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

06/11/2025

“This is a Jew of stature. He has wise eyes, and he is modest.”
— David Ben-Gurion

Seventy-two years ago today, 15 Marheshvan in 1953, Rabbi Avrohom Yeshayahu Karelitz – known as the Hazon Ish – passed away. One of the foremost halakhic authorities of his time, he was a formative figure in the development of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector.

In late 1952, David Ben-Gurion’s government was on the brink of a coalition crisis.
The Haredi Poalei Agudat Yisrael party, then part of the ruling coalition, was threatening to bring down the government over the issue of drafting young women into the IDF or national service. Party representatives explained to Ben-Gurion that they’d only defer to the opinion of the ultimate authority on the matter, the Hazon Ish. Ben-Gurion therefore asked to meet with the Lithuanian rabbinic leader at his modest home in Bnei Brak.

Accompanied by his aide Yitzhak Navon, Ben-Gurion arrived at the rabbi’s sparse apartment.
“I have come,” he began, “to ask how we can live together – religious and nonreligious – without exploding from within.”

The conversation, which lasted fifty minutes, was marked by deep disagreements. At one point, the Hazon Ish offered his now-famous parable, often misremembered as “the parable of the empty cart,” though its Talmudic source (Sanhedrin 32b) actually mentions camels:
“We religious Jews are like a camel burdened with a heavy load – the yoke of many commandments. You must make way for us.”

After the meeting, Navon recalled:
“Ben-Gurion was deeply moved. He said to me, ‘We must find a way to live together. Otherwise, the danger within will be greater than any external threat.’”

A few weeks later, the Hazon Ish sent Ben-Gurion a letter, urging him to forgo the plan to draft women for national service:

“Honorable Prime Minister,
I am inclined to believe that the Prime Minister, a man distinguished by his respect for freedom of conscience, feels unease at the thought of compulsory national service for girls, lest it harm the conscience of many—or even of one.
Allow me, therefore, to express my deep sorrow over this decree and to appeal to the Prime Minister to relinquish it. Such a step would reflect the refined sensitivity of the Prime Minister, in recognizing the anguish and conscience of the religious public…”

Ben-Gurion replied in kind:
“To the esteemed Gaon, the Hazon Ish, Zikhron Meir, Bnei Brak.
I was pleased to receive your letter, and I am truly sorry that I cannot fulfill your request. The issue of drafting women involves a double matter of conscience: the ultra-Orthodox sector feels that conscription violates their conscience, while a large part of the nation feels that the absence of conscription violates theirs.
I know that among scholars of halakha, opinion [on this matter] is divided, and I would not presume to rule in such matters, knowing you are the greatest rabbinic authority of our generation. But I am also aware of the security needs of the people of Israel, and the saving of national life overrides all else in my eyes.
I am deeply sorry that you define the drafting of girls for national service as ‘an evil decree.’ A law of the People of Israel in its own land is no external ‘evil decree’…”

Photo: Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (the Hazon Ish). Wikimedia Commons.
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03/11/2025

One hundred and forty-five years ago today, on 12 Heshvan 5641 (October 17 1880), Ze’ev Jabotinsky, one of the greatest Zionist leaders of all time, was born in Odessa.

A writer and thinker, founder of the Jewish Legion, the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth movement, and leader of the Irgun underground militia, Jabotinsky’s restless, far-ranging life could fill volumes. His prolific writing continues to engage scholars to this day. Among the most fascinating of his works is a stack of yellowed pages in his own hand, later published by his son Eri under the title Story of My Life.

We mark Jabotinsky’s birthday with a few of his most vivid recollections:

