to that of many of his colleagues. He was a political economist and a skilled debater. But, of perhaps greater importance, were his diplomatic talents that might have helped him in finding a way of co-operation with the Arab community. I was told that Arlosoroff had already made contact with some Arab leaders in the hope of achieving a measure of Jewish-Arab rapport. He had just returned from a mission to Germany, where he had been endeavouring to establish some new programs which might, hopefully, alleviate the condition of the German-Jewish community, already feeling the impact of the recent accession to power of the Nazi party. Along with his wife, Arlosoroff had been walking along the beach, as I myself had been doing only a few hours before. Suddenly his wife noticed that they were being followed by two men. According to later testimony, Arlosoroff had reassured her, saying that they were now in Tel Aviv, not in Nazi Germany. The men had then

approached the couple, and one of them asked in Hebrew if they could tell them the time. On the heels of the question, came the shot. My sense of shock at the murder of a leader of the Yishuv in the heart of the all-Jewish city was soon to be further deepened when the finger of guilt for the crime was pointed, not at Arab gunmen, but at other members of the Yishuv. Rewards for the apprehension of Arlosoroff s murderers had almost immediately been offered by the Jewish Agency and by the police. Within a few days an arrest was made; a certain Abraham Stravsky, a member of the Revisionist Party, was apprehended. This was followed by the arrests of two other Revisionists, Abba Achimier and Zvi Rosenblatt. The Revisionist Party was incensed. They claimed complete innocence in the affair, and accused the Labour Party of creating a conspiracy to defame them. When two of the accused were acquitted and, later, when the death sentence was passed on Stavsky following his trial held in Jerusalem, the bitterness between the Mapai and the Revisionists grew even more rancorous. Mapai anger was hardly assuaged when the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal who allowed Stavsky's appeal, declared that if Stavsky's case had been heard in England, the conviction would have had to stand. But he pointed out that in criminal cases, the Palestine law differed from the British. Unlike the British law, the Palestine legislation required that there must be corroborative evidence to support that of a single witness. In the Arlosoroff case, the deceased's wife had been the only witness to the murder. Hence the appeal had to be allowed on technical grounds and Stavsky was free. (Ironically, fifteen years later, as he defied the authority of the newborn Jewish state which was then facing the onslaught of several invading Arab armies, Stavsky lost his life-not to the British hangman's noose but to the gunfire of his Israeli brethren.) The Arlosoroff affair was to mark the beginning of my education into the rather complicated and not too attractive labyrinth of Zionist political life. From the vantage point of half a century later, I find it astounding that when, as a passionate idealist, I set out on my youthful search for a Jewish Camelot, I was unaware of the political tensions already besetting the Yishuv.

I left Tel Aviv for Jerusalem shortly after Arlosoroff s murder. I now had to cope with more personal and practical problems. I had to find myself both the place and the means of living an urban life, as I had promised Dr. David I would. I was grateful to find that I

could return temporarily to my little room in the cul-de-sac opposite the Pension Friedman. The real problem however, was to find a job. I turned to my friend and former benefactor, Joshua Gordon, who had originally set me off on the road to kvutza living. He told me that he had a temporary job for which he could pay no salary. Nevertheless, all travel and living expenses would be covered. The job entailed the revision and expansion of a Guide to Palestine that had been produced a few years before. My job would be to travel through the whole country, noting every milestone we passed on the side of the road. I was to compare the description in the Guide with the contemporary physical features of the place, altering and updating the existing text as necessary. I was delighted at the prospect. Thus it was that I had hardly settled back from my recent meandering~when once more I was to take to the road. I was to be able to exercise a measure of independence as to where I stayed; and my timetable was to be completely unstructured. It was the Guide to Palestine and not my previous rambling tour, that provided me with my first concentrated, comprehensive view of the whole of Palestine, at least where access roads or trails existed at that time. Buses were my means of travel for the most part. I managed to seat myself as close to the driver as possible so that I could carry on lengthy conversations with him. At all times, on my lap were spread out maps of the country and the Guide which I was required endlessly to check; and of course, at hand were my notebook and pencil. The principal roads in Palestine at that time, as I remember them, were reasonably paved, a souvenir of British conquest, with genuine milestones placed each kilometre along the edge of the pavement marking the distances. There had not yet been constructed any coastal road; the only northern route from Jerusalem to Haifa passed through such Arab towns as Ramallah, Nablus, the old Shechem of biblical fame, past Jenin, then emerging on to the Plain of Jezreel, the Emek. At that time the Tulkarem-Nablus segment of the road seemed to be as peaceful as it was beautiful. Particularly engraved in my recollection is the then-grim but beautiful barrenness of the Upper Galilee hills. Of course, I had already visited Safed, but this was the first time I had travelled beyond that ancient town, past Lake Huleh and the swamp lands, which still lay untamed and malaria-ridden, right up to the most northerly old kibbutz, Kfar Giladi. That area had already established a place in Yishuv legend, as the pre-World War I locale of the early Hashomer, the watchmen organization that preceded the Haganah.

I was invited to spend the night at Kfar Giladi by a woman who was then already well into her middle years, Mania Shochat. She was one of the early Jewish radicals who had come to Palestine at least a decade before the First World War, determined to experiment with the then almost revolutionary concept of communal agricultural settlements. By the time I met her, the struggles and hardship of a difficult life were clearly visible on her lined face. But her toughness and determination shone through. I recall how puzzled she had been by the project in which I was engaged, particularly after I recounted my experiences at Kiryat Anavim. She could not understand how I could possibly abandon the kvutzah and even proposed that I give up my assignment in order to spend some time at Kfar Giladi. But I thought the better of it, and continued on my way, leaving behind me the stark and uncultivated Upper Galilee which, in those days, evinced little to reveal the potential of its hills, long since realized. Although I had kept to the built-up roads then available and had followed the routes already described in the old Guide, I soon found that there were areas of the country for which the Guide gave me little help. These were areas of newly established Jewish agricultural settlements, many of which could only be reached by means of sand tracks; by riding in trucks which frequently got bogged down; or by hitching a ride on a mule-drawn cart belonging to some of the local settlers. It was on one such route that I found myself in a vast valley still known by its Arabic name, Wadi Hawareth. It was not until I reached Kfar Vitkin, a smallholders settlement of several families who had established their moshav only some four or five years before, that I realized that this was the Emek Hefer of which I had heard so much in Canada. Although the Canadian Zionist community at that time was relatively small, they had pledged to raise a million dollars within ten years to enable the Jewish National fund to redeem Emek Hefer. The area was said then to be malaria-ridden swamp land, a condition no longer visible on the occasion of my first visit. There were, of course, no hotels or pensions at Kfar Vitkin, but the settlers were overwhelmingly gracious in their offer of hospitality in their own humble homes, I found that some of these settlers were veterans of the First World War Jewish Legion, the Gdud, and that several of them were former Canadians, During the few days I spent at Kfar Vitkin, I enjoyed the luxury of long political discussions with some of the English-speaking members of the community. They told me of their struggle to tame the harsh environment and to transform it into the fertile land that

En mute to H a i h to p;~rticip;~rc in cele111-ationsof May Day, 1933

it had already become. They also told me of one aspect of the Wadi Hawareth lands of which I had never heard. Apparently, when these lands had been purchased by the Jewish National Fund from their absentee Arab landlords, they were not entirely empty of occupants. According to the Kfar Vitkin settlers, several hundred Bedouin Arabs had been accustomed to camping in Wadi Hawareth. That spring, however, the court had issued an evacuation order requiring that the Bedouins vacate what had now become Jewish National Fund land. According to the Kfar Vitkin settlers, the displaced Bedouins had been compensated by the Jewish National Fund and, in addition, had been given the permanent ownership of an alternative site consisting of state lands. Therefore, the settlers at Kfar Vitkin foresaw no problem of large-scale displacement of Arab peasants from lands sold to the Jewish National Fund by absentee Arab landlords. I cannot say that I took the matter very seriously at the time. By the time I returned to Jerusalem, I had succeeded in providing for Joshua Gordon a few notebooks full of illegible scribblings, providing a blow-by-blow description of the landscape as I had seen it. It was undoubtedly superficial, but it was enough at least to update and amplify the old Guide to Palestine. When the revised Guide was published the following summer, the part for which I was responsible was described in the press as

