Segula - The Jewish Journey Through History, 10 Yad Harutzim, Jerusalem (2025)

09/07/2025

Hot off the press – Segula’s new summer issue is here!

Step into the vibrant world of Jewish history with our latest issue:
• The drama of Yiddish theater in New York
• Julius Rosenwald's impact on black education in America
• Ideological clashes in the early Yiddish press
• Hadassah Kaplan’s Zionist journey in pre-state Israel

Subscribe today for just 23 NIS a month (or $8 internationally) including delivery PLUS enjoy free access to Segula's new website and digital archive!

A perfect way to gift yourself a year of inspiring, beautifully illustrated Jewish history.

Order here: https://segula.vp4.me/Summer-2025

07/07/2025

Today, 104 years ago, on the 11th of Tammuz in 1921, Hannah Szenes was born in Budapest.

Growing up as Anika-Hannah amid Hungary’s rising antisemitism, she decided when at the age of 18 that it was time to leave. It was 1939 and the world was on the brink of World War II. But she managed to secure an immigration certificate, said goodbye to her widowed mother, and set off for the girls’ agricultural school run by Hannah Meisel in Nahalal.

During their separation Szenes sent her mother frequent, detailed letters, offering a vivid portrait of a remarkable young woman – brave, spirited, clear of purpose, embracing her calling with quiet pride.

Here is one of those letters – in honor of the parachutist who never returned, and the youthful fierceness and courage she embodied right up until her tragic death:

Dearest Mother,
Perhaps so far you’ve judged my letters to be superficial, Mother dear. After all, I’m almost always writing about what I do, how I live, where I’ve been. But I am sure you’re waiting for an answer to an unasked question. After all, you made a sacrifice when you let me leave home, and I made a sacrifice when I parted from you. And now I’m sure you would like to know whether it was all worth it. Perhaps I don’t have the right to answer this question yet. It really takes a good deal more time to make a decision, but I’ll attempt to answer sincerely according to how I feel at this moment.

My answer, dearest Mother, is unequivocally, Yes. I won’t deny that there are times when I would give a great deal to see you all for a bit, or at least to have the knowledge that you’re all somewhat closer. But at such times I that a year or two years away from you, spent in fulfilling the very reasons for which I came, is not too long a period, and try to imagine how wonderful it will be when we can all be together again.

It was worth coming for the sensation of feeling that I am the equal of all men in my own country (at the moment this last is merely a feeling, not a fact), for that peaceful feeling with which one can walk down the street without wondering whether the person coming in the opposite direction is a Jew or not, and for the knowledge that the smallest matters are not decided by the criterion of whether one is a Jew or not.

However, this factor – that there is no anti-Semitism – may not even be enough of an answer. The most positive answer is that a healthy, new Jewish life is developing here, which one can best express by stating that in the Diaspora Jews were sad if they had no particular reason to be good humoured, and here, on the other hand, people are good humored if they have no particular reason to be sad – as people are in most lands.
(Nahalal, December 1939)

From: Hannah Szenes: Her Life and Diary, Vallentine, Mitchell – London, 1971.

Photo: Szenes in the cowshed at Nahalal agricultural school, 1940. Courtesy of the Szenes family, Hannah Szenes House Archives, Sdot Yam, and PikWiki.

Join the Segula Snippets quiet WhatsApp group to revisit moments that have shaped Jewish history: https://bit.ly/Segula-Snippets

03/07/2025

Twenty-one years ago today, on 7 Tammuz 5764, Naomi Shemer passed away.

During Israel’s War of Independence, a heated meeting took place at Kibbutz Kinneret. On the agenda: a young girl named Naomi Sapir, asking permission to leave the kibbutz for a few years to study music.

The kibbutz secretary was firmly opposed. He tried to convince the members that they should not let this young woman be “corrupted” by the big city, nor take the risk that she might, heaven forbid, become bourgeois.

Two stormy meetings ended without a decision. At the third meeting, just as the secretary felt victory within reach, Sara Meirov – a kibbutz member and bereaved mother – stood up to support Naomi and said:

“Friends, let’s each of us admit, just to ourselves, with a hand on our heart, the truth we all know deep inside: this is our Naomi’s true calling. Let’s not be responsible for stealing away a piece of the developing Land of Israel. By behaving this way, you’ll be killing this child and her gift.”

Silence fell around the room. And as for the vote on Naomi Sapir’s request – well, everyone knows how that turned out.