Once I asked my mother, “Are we Hasidim?” She answered with some vague annoyance: “What do you think we are – Misnagdim?” Ever since, I’ve thought of myself as a Hasid by birth. I learned something else from her short answers. I was seven, maybe younger, when I asked: “Will we Jews ever have a kingdom of our own?” She replied, “Of course we will, you foolish boy!” From that day to this, I’ve never needed to ask again.
👨🏻‍🏫
All that I learned as a child – I did not learn at school.
🖋
An uncle in Odessa once gave me excellent advice when I came to say goodbye: “So, I hear you mean to be a writer. Remember this: if you succeed, everyone will say they knew you were brilliant from the start; if you fail, they’ll say they always knew you were a fool.”
👦🏻
My adventures at the Zionist Congress could make a lively comedy. To begin with, I wasn’t even old enough to attend – short of the legal age by a year and a half. I can’t recall who my good perjurers were, but they swore I was twenty-four. I still had a boy’s face, and the clerk refused to give me a delegate’s card until I produced my “witnesses.”
✡
Among Jews our work has succeeded. And if there is such a thing as transmigration of souls – and I am granted a choice of people and race before I am born again – I’ll say: “All right then, Israel – but Sephardi.”
🎤
I delivered the same lecture in fifty towns and villages; “The Language of Hebrew Culture.” I learned it by heart, word for word. Though I’ve never thought much of myself as an orator, I’ll be proud of this one speech to my dying day. Zionists everywhere heard me and applauded, but afterwards they’d come up to me, like adults humoring a naughty child and say: ‘Impossible.’
👶🏼
There was once a prophet in Israel who named his son Lo-Ami – “Not-My-People.” I don’t wish to exaggerate, but had a second son been born to me in those days, I would have named him Ivri-ani – “I-am-a-Hebrew.”

📷Portrait of Ze’ev Jabotinsky by Elias Grossman. Courtesy of the Jabotinsky Institute in Israel.

📖 Read more about Jabotinsky’s vision and his foundational role in Israel’s existence – in Dr. Yemima Hovav’s article in Segula >>
https://www.calameo.com/read/00466378209830eb55ab9
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29/10/2025

One hundred and forty-eight years ago today, on 7 Heshvan 5639, November 3, 1878, four pioneers set out from Jaffa toward the swamplands of Mulabbis to establish the first Zionist agricultural settlement: Petah Tikva. 🏘🏠

To be exact, the story of Petah Tikva’s founding actually begins over a year earlier, when Zionist land-purchasers in Jerusalem heard that the Arab village of Mulabbis’ fields were up for grabs from a wealthy Jaffa businessman named Antoine Bishara Tayan.

Four men set out from Jerusalem on horseback to survey the property: David Gutmann, Yoel Moshe Salomon, Yehoshua Stampfer, and Zerach Barnet.

Impressed by the lie of the land, they decided to buy the entire tract. But when they reached the village of Mulabbis at the end of the day, they were appalled by the sight of the peasants living there, who seemed, as they reported, “wan, feverish, and yellow-faced.”

That night, Yoel Moshe Salomon stayed in the village while the others returned to Jaffa. That was the day immortalized by Israeli lyricist Yoram Taharlev as “a dewy morning” in 5638. (Dr. Kalermo Mazaraki, “the silver-haired doctor” from Taharlev’s song who warned of the insalubrious absence of birdsong in the area, joined them only on their second visit.)

But the morning we recall today – a dewy morning in Marheshvan 5639 – was the day four founders first set out to till the soil of Mulabbis: Elazar Raab and his son Yehuda, Yehoshua Stampfer, David Gutmann, and Yoel Moshe Salomon.

Since neither Elazar Raab nor his son Yehuda figured in the popular song about Petach Tikva’s founding, they’ve been largely forgotten. But some years later, this pioneering family produced the first native-born Hebrew poetess, Esther Raab – Yehuda’s daughter and Elazar’s granddaughter. 🖋

Throughout her life, Esther Raab wrote poems evoking her childhood as the daughter of Petah Tikva’s founders. Brought up on the ideals of manual labor and love of nature, her poetry reflects her deep attachment to the land. She often recalled the hardships of those early years – the struggle with malaria and other diseases, and the daily challenges faced by the settlers.

This is Esther Raab’s poem “To Petah Tikva,” written in the last decade of her life and found posthumously among her papers – to mark this 147th anniversary of the land of Israel’s first Zionist colony.

-To Petah Tikva-
“Tercina,” “Tropical,” or just “something” –
I was covered in the sicknesses you gave.
Green flies swarmed around me;
I saw your leeches
in the barrels of drinking water.
But at night, when the fever eased,
I swallowed your lofty, whispering skies,
alive with the spirits of past and future.
Your stars sang in my ears
to the murmur of quinine
hymns of futures yet to come.
Your scattered houses
were like a baby’s first teeth.
But the grace of narcissus in the swamp,
and your tulips on the virgin hills,
planted within me
a joy
I shall drink
until my final breath.

📸 Photo: Esther Raab. Courtesy of the Gnazim Institute.
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28/10/2025

“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.”
— Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

🗽 One hundred and thirty-nine years ago today, on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor.