"a straightforward, succinct account, with just the data needed." I was not disturbed by the added comment that it contained "no pretence to scholarship," for indeed there was none. Some three years later, one of the Yishuv's most knowledgeable scholars, Zev Vilnay, published his Palestine Guide, giving not only descriptions of the land, but recounting also its history and legends. Vilnay was no young greenhorn whose writings had been inspired solely by the offer of an all-expense bus trip through the new and changing routes of the ancient land. Almost immediately after coming back to Jerusalem, I encountered, for the first time, a demonstration of organized Arab anger. One Friday afternoon, in a state of utter and complete innocence, I decided to visit the Old City, calling on the way home at the government offices then situated at the Damascus Gate. I had some business or other to attend to at the Secretariat, and forgot that that day was the Moslem sabbath. Certainly I did not know, or perhaps had also forgotten, that on that particular Friday the Arabs had planned to hold a demonstration to protest the current immigration policy that allowed the entry of Jewish immigrants and particularly refugees who were beginning to arrive from Nazi Germany. In my usual lighthearted frame of mind, I proceeded on my way. Suddenly, I found myself facing a veritable mass of angry Arabs who had formed a procession headed in the direction of the government offices. There was much shouting and demonstrating going on, and, all at once, I was more than a little ill at ease. It was all I could do to get out of the way before the police broke into the crowd, swinging their clubs in an effort to break up the demonstration. By the time I got back to my lodgings, rumours had already spread that Jerusalem was to be placed under curfew. That first taste of a curfew was a bitter experience for me. I can still feel the sense of isolation. For an extrovert like myself, it was harsh punishment to sit alone in a rented room, in a strange house, in a district far removed from my friends, not yet acquainted with the neighbours nearby, and with a radio lacking batteries. Happily, those Arab disturbances in 1933 were short-lived. And so was the curfew.

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STUMBLING INTO A CAREER 1933-34

took my first tenuous ste s into the

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world of urban wage earners by seeking a ew young people who might wish to improve their knowledge of the English language. Quite apart from its cultural value, English was essential in a country administered by Britain. My first student was a young man, Reuben Zaslani (Shiloah), who had recently returned to his native Jerusalem after some three years in ~ a ~ h d and a d Kurdistan, where he had been employed as a teacher and ajournalist. He was one of several promising young men of the ~ i s h u vwho had been sent to other Middle Eastern countries to gain competence in Arab affairs. Zaslani was not a particularly attractive man, but I found much to interest me in his political know-how. He came from an old orthodox family, but had become involved in the Labour Party which then dominated the political scene. Occasionally, he would invite me to visit some of the Labour leaders of the day to whom, in other circumstances, I would never have had access. We would call on the Ben Zvi's, who then lived in a rather humble cottage in the middle-class residential quarter of Rehaviah. In spite of the relative affluence of the neighbourhood, Yitzchak Ben Zvi, who would later become Israel's second president, lived modestly. His wife Rahel Yanait, had already established her Agricultural School for Girls in a Jerusalem suburb, not far from the imposing new residence of the British High Commissioner. While Zaslani was studying English with me daily, he in turn was giving lessons in Hebrew to one of the senior officers of the

Criminal Investigation Department (CID), a Britisher for whom he developed an almost worshipful respect, a man named Domville. Zaslani used to regale me with cloak-and-dagger stories of the wondrous, undercover exploits of his friend. Whatever other factors influenced Zaslani's life, I have no doubt as to the important role Domville unknowingly played. In due course Zaslani himself became deeply involved in political intelligence. Some three years after we first met, he was appointed to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, and in that capacity became the Agency's liaison officer with the British authorities. I do not know whether my students ever got their money's worth from their English lessons, but I managed to earn enough to cover the cost of my modest rent. I did not enjoy private teaching nor did I consider it a likely career. Aside from private teaching, my opportunities for employment in 1933 were limited, particularly since I was determined to avoid a boring and unproductive career as an office worker. Someone suggested to me that the Palestine Post, the new English daily newspaper, was looking for staff. The Palestine Post had commenced publication on December 1, 1932, only three weeks after my arrival in the country. There had been an English publication, the Palestine Bulletin, appearing for some seven years before that time, but it was purchased and incorporated into the Palestine Post, with an American journalist, Gershon Agronsky as its editor. At one time, Agronsky had been the editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, as well as a correspondent for such prestigious newspapers as the London Times and the Manehater Guardian. During the First World War he had been a member of the Jewish Legion, the Gdud, and subsequently he had served on the Press Bureau of the Zionist Commission. Since then he had been a resident of Jerusalem. Agronsky's young colleague on the Post in its early days was Ted Lourie, one of the few single young men of the Jerusalem Englishspeaking community. Although I was friendly with Ted Lourie in those early years, I always harboured a grudge against him. When I first applied for a writing job with the Post, he promptly lost all the clippings of my columns from the Standard which I had brought with me to demonstrate some previous experience as a writer. I was too sensitive in those days to approach Agronsky himself, and I never mentioned the matter again to Lourie. At its inception the Post engaged a couple of former employees of its predecessor, one of whom, Anne Goldsmith, was a particularly

attractive and competent American. She had come to Palestine from her family home in Connecticut, where she had been engaged in social work. She had spent a short time as a teacher in Jerusalem, subsequentlyjoining the staff of the Palestine Bulletin. Anne's position at the Post grew and developed along with the paper, as did her relationship with her colleagues and, in particular, with her editor. Agronsky was a colourful man, and had quite a way with women, particularly with intelligent and attractive women. It had been to Anne Goldsmith that I turned on my return to Jerusalem in 1933, in the hope of obtaining some sort of job-if not to work as a journalist for the Palestine Post, then at least to earn my keep in the field of advertising for which she was responsible. She assured me that she would be delighted to have me solicit advertisements for the paper on commission. It was a fair enough arrangement, except that I had not realized how unaccustomed the retailers in Jerusalem were to purchasing advertising. When, on the first day, I obtained a good-sized advertisement from Charlotte's, an art shop then recently opened by a new immigrant from Czechoslovakia, I assumed my life had entered a new phase. However, when by the end of the week Charlotte's was the only advertisement I had managed to obtain, I realized that beginner's luck notwithstanding, my income would not even cover the cost of my meals. Although I carried on for some time as an unofficial Palestine Post advertising agent, it soon became obvious that there was no future in it. It was about this time that my friend and mentor from Camp Modin days, Libby Berkson, herself in search of a project to keep her busy, decided that Jerusalem was in need of an American-style tearoom. There were a number of so-called restaurants in Jerusalem, including a dairy restaurant on Jaffa Road, Farberov's, where I first learned to appreciate such Oriental delicacies as kefir and leben, the original though more primitive forms of yoghurt; and the Eastern European bowl of fruit, a sort of compote in a soup bowl, with which one commenced a meal. But by no stretch of the imagination could Farberov's have been described as a tearoom, a place where one might plan a tete-a-tete with one's friends. For such occasions there was that Jerusalem institution situated in the heart of Jewish Jerusalem on Zion Square: the Vienna Cafk. At the Vienna Cafe, one could sit for hours over a single glass of tea, read all of the newspapers in a dozen different languages, or join one's friends for a game of chess, sets being readily provided by waiters who soon became your pals. Here on occasion I could watch from afar Yishuv pesonalities like Shmaryahu Levin, whose