Naomi set off to study at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, where she was taught by the best private teachers in the country.

When she came back to Kibbutz Kinneret having completed her studies, she started working with preschool kids and running music groups. Naomi soon realized there was an acute shortage of children’s songs in simple, flowing, accessible Hebrew. That’s how she came to compose seven beloved children’s songs, including The Little Walk, The Post Comes Today, and Our Little Brother.

Naomi’s first album of children’s songs was recorded by famous singer Yaffa Yarkoni under the title: Songs from Kinneret, helping to launch the young Naomi Shemer’s public career.

Her first real breakthrough came with the song From the Songs of a Wandering Singer, performed by pop-group Batzal Yarok (Spring Onion) in its debut program in 1957.

In the years that followed, Naomi Shemer wrote songs for army bands and regular pop groups, for soloists and for theater and film, until her 1967 pre-war Hebrew Song Festival hit, Jerusalem of Gold made her the best-known songwriter in Israel.

As time went on, Shemer preferred to call herself a “mizmora’it” (a psalmist), rather than a songwriter or poet. The term expressed the unique character of her work, which wove together words and melody, drawing deeply on Jewish tradition, the words of the biblical prophets and the poetry of Psalms.

Shemer’s first songbook, All My Songs, also published in 1967, included 42 of her best-loved and most successful numbers, including Tomorrow, The House of My Dreams, Father’s Song, The Eucalyptus Grove, The Love of Construction Workers, A Night on Akhziv Beach, The City in Gray, and many more.

In her introduction Naomi wrote:
“My dears, here are all the songs, all in one go. Well, not quite all of them. Some were published long ago, and others I don’t feel deserve publication. But I believe you’ll find all the songs we loved most in this book.
Yours, Naomi Shemer.”

Photo: Naomi Shemer performing, 1967, alongside the cover of her book “Kol HaShirim” – All My Songs.
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📚📚📚 Don’t miss our renewed historic Book Week offer >> Order your magazines here: https://segula.vp4.me/BookWeek2025

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02/07/2025

“I will tell the praises of a certain woman, dear to us all...
For she is a sublime poet and swift writer – whose delightful compositions have added beauty and splendor to our sacred tongue – from the illustrious Luzzatto family.”
(Isaac Castiglioni, in the introduction to Rachel’s Harp)

History has bestowed the rare title of “the first Hebrew poetess” upon Rachel Morpurgo.

She was born in Trieste, Italy, on the eighth day of Passover, 1790, into one of Italy’s most distinguished Jewish families – the Luzzattos.

On her father’s side, she was the granddaughter of the physician-poet Isaac Luzzatto; on her mother’s side, she was the cousin of the biblical commentator and scholar Samuel David Luzzatto – anacronym Shadal.

In a letter she sent to Shadal, Rachel described her childhood, noting that even at a very young age, she would sit with her brothers during their Torah study hours, deeply immersed in the Five Books of Moses with Rashi’s commentary.

At fourteen, she began studying the Babylonian Talmud with a private tutor.

In enlightened Trieste, it was common for Jewish families to send their daughters to school, but Rachel refused to learn “worldly knowledge.” All she desired was to remain at home, studying Torah alongside her brothers.

At eighteen, she began composing Hebrew poetry, yet only decades later, in her sixties, did she begin publishing her poems in the Viennese Haskalah journal Kokhvei Yitzhak.

Upon publication, Morpurgo’s poetry received glowing praise from readers. At that time, Hebrew poetry readers were exclusively men, and they were captivated by the “phenomenon” of a learned woman writing Hebrew verse.

Morpurgo responded to their enthusiastic praise with a bitter poem of protest:
Woe to me,
my soul cries,
for bitter is my lot,
my spirit beats its wings, and I rebel.
I heard a voice saying:
“Your poems will endure,
Who like you, Rachel,
can write poetry...”
I turn north, south, east, and west,
“A woman’s mind is fickle,” they say, and so it is cast aside.
After so many years, why now –
should every town and province
remember a dead dog?
Let every resident and traveler bear witness:
“A woman has no wisdom –
beyond the spindle.”

Rachel Morpurgo published several dozen poems over her lifetime but never gathered them into a book of her own.

It was only after her passing, on the centenary of her birth, that Rabbi Isaac Hayyim Castiglioni collected all of Rachel Morpurgo’s poems and published them under the title “Ugav Rachel” – Rachel’s Harp – the first book of Hebrew poetry ever written by a woman.