Flags of France and America fluttered above cheering crowds. Hundreds of ships gathered around Bedloe’s Island – later renamed Liberty Island – as the great copper figure was revealed for the first time. On their decks stood thousands of immigrants, gazing at the new wonder that seemed to welcome them home.
🇫🇷🇺🇸🇫🇷🇺🇸

Three years earlier, a young Jewish poet named Emma Lazarus had been asked to write a sonnet to help raise funds for the statue’s pedestal.

Lazarus was already a known literary voice in New York – born into a wealthy Sephardi family, fluent in world classics, and the author of several admired volumes of poetry.

But that same year, a visit she paid to Ward’s Island, immigrants’ gateway to Manhattan, changed everything. There she met Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe. Shocked by their suffering, she began to see herself as their advocate and her pen as their weapon. She wrote essays on the plight of the Jews and published An Epistle to the Hebrews – one of the earliest Zionist appeals in English.

Lazarus envisioned the Jewish nation reawakening from its long exile to serve once again as a clarion-call to justice and morality, even in America.

When asked to write about Liberty, she reimagined her not as a cold, neo-classical goddess of triumph, but as a Jewish mother of exiles – compassionate, prophetic, and tender:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Through those lines, Lazarus gave the Statue of Liberty its soul – turning a monument of freedom into a symbol of mercy and hope.

Emma Lazarus died the following year, in 1887, at just 38. Returning from treatment in Europe, she passed away in her sister’s New York home. The newspapers mourned “a gifted American poet,” yet few mentioned her Jewish voice – or the poem that had given new meaning to America’s most famous statue.

Only in 1903, when her words were cast in bronze at the statue’s base, did the world finally recognize her legacy.🗽🇺🇸

Read more about Emma Lazarus, Lady Liberty’s Jewish Voice, in Prof. Shira Wolosky’s article for Segula >> https://www.calameo.com/read/0078446402520101703be

📷Pictured: Emma Lazarus, photo by William Courts, engraving by T. Johnson
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23/10/2025

“May our efforts be crowned with success in training spiritual leaders – inspired by the eternal truth of our faith – who will teach with devotion and self-sacrifice, and see in this their life’s mission, while fulfilling their civic duties and taking part in all that is noble and uplifting in the redemption of society.”
(Excerpt, “From the Teachers,” 1898)

Late 19th-century Berlin was a place of intellectual and spiritual ferment – home to philosophers, scientists, artists, and thinkers.

One hundred and fifty-two years ago, on 1 Marheshvan 5634 (1873), a revolutionary Jewish institution was founded there: the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin, brainchild of Rabbi Dr. Azriel Hildesheimer.

His vision was bold and new – to raise a generation of rabbis deeply learned in Torah, yet fluent in the language of modern thought and science. Men of faith who could engage with the modern world without surrendering their commitment to halakhah.

Hildesheimer founded the seminary as an Orthodox alternative to the growing Reform movement and the rabbinical school it had opened in Germany, seeking to meet the challenges of the times head-on.

The curriculum reflected this balance: Talmud and halakhic rulings, practical rabbinics, Bible and Hebrew grammar, modern Hebrew literature, Jewish history, writings of the Geonim and ancient Hebrew texts, philosophy, apologetics, homiletics, and pedagogy – all taught in the belief that general knowledge was essential to a true understanding of Judaism.

Students were expected to play an active role in public and academic life. Each was required to complete a doctoral degree in philosophy at nearby Friedrich Wilhelm University. 👨‍🎓

Over the years, the seminary was led by some of the towering figures of German Jewry’s golden age:
Rabbi Dr. David Zvi Hoffmann, Rabbi Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan, and finally Rabbi Dr. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg – author of Seridei Esh – under whom the seminary became a true spiritual beacon.

For six decades the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin flourished, until it was shut down by the N***s on November 10, 1938 – the day after Kristallnacht.

Yet its spirit endured: its graduates went on to serve communities across Europe, America and the Land of Israel, spreading the ideal of “Torah im Derekh Eretz” – a faith that is thoughtful, open and brave, seeking dialogue between tradition and the challenges of the age.

📸 Pictured: Lecturers and students of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary. From the website of the Adat Israel community, Berlin.
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15/10/2025

“Tell them,” she wrote, “that Sarah asked them to take adequate vengeance for every drop of her blood – vengeance on our Jews, and especially upon the government under which we live. Show no mercy, as none was shown to us.”