name was already a legend in the Jewish world. He was internationally known for his writings but was particularly known for his talents as a public speaker and a scintillating conversationalist. He had been born in Russia, but pursued advanced studies in Berlin. On his return to his native land, he became a member of the first Russian Duma. When the Duma was disbanded, he had returned to Berlin, moving later to the United States where he spent the years of the First World War. Throughout that period, he was a member of the Zionist Executive charged with the direction of Zionist propaganda. He had settled in Palestine about eight years before my sojourn in that country. At the Vienna Cafe, in those early years of the thirties, Shmaryahu Levin had become an established institution. On any day he could be found sitting for several hours, a game of chess set out before him, and a large glass of clear tea and lemon close at hand. Sometimes one of the cafe's regular supply of newspapers would also be nearby. Across the table from him, there would frequently be a chess partner, who may or may not have been one of his cronies, for the cafe staff felt it was their duty, in the absence of a familiar chess partner, to find him someone to play with even if that someone was a total stranger. Generally, the language which flowed from Levin's table was Yiddish, for Levin was, if nothing else, a man of the people, and his stories and his natural forms of expression were in his mother tongue. When Levin's health began to deteriorate, it was rumoured that his favourite waiter at the Vienna Cafe would endeavour to persuade Levin's chess partners to allow the old boy to win a couple of games to give him the pleasure of taunting his partner for his failure. It was all good-natured teasing, and it was a scene those of us who never missed an opportunity to walk into the cafk sorely missed after his death in the mid-thirties. The Vienna Cafe, however, was not a restaurant and it did not serve meals. Incidentally, when I first came to the city, I had been surprised to find that there was not a single Kosher restaurant in Jerusalem, a circumstance which did not disturb me unduly, for I was not an observant member of my clan. For those whose religious scruples required such amenities, only a few of the hotels provided Kosher meals. There was the old Amdursky Hotel and the more modem Eden Hotel, run by a gruff proprietor by the name of Lifshitz. But for those of us who did not ask too many questions, there was no shortage of rather ugly, but otherwise adequate, eating places. We welcomed the proposal for a congenial establishment, where we

could obtain wholesome American-style meals in friendly surroundings. This was the project Libby Berkson envisaged. Libby Berkson formed a partnership with Lillian Friedlander, the sister of the late Israel Friedlander, a Jewish scholar who had been murdered on a relief mission in the Ukraine after the First World War. I had known the Berksons since my teenage days at Camp Modin, where Libby had been an active head counsellor. In fact, it was in no small part her tremendous enthusiasm for the building of a Jewish National Home that had fired me with a Palestine passion in the first place. She was both a pedagogue and an executive, well versed in business practices. She also knew me very well, having dealt with many of my adolescent problems during the years when I was a camper and later a counsellor at camp. Since I was without a job and since Libby was looking for some trustworthy and inexpensive help, she offered me employment in her tearoom, which she carelessly named A1 Cos Te, translated from Hebrew as Over a Cup of Tea. I say carelessly named, for apparently in Arabic, a language with which she was completely unfamiliar, the connotation of the Hebrew words was something less than polite. The tearoom shingle, already fixed outside, had to be altered almost at once. It was not a happy beginning. Initially, I was to be employed as a waitress, for which I was to be provided with all the food I could eat during my hours of work. I also received monthly, three Palestine pounds (LP 3) equal to approximately fifteen Canadian dollars. I was delighted at the prospect of the job, although it hardly met my great expectations of participating in the upbuilding of the Homeland. That I turned out to be a well-meaning but hopeless waitress soon became clear. After only a few days on the job, I was transferred to acting as cashier. It was during this period that a number of former American friends from Camp Modin days came as tourists to visit Jerusalem, and, in nearly all instances, they visited the tearoom. One of the visitors was Rose Jacobs, an active and capable president of the Hadassah organization in the United States. Her children had been Modinites and consequently she was quite familiar with my youthful, energetic capacities, for whatever they were worth. Obviously, she viewed my present activities as less than appropriate. Still, I assured her that I was not in any way dissatisfied with my job, which kept me busy from noon to midnight. But I found that my morning hours were not usefully occupied. This gave Rose Jacobs the opportunity to suggest that I might involve myself, at least in a voluntary capacity, in some more productive endeavour.

Mrs. Jacobs inquired as to whether I knew anything about the work of the welfare bureaus established quite recently in the three major cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. She suggested that I might be able to work as a volunteer in the Jerusalem Welfare office. Although I had no experience as a social worker, I was fascinated by the prospect of making contacts with the dozens of communities in Jerusalem, contacts which most Americans and Canadians in Palestine rarely made. I had little concept of the type of services I might be able to offer. Nevertheless, Rose Jacobs decided to introduce me to Henrietta Szold, to discuss voluntary work, at least for the morning hours when I was free. Thus it was that one evening I went with Rose Jacobs to the Eden Hotel where Miss Szold was living at that time. I was surprised to find that this grey-haired, dynamic American woman, whose name was so familiar to those of us with a North American background, was so physically slight. As far as I knew, her great reputation was due to her work as a founder of Hadassah, the Zionist organization of Jewish women in America. I knew virtually nothing about Miss Szold's subsequent work within the Yishuv in the fields of education and social work. Our first meeting could hardly be described as promising. When she learned that I was a Canadian, she had much to say about Hadassah in Canada, none of it complimentary, and most of it expressed in considerable anger. I was astounded at her outburst, as much for its vehemence as for the information she conveyed. Miss Szold forcibly contended that it was she who had originally organized the Canadian women intending them to form a part of the American women's association. Hence, the Canadian group had also been named "Hadassah," the name Miss Szold had herself chosen for the American organization. I can still see Miss Szold's fist coming down with a bang on her desk, as she accused some of the Canadian leaders of having subsequently deserted the Americans in favour of the London-based Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO), which had been founded a few years later. Miss Szold became quite overwrought when she declared that the defection to WIZO might have been understood by her, had Canadian Hadassah not continued to appear before the public as though it were a part of the American organization. She accused Canadian Hadassah of continuing to use the publicity material devised and financed by the United States women in sup ort of American Hadassah projects, as though these projects were t eir own. The coup de grace, insofar as Miss Szold was concerned, was what she described as the indecency of the Canadian organization

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in its retention of the name "Hadassah." I recall that I had considered many projects then supported by American Hadassah as being projects of the Canadian organization, an impression that Canadian leaders did little to discourage at the time. Nevertheless, I suspect that most of the Canadian membership was quite innocent of what Miss Szold considered to be a deception. In all the subsequent years during which I worked in close association with her, Miss Szold never softened her deep resentment towards the founders of the Canadian organization. I was unprepared for Miss Szold's assault on Canadians, and I wondered what effect such deep-rooted feelings would have on her attitude towards me. I did not feel I had made much impression on her. It was with some surprise, therefore, that before we parted she suggested that I report at eight o'clock next morning at the welfare bureau of the Jerusalem Jewish Community Office, the Kehillah. She said that she would be communicating immediately with the social worker, Zipporah Bloch, advising her that she wished Miss Bloch to take me on as a volunteer during the morning hours. The following morning I set out for the office of the Kehillah. I discovered it housed on the second floor of an ancient Arab structure, over a small Jerusalem bakery known as Patt's. On ascending a well-worn stairway, I found myself in a long central hall lined on each side by a series of doors. On a bench outside one of these doors bearing the name of the welfare bureau in large Hebrew letters, sat a conglomeration of characters, mostly women with a number of children in tow, many clothed in rags, children with running eyes and infants whose noses were hardly perceptible for the flies that covered them. As instructed, I asked for Zipporah Bloch, who greeted me warmly in a Hebrew too classical for me easily to grasp. Apparently she made up the whole of the staff, although I subsequently learned that she took guidance from an advisory committee consisting of some hard-working non-professional members of the community. It did not take me long to discover that Zipporah Bloch had a temperament which easily matched that of Henrietta Szold. But her kindness to me from the first moment I stepped into her office has rarely been duplicated in my long professional career. Although Bloch knew something of my disconnected academic background, I could never convince her that I was not a university graduate. She herself had been born and brought up in Russia, in a family that revered education and that had a great sense of class distinction. T o her, anyone who had even attended a university