Photo: Portrait of Rachel Luzzatto Morpurgo, from the book “Ugav Rachel”, alongside the cover of the book.
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*Don’t miss our renewed historic Book Week offer >> Order your magazines here* https://segula.vp4.me/BookWeek2025

Join the Segula Snippets quiet WhatsApp group to revisit moments that have shaped Jewish history: https://bit.ly/Segula-Snippets

01/07/2025

“Everything I write now, all I have written, and all I will yet write, comes from a heart heavy with sorrow. Since the passing of my dear husband, I will not linger here on this pain, for I am ready to record my memories in seven small books, if God grants me life, and so I believe it is best to begin with the day I was born.”

Gluckel of Hameln was born in 1646 in Hamburg, Germany.

She was a sharp businesswoman, a devoted Jewish mother, an enterprising and learned woman – but above all, Gluckel is remembered for leaving behind one of the most important literary and historical documents written by a Jewish woman before the modern era.

📕 She composed a memoir arranged in seven parts, vividly describing her life, her family and her community.

📙 She began writing these memoirs in Yiddish when she was widowed and already advanced in years.

📗 Before she turned twelve, Gluckel was betrothed to Hayyim of Hameln, and at fourteen, she married him. Soon after, the young couple returned to Gluckel’s parents’ home in Hamburg, where she wrote:

“When I came to Hamburg, God granted me a pregnancy, and at that same time, my dear mother also conceived. The Merciful One blessed me, and in due time I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I was still very young, and although the pain of childbirth was hard for me, I rejoiced in having a beautiful, healthy daughter. According to my mother’s calculations, she too was meant to give birth around that time, but she was overjoyed that I delivered first, allowing her to care for me. We lay together in one room, and we had no rest from the endless visitors who came to witness the wonder of mother and daughter sharing a lying-in room together.”

Over her lifetime, Gluckel gave birth to fourteen children, two of whom died young.

Her memoirs are a captivating blend of personal biography, ethical reflections, and folk tales. The book is filled with humor and wry observations, yet just beneath the surface there’s also deep heartbreak. Its pages give historical accounts of events from her time, including the Khmelnytsky massacres, the wars between Sweden and Denmark, outbreaks of plague, and insights regarding significant figures like the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi and the infamous Khmelnytsky himself.

When Gluckel’s memoirs were published in various translations, they resonated deeply with readers who perceived them as a rare window into the spiritual and everyday world of a 17th-century Jewish woman.
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The quotes are from the Hebrew translation by A.Z.R. (Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitz).

Photo: A manuscript page of the memoir from the Goethe University Library in Frankfurt, alongside the cover of the diary in English translation.

📚 Don’t miss our renewed historic Book Week offer >> Order your magazines here: https://segula.vp4.me/BookWeek2025

30/06/2025

Segula Magazine is excited to offer a fascinating 3-part lecture series!

Josephus: Good or Bad for the Jews

Join via Zoom (recordings available) or in person in Efrat.
The lectures will take place on Tuesdays, starting July 15, at 10:45am.

Lecturer: Sara Jo Ben Zvi, editor of Segula Magazine
Cost: 100 NIS for the full series

Register here: https://segula.vp4.me/Summer-Lectures

29/06/2025

Book Week is back and so is our special offer!

Due to the recent war with Iran, Israeli Book Week was canceled, but it's on again this week! And Segula Magazine is exited to reinstate the historic Book Week special.

Dive into the rich tapestry of Jewish history with Segula – the only popular Jewish history magazine in print.

Purchase back issues of Segula Magazine at unprecedented prices!

Use the link in the comments below.

25/06/2025

“Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces –
Now, with the ceasefire in effect, the war of the sons of light against those who sought to cast us into darkness has come to an end.”
– From IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s daily order, delivered at the Western Wall

Sunday, June 10, 1967 – a date forever etched in Israel’s history.

On this day, the Six-Day War officially came to an end. IDF forces now stood on the Golan Heights, along the Jordan River, and all the way down to the Suez Canal – controlling territory from Mount Hermon in the north to the Straits of Tiran at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

Earlier that day, the IDF completed the capture of Tel Tamra and Quneitra.
At 6:30 PM, the ceasefire came into effect.