🕯️ One hundred and eight years ago today, Sarah Aaronsohn was released from her suffering.

Three days earlier, on October 5, 1917, she sat wounded and tortured in her home in Zikhron Yaakov, her mind perfectly clear. She knew there was nowhere to run – the Turks who sought her life were already closing in. Taking pen in hand, she wrote her final letter.

It was addressed to her relative David Sternberg, with instructions on how to proceed after her death. Her missive was cut short when Turkish soldiers reached her doorstep. The last words she managed to scrawl in the margin were: “They have come, and I can write no more.”

Sarah was born in 1890, the fifth of six children in one of the pioneering families of Zikhron Yaakov.

Together with her brother Aaron and their friend Absalom Feinberg, she helped found the Nili espionage network, which aided the British army’s campaign against the Ottoman regime in the Land of Israel during World War I.

In the last year of her life, with her brother stranded in England and Feinberg missing and suspected dead, Sarah Aaronsohn ran Nili’s operations with the help of Yosef Lishansky, passing intelligence to British agents anchored offshore near Atlit.

🐦✉️That autumn, one of the carrier pigeons she had sent with a message to the British was caught, and the Turks launched covert investigations into a possible Jewish spy ring.

On the eve of Sukkot 1917, following an informer’s tip, the Ottoman authorities surrounded Zikhron Yaakov. Sarah Aaronsohn and the other Nili members were arrested – including her father and brothers – all but Yosef Lishansky, who managed to escape.

Sarah was tortured for three days but revealed none of the network’s secrets. When the order came to transfer her from Zikhron, she asked permission to bathe and change her clothes in the privacy of her own home.

✉️ Knowing her end was near, she wrote her last letter, then took the revolver hidden in the doorframe and shot herself. Gravely wounded, she lingered for three days before dying.

The Nili underground will be remembered as the spy-ring that provided the British with vital intelligence during World War I, helping launch their successful conquest of the Land of Israel from the Ottoman Turks. Yet their actions – taken without consultation with the rest of the pre-state Jewish community – sparked fierce controversy that still echoes in Israeli society:

Were the members of Nili Zionist heroes, or reckless adventurers whose daring could have exacted a terrible price in blood and suspicion – had the British not won the day?

For the full story of the fierce debate over Nili’s path – and how its heroes were long erased from the pages of history – read Dr. Yemima Hovav’s fascinating article in Segula >>
https://tinyurl.com/Segula-Nili

Photo of Sarah Aaronsohn, photographer unknown
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09/10/2025

🌿One hundred and thirty-nine years ago today – on 17 Tishrei, on one of the intermediate days of Sukkot in 1886 – *David Ben-Gurion was born*.

Perhaps it was no accident that the State of Israel’s founding father entered the world on Sukkot, the festival when the fragile and temporary – the sukkah – is imbued with a special spirit that lends it an air of permanence and stability.

Ben Gurion’s life story marks him out as one of the Jewish people’s truest guides, leading them from a fraught existence in the wilderness of exile, wandering and impermanence to the safety of a lasting dwelling – the State of Israel.

From the dusty shack of his desert home at Kibbutz Sde Boker to the halls of the Knesset, Ben-Gurion brought the ancient dream of a return to Zion to fruition with his own hands.

In honor of his birthday, here’s an excerpt from a speech he gave late in 1915, while waiting out World War One in exile in New York:

"How shall we attain the Land of Israel, and what must we do to secure it?
The nation’s forces must be organized and united; the parties must extend their hands to one another and sit in council together. And after the war, when all countries’ representatives gather to decide the fate of nations, the representatives of the Jewish people will come as well, and they will demand justice – for the greatest national suffering in human history.
As recompense for our spilled blood, as redress for our global affliction, and as a solution to the Jewish Question that troubles the nations of the world – our representatives will demand our share in the Land of Israel. The peace conference will hear our just claim and grant our wish; it will be written and sealed in the treaties and covenants of the nations, and the Land of Israel will arise as the inheritance of the People of Israel."
(David Ben Gurion, “The Gift of the Land,” in From Class to Nation: Essays on the Mission and Destiny of the Labor Movement)

🕎 On Ben-Gurion in Israel’s War of Independence, read Yegil Henkin’s fascinating article in Segula: https://tinyurl.com/Segula-Ben-Gurion

📷 Illustration produced using AI
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01/10/2025

Why do you tremble, my father,
my father, silent, filled
with your cry?
My fist in your hair, and I–
I am your pain
still to come.
How shall I not recall,
for in tears you planted me,
and in weeping you shall reap.