belonged to a certain site social group, a group to which she assigned me in spite of myself. She herself took particular pride in the fact that her late brother David had once been the mayor of Tel Aviv. This attitude never in any way hampered her relationship with her clients, few of whom could read or write, and practically none of whom had finished elementary school. Bloch assigned to me rather routine duties when I first began as a volunteer. I had no background in family casework, which was the method Bloch was endeavouring to follow. As she explained it, this entailed home visits to obtain a profile of the client, the family and the environment in which the client lived. Certainly, I was unfamiliar with the people for whom services were offered. Thus it was that, in the early days of my Jerusalem sojourn, I found myself in two unforeseen and unlikely roles. During the morning hours I was endeavouring to emulate a family case worker, albeit as a volunteer, while the rest of my waking hours were spent working in the tearoom. In one capacity, I derived a tremendous sense of satisfaction, while, in the other, I achieved the means for an independent life. I was determined not to retreat on either front. Meanwhile, the family in Canada had been expecting, or perhaps merely hoping, that by the time I had completed the agreed year in Palestine I would come back home to Toronto and settle down to a way of life not different from that of other young women of my age. Such a thought never crossed my mind. Repeated requests for me to return home began to arrive from my father, requests that I am sorry to say, were not even answered, for I was a poor correspondent. Thus it was that, for the first time in her life, my mother embarked on a voyage abroad; indeed, it was the first time that she ever travelled anywhere alone. She was coming to Palestine, not as a tourist to see the sights, but as a mother, charged by her husband to bring his only daughter home. The logistics of my mother's trip eastward were simple: she sailed on the Aquitania, one of the great luxury liners that frequently plied the Atlantic route in winter, sailing via Gibraltar all the way from New York to Haifa, thus eliminating any need to transship or cross Europe by train. It was on a stormy February day that I took leave from the tearoom, a leave which was simple enough to obtain since Libby Berkson was an old family friend. Leave from the welfare bureau was equally simple since, after all, I was merely a volunteer. I set off for Haifa to greet my long-suffering mother, only to find that the ship had had to anchor some fifteen miles outside the harbour because strong winds did not permit a ship of her size to enter the port. It

With my Mother on the beach, Tel Aviv, 1!)34.

was not until the next day that the passengers were able to set foot on dry land. My mother must have had quite a shock when she greeted a daughter who weighed some forty pounds more than when last she had seen her. We had planned to proceed immediately to Jerusalem where, in the interests of economy, my mother would stay in the home of the Russian-Jewish family with whom I was then livin alon with two American grls. My landlords, the Moros, were oocf solicf hospitable eople. The husband was a medalist by pro esslon, but as he coul not make a living through his art alone, he operated a small 'ewellery shop on King George Avenue. Their house was in one o the poorer areas of the city, on an unpaved street. The February rains had done their job well, depositing more water in the muddy roadways than had accumulated in the cisterns where it could have served more useful purposes. My poor mother climbed through the mud to enter the less than palatial establishment in which her daughter lived. The weeks during which my mother was with me in Jerusalem were unhappy ones for her. She was shocked by my style of living,

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and she felt isolated in the Moro home. She and Mrs. Moro liked each other but had no common language. Mrs. Moro was fluent in her native Russian, she spoke flawless Hebrew, and was quite at home in Yiddish. My mother knew some French from her school days in Montreal, and was, of course, fluent in English, her mother tongue. She did not speak Yiddish, her knowledge of the language being limited to childhood efforts to understand what her parents were saying to each other when they wished to convey something to each other in a tongue the children were not to understand. Thus, my mother would talk to Mrs. Moro in a strange lingo, consisting mainly of English, distorted by the pronunciation she was used to hearing from Yiddish-speaking immigrants at home. She was apparently under the impression that by calling a window a "vindow," the word became Yiddish! My mother endeavoured to seek advice as to what she should do about me in the face of my determination to remain in Palestine. She consulted with people she already knew, such as the Berksons and the Dushkins, and people with whom I had become associated, including Henrietta Szold. Without exception, they advised her not to insist on my returning home for they believed I was on the verge of developing a creative career. Miss Szold told my mother that she had received unusually favourable reports of my work in the welfare bureau; and said that she was prepared to enable me to make social work a full-time occupation. She then told my mother of her plans to establish at the Va'ad Leumi, as an experiment, a School of Social Work; and, on the basis of my early volunteer work, she hoped to include me as a student. I believe that it was Miss Szold's advice that finally won my mother's agreement to leave me in Jerusalem. It must have been a difficult decision for her but it was consistent with the life-long support she gave me. It was also consistent with her readiness to go along with my own plans and my insistence on a life of independence. She returned to Canada alone, a tourist passenger on a rather decrepit, Mediterranean ship of the Messagerie Maritime Line, on a trip that entailed train connections from Marseilles to Paris and Paris to Cherbourg, a trip that must, in itself, have been for her of frightening proportions. My mother now faced up to what she recognized as a fact of life: her only daughter was a non-conformist. She also seemed to have determined that she would continue to provide the moral support that, to some extent, soothed my frequently troubled conscience. At no time during her life did she discourage me from going

my own way, even when that way was one that must have caused her unhappiness. Almost immediately after my mother left, Miss Szold invited me to her office. She explained that some of her American friends had placed at her disposal a modest fund for her social welfare work which she was to use in any way she chose. She now proposed to create a small social welfare scholarship to enable a student to devote full-time to studies at a School of Social Work, the plans for which were already under way. If I agreed to give up myjob at the tearoom, and devote myself full-time to the study and practice of social work, Miss Szold offered me a monthly scholarship amounting to LP 4. It was not a condition of the scholarship that I should repay the money, but I can still recall the great sense of satisfaction it gave me when, on eventually being employed by the Kehillah at a wage of LP 10 a month, I paid back LP 1 a month to Miss Szold. She was touched, and I was smug about the whole affair. Thus I embarked on a professional career that I had never envisaged for myself, and for which I had hitherto shown no particular interest. I also embarked on an association with a woman whose name was already legendary in the Jewish world. During the last decade and a half of her life, Miss Szold's friendship and counsel provided me with unfailing moral support, even on occasions when she did not wholly share my unorthodox views.

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STRANGE ENCOUNTERS 193636

hen I first met Miss Szold, she

had already passed her seventieth birthday. For the last three years, she had been responsible for the newly established ~ e ~ a r t m e of n t Social Welfare df the Va'ad Leumi. She was looking forward to returning to her native Baltimore where she planned to spend the last years of her life. She did not yet know that one of her greatest challenges still lay ahead-a challenge which would deprive her of retirement in her native land. During the short period she had been the Director of Social Welfare, she had already managed to establish a network of bureaus in the three largest urban centres of the Yishuv. A professional social worker was employed in each bureau and a somewhat primitive system of family casework services had already been initiated. Miss Szold herself had never had any social work training, but she was familiar with the basic principles then practised in the United States. It was her ambition to see established within the Yishuv, a modern, American-style, casework organization in spite of the complexities posed by some of the old traditions and customs of an ethnically diverse Yishuv. In the early years of our acquaintance I used to visit Miss Szold almost every Friday afternoon, when she would leave her office earlier than usual, and return to her lodgings to prepare for the Sabbath. Miss Szold was no zealot, but she was an Orthodox Jew in every sense of the word. T o her the Sabbath was a time to relax, to reflect and to greet friends and colleagues.