Back on June 6, the UN Security Council had launched intense diplomatic efforts to bring the fighting to a halt. In an emergency session of the United Nations, speaker after speaker echoed the urgent need for a ceasefire.

“We welcome, we support, we approve the resolution calling for immediate steps toward a ceasefire,” declared Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, that very day.

Two days later, on June 8, King Hussein of Jordan announced his agreement to the ceasefire. Hostilities with Jordan ended the next night at 10:00 PM.

That same day, however, Egypt vowed to fight “to the last drop of blood.” Only late that evening did President Gamal Abdel Nasser finally send an urgent message accepting the ceasefire.

Syria followed the next day, in principle – but its forces continued to shell Israeli communities below the Golan Heights, and Damascus Radio urged Palestinians to launch guerrilla warfare against Israel.

A full ceasefire was finally achieved on Day Six of the war: June 10.

Though the ceasefire marked a clear Israeli victory, it wasn’t the end of conflict. Within just three weeks, Egypt violated the agreement by firing on Israeli forces and crossing the canal – igniting what would become the next long, grueling chapter: the War of Attrition.

For an in-depth look at Israel’s wartime strategies and its generals’ decisions as the action evolved, don’t miss military historian Dr. Yagil Henkin’s fascinating article in Segula >>
https://www.calameo.com/read/0064782396375b0f13a5d

Pictured: Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s daily order, set against a photo from June 13, 1967, showing Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Minister Menachem Begin and Southern Command chief Yeshayahu Gavish visiting Sinai after the victory.
Photo: Israel National Photo Collection
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19/06/2025

This week’s headlines were stark: a missile fired from Iran struck the heart of the Weizmann Institute’s research labs in Rehovot, causing unprecedented damage. Researchers mourned the loss of decades of work – rare samples, delicate instruments, and untold hours of discovery. And yet, amid the wreckage, a quiet triumph: thousands of critical specimens were salvaged. The institute’s leadership are determined to get research activities back on track in the very near future.

The founding of the Weizmann Institute is the story of dreamers and doers – visionaries who believed that science could power the Zionist dream to new heights.

It’s a tale of ambition, resilience, and unshakable faith in the promise of science and the agricultural potential of the land of Israel. But above all, it’s the story of one man’s bold vision: Dr. Chaim Weizmann – world-renowned chemist, President of the Zionist Organization, and later, the first President of the State of Israel.

“I’m striving to establish a completely independent institute in Rehovot – one that can make a fresh start and remain separate from the Jerusalem university’s legacy… I hope this institute will soon fully replace the university’s chemistry department.”
— Chaim Weizmann

In the spring of 1934, the Institute opened its doors as the “Daniel Sieff Research Institute,” named for the British Sieff family, with a grand inaugural ceremony. Carved into the gates were the words:
“Work for this land, work for science, work for humanity.”

The institute started out with just ten scientists, most of them Jewish refugees expelled from N**i Germany. But before long the Sieff Institute had earned international acclaim, and the name Rehovot gained honorable mention in chemistry labs around the world.

In the summer of 1946, the cornerstone was laid for a vastly expanded and well-funded campus, for which the Sieff Institute had been the founding component. The new building was completed by 1948, but the War of Independence delayed its dedication until late 1949 – on Chaim Weizmann’s 75th birthday, when it was renamed in his honor.

Construction had continued even as war raged, with fortifications, rooftop guard posts, and camouflage netting protecting the security-sensitive sites.

From those ten original scientists, the Weizmann Institute has grown into a global leader in research, shaping Israel’s scientific landscape and earning its place among the world’s top 100 academic institutions.

📸 Photos:
The Weizmann Institute’s Physics Building, and three of its founding scientists (left to right): Prof. Ephraim Katzir, Prof. Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Esther Hellinger
From the Weizmann Archive, Rehovot.
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11/06/2025

In honor of Book Week in Israel, Segula Magazine presents a historic offer!

Dive into the rich tapestry of Jewish history with Segula – the only popular Jewish history magazine in print.

Purchase back issues of Segula Magazine at unprecedented prices!

Segula Magazine brings the rare stories of our past to life, introducing you to the people and events that shaped Jewish history. Each issue is meticulously researched, superbly written, and lavishly illustrated with photos, maps, timelines and more.