Sketch of Henrietta Szold in anticipationof an oil painting by portrait artist, Litvinovsky.

Whenever I came to call on her in her modest quarters, she would endeavour to drum into my head the appropriate Latin names of the plants with which she was always surrounded. When, the following week, I would fail to recall the name she had so diligently tried to teach me, her impatience knew no bounds. But then she would laugh for, obviously, botany was hardly one of my strengths. In a more serious vein, Miss Szold would turn to the stack of problems that faced her as the Yishuv's first Director of Social Welfare of the Va'ad Leumi, and, particularly, to social programs yet to be initiated. The project that most concerned her was the School of Social Work. The development which made such a project a reasonable reality was the arrival from Nazi Europe of social workers who had suddenly found themselves relieved of their jobs and had joined the ranks of the refugees coming to Palestine. Among them was a wellknown German teacher of social work from Berlin, Sidi Wronsky. Miss Szold had already been in correspondence with her for some time, with a view to using her experience in the Yishuv. Sidi Wronsky had been a teacher in Berlin's first School of Social Welfare. She was recognized in academic circles as an authority in her field and had achieved considerable recognition through her published works. Miss Szold was greatly impressed by Wronsky's professional expertise, and was instrumental in Sidi Wronsky setting up the Yishuv's first School of Social Work under the auspices of the Va'ad Leumi. When Miss Szold had offered to make it possible for me to work full time at the Kehillah, she obviously had in mind the need to find some young guinea pigs for the new school. Although I was the first student formally to become a part of the student body, I was soon joined by other candidates. One of these was a young married woman, Ora Goitein, who had been involved as a volunteer in some of the local charities. A second student, Hava Danziger, was the daughter of a physician, an attractive young sabra who subsequently married the son of the president of the Hebrew University. Sidi Wronsky established a daily schedule for us which consisted of lectures during the first half of the day, and practical work during the second half. For me, the practical portion of my apprenticeship consisted of a continuation of the volunteer work I had been doing at the Kehillah. For the theoretical work, Wronsky supplemented her own lectures by inviting a number of local academics to talk to us on a number of specialized subjects.

It was a fortunate arrangement; none of us could follow what Wronsky was trying to say, since she insisted on speaking in Hebrew, a language that she was only then beginning to learn. We soon began to notice with the greatest of glee, Wronsky's very special talent for malapropisms. She would consistently mix up one Hebrew word for another which, to her ears, sounded the same. Even I, with my still elementary grasp of the language, could appreciate her boners. I cannot say that I ever attended Wronsky's lectures with much anticipation. And whatever I did learn, I managed to acquire from some of the American texts she recommended. I remember reading some dull papers concerning principles of social investigation. But I still maintained my fascination with the practical side of our social work study. For the first time I was learning something of the poor quarters of Jerusalem unseen by the average visitor. Working in the offices of the Kehillah also gave me ample opportunity to get to know something of the organizational setup of the Yishuv. The Jerusalem Kehillah, or to give it its full Hebrew name, Va'ad (Council) ha-Kehillah, (the community), was the local counterpart of the Va'ad Leumi (National Council), the national body established following the enactment in 1926 of the Religious Communities Organization Ordinance. This law provided for the formation of self-governingelected community organizations as well as the establishment of religious courts. To these courts was allocated the solejudicial responsibility in matters of personal status including marriage, divorce, alimony and the confirmation of wills. Within the Jewish community, both at the national and local level, matters such as social service, education and health, were also dealt with. To enable these institutions adequately to function, the right to levy taxes within the respective communities was provided by the law. In the Jerusalem Kehillah office there were a number of separate departments including an administrative section responsible for the taxcollection and the allocation of approved funds for community services. Some space within the Kehillah was also set aside for the local headquarters of the Haganah. Although itsjurisdiction was not solely local, the Rabbinic Court was located within the offices of the Jerusalem Kehillah. Side by side with all of these, was the Social Welfare Bureau, where I shared a small space with Zipporah Bloch. Each of these sections of the Jerusalem Kehillah served a considerable clientele. On any one day a substantial congregation would assemble outside the door of the Rabbinic Court, and an even larger congregation outside the Welfare Bureau. Although there may have been less coming and going to and from the other offices, they too

served the Jerusalem public. The Jerusalem Kehillah, accommodated as it was on a single floor in a relatively small building, was indeed a busy place. It was also impoverished. In those early years, the Jerusalem Kehillah was in a chronic state of impending bankruptcy. Although its employees received minimum remuneration, their salaries were almost always overdue by many months. I can recall Zipporah Bloch being given an official letter, attesting to the fact that she was owed back-pay of a specified amount. She had asked for the letter in order to placate her landlord, to whom she then owed several months rent. In spite of this situation I cannot recall a single resignation even though all the employees were members of a trade union, the Histadruth. But they were all imbued with a sense of mission and of devotion far beyond the call of duty. Their creditors were equally long-suffering. It was not until I became involved with the Kehillah that, for the first time, I realized the extent to which the Yishuv was a manyfaceted community. Quite apart from the general separation from each other of the Ashkenazic (Eastern European) and Sephardic (MediterraneanfMiddle-Eastern)communities, there were the endless subdivisions within these two primary groups. Among the Ashkenazic community, were descendants of families who had been in Jerusalem for generations. These included such ultra-orthodox groups as the Agudath Yisrael who opposed the Zionist movement, preferring to wait for their redemption until the coming of the Messiah. Many of these families still lived in the Old City, though it had been some of their numbers who first moved outside of the walls, settling in areas such as Meah Shearim. Quite apart from the old orthodox community, there was in Jerusalem a vibrant Ashkenazic community with roots in the enlightened world of the twentieth century. They were the founders of the Hebrew University, which was already a flourishing institution. They were the professional men and women who were responsible for the educational, medical and scientific institutions that, even in the earliest days of the Mandate, had already taken root. In fact, the Ashkenazic community was almost as diverse in its own way as was the Sephardic community. It was a diversity, however, with which I was not completely unfamiliar. I knew less about the different segments of those considered to comprise the Sephardic community in the Yishuv. In Canada and in Britain, the Sephardic community consisted of Spanish and Portuguese communities that I knew were considered to be rather prestigious, somewhat more blueblood than their

Ashkenazic counterparts. In Jerusalem, however, I found the general attitudes to be the reverse. I was quite taken aback when first I heard Sephardic Jews referred to disdainfully as "Franks." Yet members of the Sephardic community in Jerusalem were descendants of families who had been living in the land for many generations, most of whom could trace their roots back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. In fact, the word "Sephard" is the Hebrew word for Spain; and I found that, in not a few of the Sephardic families, some members still conversed in Ladino, a Spanish-basedjargon which, in its way, paralleled the German-based Yiddish of the Eastern European Jews. In getting to know something about the Sephardic community as I found it to be in Jerusalem, I discovered that non-Spanish eastern Jews who had come from Kurdistan, Baghdad, Iran and Yemen, in fact from all so-called eastern Jewish communities, seemed to be designated as Sephardic Jews. It took some time for me to understand the reason. Apparently, during the time of Ottoman rule there had been one officially recognized Chief Rabbi who held the prestigious title of Rishon le-Zion, the First in Zion. He was a Sephardic Jew. With the advent of the British, and the delegation of certain statutory powers to the Rabbinic Court in matters of personal status, it was deemed necessary to appoint an Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi as well. For while Jewish law in general applies equally to both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, the interpretation of that law frequently differs. Thus, a dual Ashkenazic-Sephardic Chief Rabbinate was appointed, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi dealing with personal status law as it applied to all Eastern communities. Hence, the common reference of all of these communities as Sephardic. Nevertheless, it soon became obvious, even to a greenhorn like me that each socalled Sephardic group had its own individual customs and its own traditions. In fact, whole worlds seemed to separate the Yemenite from the Baghdadi, the Kurdi from the Urfali, and each and every one of them from the true Sephardic Jew. If there was diversity within the Ashkenazic community, there was even greater variety within the non-Ashkenazic communities, all of which were represented among our clients. While I was trying to grasp some of the more difficult implications of the social structure of the lerusalem scene, I also had to e it was essential cope with the problem of languages. ~ u i t obviously, to be able to communicate directly with people if one hoped to help them. By this time, I was able to communicate reasonably well in Hebrew, but within the Ashkenazic community a knowledge of

Yiddish was necessary. By making a great effort, I somehow found a way to make myself understood by manipulating my high school German, to which I would supplement a sorry mixture of Hebrew. In time, I did pick up a smattering of that colourful language, genuine Yiddish. With the influx of German refugees, however, and the need to provide services to these newcomers, I was forced to acknowledge that my poor German was hardly adequate. These clients were welleducated people, unaccustomed to the simple and frequently incorrect form of their language which was all I knew. Happily for me, most German immigrants seemed quite fluent in English. Furthermore, as time went on, even my German improved. Much more difficult, however, was the lack of any vestige of a common language with the non-Ashkenazic communities. Most families who belonged to the genuine Sephardic community spoke Hebrew, so I had little or no difficulty in communicating with them, except for the few older people who spoke only Ladino. But the vast majority of our clients hailed from Arab or other Eastern countries, and for the most part, they spoke only Arabic. The Arabic dialects which our clients spoke differed somewhat from group to group. I soon realized that I would have to learn some elements of the Arabic language if I was usefully to serve most of our Kehillah clients. Accordingly, I registered for some evening courses in Arabic. The language I was being taught, however, was not a form of the language readily understood by our clients. At first, I could not understand why; then I discovered that I was being guided into the mysteries of classical Arabic which, of course, was of little use in the marketplace. More and more, I began to rely on the Arabic I managed to pick up from my clients. Some of the Arabic phrases I learned, particularly from our young probationers, unfortunately turned out to be hardly fit for polite conversation! I cannot claim that I ever achieved any mastery of the Arabic language. Nor, indeed could I ever have been described as competent in Yiddish. But at least I picked up a sufficient smattering of the languages to enable me to communicate with nearly all of those who came to the Kehillah Welfare Bureau. Although some of our clients lived in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, many lived in small, ethnic enclaves in several quarters of the New City. While each of these quarters had its own individual name and was easily identifiable geographically, the streets and laneways within the quarters were almost always unnamed and the dwellings unnumbered. In the absence of precise addresses, it was essen-

tial to describe some nearby landmark in order to pinpoint the specific dwelling. For example, if there was a public bathhouse across the way, or a synagogue near the house, then these places had to be entered in the case record. Haim Mizrachi's address might well have read: "Old Beit Israel Quarter, Levy House, near the Bath House, back of the Kurdi Synagogue, not far from the small suk." Thus, the card index in the welfare bureau contained a fascinating collection of addresses,. sometimes poetic but often horrific. In order to carry out the required social investigation, the social worker would set off for the quarter armed with these descriptive details. Even then, it might be necessary to seek help within the quarter, often to find that the client was known by a different name, thus necessitating a special line of questioning to establish correct identification. "How to Identify a Dwelling" might well have been included as a compulsory subject in the syllabus of a Jerusalem Social Work course in the early thirties. The quarters of Jerusalem and varied peoples who lived in them provided a laboratory for any social researcher. The more I came into contact with our clients, the more I was astounded by the variety of their individual traditions and customs. It was not always-easyto gain the full confidence of those who had come to the Kehillah to seek aid and assistance, for so many of them had come to the Yishuv from countries where they had been looked upon as something less than.ful1-fledged citizens. They feared the authority of the bureaucrat, even when that bureaucrat represented no government, but only one of the institutions of the community to which they themselves now belonged. Many social work clients in those early days seemed to have the feeling that this new Yishuv was not only alien but at times even hostile to them. On the other hand, it was frequently difficult for the European social worker, whose culture was so far removed from theirs, to be sympathetic with their customs and traditions. In the early days of my social work training, I was often at a loss as to how to deal with some of the harsh disciplines they inflicted on each other, particularly on the children. I recall particularly one occasion when I was visiting the home of a Yemenite family, consisting of a father, mother and five children, all of whom dwelt in a small single room in the Yemenite Quarter. In one corner of the room stood a single, bedraggled bedstead. There, to my utter astonishment, tied up to one of the leg posts, lay a young boy on the floor, who, I was informed was to remain thus restrained for another four days. Apparently, the boy

was being punished for having disobeyed his father. When I suggested that there might be other less drastic methods of punishment, both parents were astonished. I remember another case of a young Moroccan girl who somehow had found her way to our office, in considerable distress. As she sobbed, she told us that her father had been angry with her because she had attended a club in another quarter where boys were present. As punishment, her father had shaved off all the hair on her head. It was for her a terrible humiliation. During this period of my apprenticeship in the field of social work, I learned more from my own mistakes than from either Wronsky's boring lectures or Bloch's well-meaning guidance. Undoubtedly, because we were so short-staffed, I was assigned responsibilities far beyond my competence and frequently beyond the limits of my undeveloped judgment. One such case was that of a young Polish girl whom I shall call Ruth Polanski. Ruth had come to Palestine from Poland, having been eligible for the much-treasured immigration labour certificate. Unfortunately, during the early months of her stay in the country, she became ill, suffering a serious mental breakdown. She became so violent that she had to be admitted to a private mental hospital in Jerusalem. At the time, public facilities for mentally ill patients were practically non-existent in Palestine. It was not unusual to see seriously disturbed persons on the streets of Jerusalem, abandoned to their own resources, sleeping often in laneways and begging for bits of food to sustain themselves. There were some heroic volunteers who supported the Ezrath Nashim Home for Insane and Incurables, a private mental hospital in the city. But the home received no government support and the Yishuv could not cope with the full extent of the public problem. Thus, the cost of maintaining Ruth fell on the minuscule budget of the Kehillah, a serious drain on funds which we sorely needed for other cases. The combination of Ruth's poor prognosis and our budgetary limitations, led the Kehillah Social Welfare Committee to approve the price of a voyage to Poland, to send Ruth home to her family. It was also decided, initially at least, to have a social worker accompany her on the voyage. Since I had never visited Eastern Europe, I was delighted to be chosen as her escort. However, when further budgetary considerations showed there were not sufficient funds to pay for a second ticket, it was decided that no escort would be sent. Instead, it was agreed that a small amount would be set aside to reimburse some passenger on board to keep an eye on Ruth during