Order your magazines here: https://segula.vp4.me/BookWeek2025
Check out a past issue here: bit.ly/Segula_sample

09/06/2025

“Among all the great figures of the people of Israel after Einstein, Buber is the most renowned across the nations. Many times, I heard from `great gentiles’ who spoke of Buber with boundless admiration. Some gleaned something of the light of Israel from him, while others had to scrape away the evil they’d absorbed with their mother’s milk. Buber can appropriately be called `an envoy to the nations.’”
(S. Y. Agnon on Martin Buber)

Sixty years ago, on 13 Sivan, 1965, the thinker, scholar and educator Martin Buber passed away.

Martin Buber was born in Vienna in 1878, the grandson of Solomon Buber, rabbi of Lviv. After his parents’ divorce, Buber was raised in his grandfather’s home in Galicia and educated under his watchful eye.

As a young man, Buber immersed himself in the works of diverse thinkers and philosophers. He mastered fourteen languages(!) and studied philosophy, art, German and linguistics at the University of Vienna. During this period, he drifted away from a religious lifestyle and sought to forge his own path as a European intellectual.

Buber’s life took a dramatic turn at age twenty when he first met Theodor Herzl. The encounter inspired the younger man to join the Zionist movement, and he soon began working alongside Herzl as an editor. Yet Buber found himself disagreeing in principle with Herzl’s bourgeois, European vision of Zionism; instead he joined Ahad Ha’am’s more practically based opposition faction, the movement’s dissenting voice.

Buber was drawn to Hasidism as the living expression of dialogue between humankind and the divine. Its spiritual fire resonated with his anarchic spirit, which shunned rigid rituals and the dry letter of the law in favor of passion and authentic emotion.

He devoted much of his life to collecting, researching, and recording Hasidic tales.

“In my childhood, I read an ancient Jewish legend whose meaning eluded me. It spoke of a beggar, covered in sores, sitting by the gates of Rome and waiting. This man, it said, was the Messiah. I went to an old man and asked him: `What is he waiting for?’ And the old man told me something I couldn’t understand then, though its truth slowly dawned on me over the years. He said: `He’s waiting for you!’”

Photo: Buber in 1963, by Joop van Bilsen, against the background of his study in Jerusalem, taken by Hanania Hermann, Israel National Photo Collection.

Read more about this profound philosopher who gave Zionism and Judaism his own unique interpretation and strove boldly to build bridges with the Arab community in the land of Israel in Dr. Yemima Hovav’s article: https://www.calameo.com/read/006478239872308386d35
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05/06/2025

Hidden behind wrought iron gates set into a low wall of Jerusalem stone at the top of Jerusalem’s quiet Shmuel HaNagid Street stands a strikingly beautiful building.

“We are now standing on the brink of a momentous event: the opening of a national museum in the Land of Israel – something we have achieved here for the very first time in our history. In exile, though many tried in many places and paid dearly for it, it never came to be.”
— Boris Schatz

One hundred years ago this week, on 11 Sivan, June 2, 1925, the National Bezalel Museum was inaugurated.

The museum was open daily to the public and boasted seven galleries displaying works of art, most by Jewish artists:
– A hall with portraits of “Great Men of Israel”
– The Nordau Hall, named for writer Max Nordau
– The Hirszenberg Hall, featuring that well-known Polish Jewish artist’s famous painting “The Eternal Jew”
– And the “Waterskin of Tears” Hall, with Abel Pann’s harrowing paintings of Russian pogroms alongside relics salvaged from the wreckage in Jewish townships across Russia.

Originally the museum also housed exhibits on the history of plant and animal life in the land of Israel, including an impressive collection of stuffed wildlife. These were transferred to the Hebrew University which had opened its doors in April 1925.

Sculptor and painter Boris (or Shlomo-Zalman Dov Baruch) Schatz – founder of the Bezalel School and the museum itself – delivered an impassioned opening address. He spoke of the tremendous effort it took to bring this vision to life:

“For a man to be a true collector,” he said, “he must be blessed by the Almighty with three things: the treasures of Korah, the lifespan of Methuselah, and the patience of Boaz… God denied me the first, I doubt I’ll have the second, but the third He gave me in abundance. And that’s what allowed me to gather fourteen halls filled with art and artifacts, numbering in the thousands…”

When the Israel Museum opened in 1965, it absorbed the Bezalel Museum’s collection as the first seed of what would soon become the museum’s Arts Wing.

In the photo: Portrait of Boris Schatz with the Bezalel Museum and its emblem in the background.
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Segula - The Jewish Journey Through History

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