the return voyage. I was assigned the task of accompanying Ruth to Haifa, of finding a suitable guardian from among the passengers and making the necessary financial arrangement. I was, of course, also made responsible for completing the official passport procedures at Haifa and seeing Ruth safely on board. On the morning of our departure, I was to pick up my charge at the mental hospital and take her by train to Haifa. Ruth had been heavily sedated and was relatively quiet during the early stages of our trip. At that time, there were sections in the passenger cars set aside for women only, an essential facility for Moslem women on religious grounds. During the train trip north, a journey of three or four hours, Ruth and I joined two veiled women in one of these compartments. For the most part Ruth was quiet, although occasionally she would shout out in Hebrew or in Polish, exclamations which puzzled our fellow passengers. However, I was able to assure them that she was casting no aspersions at them, indicating by gestures that she was somewhat mentally disturbed. They were not unaccustomed to witnessing such cases. We arrived in Haifa safely, and my patient still seemed to be relatively calm. I took Ruth from the station in Haifa to the port area, where I got into conversation with a group of passengers. At my request, they kept an eye on the would-be traveller while I went to make the usual arrangements in connection with her passport and ticket. This completed, I then went on board the ship in search of some passenger who might be prepared to serve as a guardian. It was while I was standing on an upper deck, talking to a young man to whom 1 had paid the modest allowance provided by the welfare bureau, that my attention was drawn to a rumpus down below in the port area. Apparently, Ruth had got out of control. I rushed back to Ruth's side, but failed to quiet her. Meanwhile, the ship's doctor and ship's captain had descended to the dockside, where we were endeavouring to calm the poor, distraught girl. They inquired as to whether this was the passenger who was scheduled to sail on their ship. If so, they asserted, there was no way they would allow her on board. I was faced with a serious dilemma. I had received no instructions as to an alternative plan of action in circumstances such as these. With the help of four strong burly men, we managed to get Ruth into a taxi and at the driver's suggestion, we took her to a private hospital on Mount Carmel. I had no money to pay for Ruth's care, nor was I aware that this was one of the most expensive private institutions in the country. I suppose that all I considered was that I was able to place Ruth in

someone else's care; that my burden of responsibility was lifted. With a great sense of relief, I left my charge in Haifa. Completely defeated and somewhat depressed, I returned alone to Jerusalem. When Zipporah Bloch heard of the placement, with all its implications for the welfare bureau budget, she literally blew her top. Why, she kept asking, had I done this and why had 1 not done that. In the last analysis, Zipporah Bloch and her committee must have eventually recognized the fatuous nature of their original plan to ship Ruth off unescorted. Somehow, they now agreed, they would have to find the necessary funds to pay for Ruth's hospitalization in Haifa. About four weeks later I was sitting at my desk when a young woman whom I did not recognize entered the office. She was dignified and quiet, and she was obviously not in a disturbed state. When I realized that it was Ruth I could hardly believe my eyes. She told me that at the hospital in Haifa she had undergone some strangesounding medical procedures about which, not surprisingly, I had never heard. It was shock therapy. This form of treatment had then just been introduced by two Italian psychiatrists, in search of some cure for schizophrenia. Whatever its long-term value, the immediate effects of the procedure, which had made it possible for a patient like Ruth to walk out of a mental institution so quickly and so apparently well, seemed to me and to my Kehillah colleagues to be nothing short of a miracle. I honestly believe that our great satisfaction at seeing our client apparently cured, had nothing to do with our release from the anguish we had felt at the seemingly endless obligation to pay Ruth's hospital bills. For a twenty-three-year-old social work neophyte, the whole case had been an uplifting experience. Each case each day challenged me with an entirely new and unforeseen set of circumstances. For example, nothing could have been more unforeseen than the case of a woman whom I shall call Mrs. Goldberg. During the early days of subsequent Arab riots, on a day when Zipporah Bloch happened to be out of town, a call came through to our Bureau from the public health nurse in Hadassah. She sought our assistance in transferring a patient from that hospital to another specialized institution. The patient, a Mrs. Goldberg from Rehovoth, was under the care of the Dermatology Department, where she had been diagnosed as suffering from a disease that required immediate care and isolation not available in any Yishuv institution. In the event that the transfer was achieved, it was the view of the medical staff that the woman's family in Rehovoth should not be informed of the nature of her ailment. The doctors also believed

the family should not be told that the woman had been transferred from Hadassah to a Christian missionary institution, the only one in the country equipped to accept such patients. All of this subterfuge was due to the fact that Mrs. Goldberg had been found to be suffering from leprosy. Leprosy was viewed then with the same fear that had been associated with it in biblical times. In fact, certain local church sects looked on the disease as divine punishment for sin. One of the medical missionaries in Jerusalem told me that he thought Christians ran missions for lepers because they felt that it was their duty to relieve from God's punishment those afflicted with the terrible disease. But in spite of this attitude there were no public facilities. There was at that time a leper colony in Jerusalem administered by a Moravian Mission. It was situated in a non-Jewish quarter of the city, an area in which many middle-class Arabs had their homes. The hospital itself was surrounded by a substantial stone wall, and set back in a well-kept garden well away from the entrance gate. I had got to know the hospital matron, Sister Marguerite, in connection with another case, some weeks before. She impressed me as a most compassionate soul, who had been living in that place for over thirty years. Thus I did not anticipate any difficulty in arranging the transfer of the Hadassah patient. I explained to Sister Marguerite that, unlike most of her other Jewish patients, Mrs. Goldberg was an orthodox Ashkenazic Jew. I tried to convey to her the terrible shock which I anticipated would be suffered by her family if they were to learn that their wife and mother was afflicted with leprosy. Just as shocking to them would be the knowledge that she was not only in a non-kosher institution, but in a missionary establishment. The matron hardly needed my caution, for she was well aware of the universal horror with which leprosy was viewed. Sister Marguerite and I agreed to allow the family to believe that the patient was still in the Hadassah hospital; all mail and communications with her family would be transferred from Hadassah to the leper colony by our Bureau. Morally, we felt that we were wholly justified, although I now have some rather serious doubts. As far as the patient herself was concerned, I felt confident that she would receive compassionate care. I certainly did not anticipate the news conveyed to me by an agitated Sister Marguerite a few days later that Mrs. Goldberg had died of what appeared to have been a heart attack. Sister Marguerite requested that I immediately make the necessary funeral arrangements.

I telephoned to the office of the Jewish Burial Society in Jerusalem and told them the whole story, requesting that they take over the case, as they would have done in normal circumstances. But the circumstances were far from normal. The Arab riots to which I refer shortly were already affecting the free movement of Jerusalemites. The leper colony was situated in an Arab quarter, and the members of the Burial Society feared for their lives if they were spotted in that part of the city. If I could arrange to have the body moved to one of the hospitals in the Jewish section of the city, they would be glad to take over from there. I was somewhat taken aback at this turn of events but, being young and inexperienced, I still did not appreciate the significance of the apprehension expressed by the Burial Society. I pondered several alternative ways of getting Mrs. Goldberg's body from the Leper Home to the Bikur Holim Hospital, situated in the heart of the Jewish commercial part of the city. First I even tried to hire a truck, which certainly might have been lacking in dignity. T o my chagrin, however, I discovered that commercial truckers were no more prepared to take on the job from that section of Jerusalem than the Burial Society had been. Time was rapidly passing and Sister Marguerite would telephone to me from time to time, to find out what was holding up the burial arrangements. I was rather frantic when I decided to call on some of my friends in the Jewish Kurdistan community who earned their living as porters. The Kurdi porters in Jerusalem used to sit on the curb at the corner of Jaffa Road and Hasolel Street, from which place they could be hired to carry out all kinds of assignments, particularly those requiring heavy lifting, or the transporting of loads. They seemed to me to be capable of almost any heavy job, however difficult. One of these porters, Eliahu by name, used to run messages for the Bureau and it was to him that I turned in my dilemma. Eliahu suggested that he and some of his friends would be prepared to go to the leper colony in a horse-drawn wagon, provided that I went along with them. I took along another social worker, Mrs. Olendorf, a German Jewish woman of great compassion who had recently settled in Jerusalem. The wagon which Eliahu produced was a wooden contraption covered in white dust which had recently been used to transport a load of cement. Olendorf, several porters and I climbed aboard and slowly made our way out to the leper colony. We parked the wagon outside of the gate of the Leper Home, while Olendorf and I walked up the long path to the hospital. Follow-

ing on our heels uninvited were our Kurdi porters. Sister Marguerite welcomed us, announcing proudly that she had laid out the body and invited us to view her handiwork. Personally, I would have preferred to pass up such an opportunity, but in the light of her kindness throughout this sad affair, I felt obligated to accept her invitation. We were then escorted into a spotless room where, stretched out on a table with face exposed, lay the body of Mrs. Goldberg. Looking over our shoulders and gazing at the corpse was Eliahu along with his porter colleagues. He exclaimed at the sight of the exposed face, which revealed what I had failed to explain, that the deceased was a woman. Little did I know that religious law, at least as understood by my Kurdistan friends, prohibited men from touching the body of a deceased woman until it has been duly cleansed by women according to ritual. Eliahu turned on his heels and marched out, along with all of his porters, leaving Olendorf and me alone with Sister Marguerite and the deceased. I was considerably embarrassed at this surprising turn of events. Obviously, something had to be done to terminate the affair insofar as the Leper Hospital was concerned. I asked Sister Marguerite to give us some sheets in which we wrapped the body. I grasped the armpits while Orlendorf held the feet, and the two of us carried that heavy corpse all the way down the garden path, finally depositing it on the wagon. The porters were now quite prepared to carry out their portion of the bargain, as long as they never had to lay a finger on that uncleansed female body. Thus it was, that at the height of the disturbances, a decrepit old wagon carrying a female corpse and two social workers covered by now with cement powder, accompanied on foot by several Kurdi porters, including Eliahu, who held the reins of two sad-looking horses, wound its way through the streets of Jerusalem. At the Bikur Holim Hospital in the middle of Jerusalem, my role in the affair ended. Mrs. Goldberg's family was informed of her death and a dignified, traditional funeral was held. While this had not been my first experience with the leper colony, it was not to be my last contact with it, in spite of its precarious location. For while it was a missionary institution, there was as already mentioned, no comparable alternative institution in Palestine to which Jewish patients could be referred. Thus severalJewish patients, originally from either Tiberias or Jerusalem, lived out their miserable lives in that colony. The number of Jewish patients suffering from leprosy was relatively small, but their isolation from their own

community was complete. We tried, to the best of our ability, to keep in touch with them. Each year at Passover, for example, the Kehillah used to supply traditional Passover food to the Jewish patients at the leper colony. Following the outbreak of the Arab riots, however, delivery of the Passover food became something of a problem. Jewish delivery services were no more ready to enter that sector of the city than the Jewish Burial Society. Undoubtedly because of my experience in that affair, I was asked if I would help with the delivery of the Passover food that year. Arrangements had been made with the Magen David Adom Society to put one of their ambulances at our disposal. The food was set out carefully on the floor of the empty ambulance, with a spot left for me. My instructions were quite simple: I was to hand over the food consignment to Sister Marguerite, along with the usual admonitions supplied by the offices of the Rabbinic Court. Each of the food commodities had been carefully vetted by the religious authorities as being strictly kosher for Passover. Unfortunately, I had not noticed that among other commodities, there was a considerable supply of loosely packed eggs. These had been placed strategically near my corner. We set out on our trip beyond the Jewish sector of the city, with the determination that nothing would stop us on our way. We were resolved to get through by hook or by crook, for we did not wish to disappoint the unfortunate Jewish inmates of the Leper Hospital. Not unnaturally, we travelled fast even after we hit a rough stretch of road. Suddenly, eggs began to break all around me. Neither the driver nor his escort paid any attention whatsoever to my howls. By the time we reached our destination, I looked like a veritable human omelette. Happily, Sister Marguerite, while highly amused at my discomfort, offered me both sympathy and first aid. But what really concerned me was that for the whole week of Passover, the Jewish patients at the leper colony would have to do without a single egg. To a cholestrol-conscious generation, that may be seen to have been something of a blessing, but for religiousJews, Passover without eggs was Passover with a problem. My apprenticeship as a student at the School of Social Work terminated a little prematurely. It was to have continued for another few months, but a crisis had arisen at a small child service bureau being operated at that time by the WIZO in Jerusalem. For some years, the WIZO in Palestine had operated a number of child care centres. One of these situated in Jerusalem was administered by a

single professional worker, a graduate nurse named Rahel Nesher, a member of the well-known Katznelson family. She had requested maternity leave and the WIZO was looking for someone to hold the fort during her temporary absence. Bloch had recommended me for the job. The powers-that-be decided that I was sufficiently equipped by this time to qualify as a professional social worker, provided I would pass some special examinations. I cannot recall much about my examinations, but I must have passed for, in due course, I was presented with the Yishuv's first Social Work Diploma, issued by the Va'ad Leumi. Quite frankly, I was surprised that as a new graduate, I was given sole responsibility for the operation of the WIZO child care office, modest though it was. But what impressed me even more was the offer of my first full salary, LP 10 a month, a veritable fortune. My sojourn at the child care office, however, was short-lived. The WIZO decided to concentrate their efforts on a fairly large infants home, which they operated in Jerusalem. My new job, or what was left of it, was transferred to the Kehillah, to Bloch's office where I now became a full-time employee of the Kehillah. No longer was I considered to be a mere student in that office, but rather a professional social worker, an assistant to Bloch. In this connection, I was to be entrusted with wider responsibilities, including a formal assignment as probation officer attached to the Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem. The probation of juvenile offenders, administered by the Government of Palestine, was a relatively recent program. From its inception, Miss Szold had had some concerns insofar as it related to the Yishuv youth. She had therefore worked out a co-operative arrangement on behalf of the Va'ad Leumi with the government, with regard to the supervision of Jewish young offenders placed on probation. It had been agreed that the police, on apprehending a Jewish juvenile, would first refer the case to the appropriate welfare bureau. Here, the social worker would take over the social investigation of the case, appear before the Magistrate's Court as an honorary probation officer, and supervise the juvenile during any probation period determined by the court. Close co-operation would be maintained throughout with the government probation officer. The government probation officer at that time was K. L. Reynolds. He was not professionally trained for his new appointment, but had had considerable experience as a former headmaster of a boy's school in Jerusalem. He was a well-meaning, elderly gentleman who seemed more than glad to be able to rely on the profes-

sional social workers for the work entailed in handling Jewish juvenile cases. As Zipporah Bloch was the worker in charge of the Jerusalem office, she was formally designated honorary probation officer attached to the Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem. It was a title which in due course I was to inherit. For almost as soon as I became Bloch's assistant, I had been involved more and more in probation work where initially, I believe, my greatest value lay in my knowledge of the English language. The Jerusalem magistrate who heard juvenile cases was British and, in consequence, well-written reports in English were best calculated to spark his sympathetic understanding. Bloch herself spoke some English, though not fluently. For this reason she always took me along with her to court, armed as we were with all of our reports and recommendations prepared in reasonably good English. Little by little, I established a good relationship with the chief magistrate as well as with many of the Jerusalem police. While we did not always see eye to eye, we did develop a considerable respect for each other, a respect which proved to be of assistance in our joint efforts to rehabilitate the so-called young offenders. We soon evolved a routine program in our work. In addition to carrying out a thorough social investigation of family background and social circumstances, we also arranged to have a psychological examination of the young accused. This procedure was practically unheard of in those parts of the world at that time. Dr. Brachyahu, a qualified professional psychologist, held a regular clinic in the Straus Health Centre. When he had examined one of our clients, he would prepare a report of his findings and of his recommendations. This, coupled with the report we made concerning the social conditions of