Fifty-two years have passed since the Yom Kippur War.🕯

This poem was one of five penned by Captain Be’eri Hazak, who fell in the battle for the railway line at Serapeum on the Egyptian front west of the Suez Canal – a desperate, heroic stand by his company against hundreds of Egyptian soldiers, in which 14 IDF fighters were killed.

Be’eri was laid to rest in his kibbutz, Kibbutz Afikim, leaving a wife and a son.

In these fateful hours,
standing on the verge of historic events,
we pray for tidings of life,
and wish, in the words of Naomi Shemer:

🙏🏻 If the herald comes and stands at the door,
place good tidings on his lips,
All that we ask – let it be.🙏🏻

Photo of Be’eri Hazak courtesy of the Israel National Library
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25/09/2025

Give yourself the gift of Jewish history for the New Year!

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.

Special 1+3 Offer: Purchase the latest print (special Iran) issue of Segula and get 3 months' free access to our NEW digital library (full access to the contents of our website)!

To order: https://segula.vp4.me/New-Year-2025
Check out a past issue here: https://tinyurl.com/Segula-sample

25/09/2025

Foxes no longer cry in Petah Tikva at night,
And memories too are slowly fading.
Yet sometimes the heart still thirsts
To hear the tales
Of Sheikh Shapira – Miko Ibrahim.

At the end of the 19th century, nights in the young colony of Petah Tikva were anything but quiet. Arab raiders lay in ambush in the fields, wild animals prowled in the dark, and the settlers had to fight for every patch of land.

Almost incidentally, a young man named Avraham Shapira dropped into this battered reality. He’d later be remembered as Sheikh Ibrahim Miko, Petah Tikva’s hero, head watchman, and enduring symbol for over eighty years.👳🏻

One hundred and fifty five years ago today, on 3 Tishrei 5631 (1870), Avraham Shapira was born.

He was ten when his family immigrated from Russia to the Land of Israel – first to Jerusalem, then to Petah Tikva.

By the age of fourteen, Shapira already had a reputation for courage. When Arab attackers fell upon a group of Petah Tikva settlers, he fought them off practically singlehanded, despite being wounded by gunfire and almost killed.

At twenty, he was the colony’s head watchman. He ran the local guard, keeping its members trained and organized, repelled raids, captured bandits and murderers, and always did his utmost to bring wrongdoers to justice.

His determination on this score didn’t prevent him from developing ties of friendship with neighboring Arabs, who held him in great esteem. They called him Sheikh Ibrahim Miko – and even elected him Sheikh al-Mashiyekh, the “Sheikh of Sheikhs.”👰🏻‍♀

That same year he married Liba-Rachel, his cousin and lifelong partner. “You think I’m the hero?” he once said. “Not at all. Everything I have comes from my wife. When I’m called out to help, she stands by me and says: ‘Go! You can’t stay. I’m safe here among Jews. Go, succeed, and come back.’ And, God bless her, she gives me a child every two years – and there’s no one to help her but herself.”

Shapira’s life was interwoven with the history of the pre-state Jewish community. He escorted Baron Rothschild on his visits, was arrested during World War I on suspicion of being a member of the Jewish spy-network NILI, worked with the Haganah, and served as bodyguard to Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president.

📰 Stories of his bravery appeared in the Hebrew press abroad, portraying him as Petah Tikva’s fearless guardian, defending its honor, and deterring its enemies.

His home at 20 Herzl Street was a public magnet: Arab tribes gathered there for him to mediate their sulha reconciliations, and both dignitaries and common folk sat together at his table.

Shapira died at 95. His funeral was a national event, with tens of thousands – including the President of Israel – following his hearse. Yigal Allon eulogized him. His plain headstone bears the words:
“Here lies Avraham Hillel son of Yitzhak Zvi Shapira, of blessed memory. One of the pioneers of settlement, defense, and guarding. He was a living example of heroism to the entire people of Israel and to his city, Petah Tikva.”

Photo: Avraham Shapira on horseback, circa 1935
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21/09/2025

The war in Gaza and elsewhere continues as we prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah 5786. Our soldiers stand firm at their posts and battle fiercely with terrorists. Yet though the war’s effects are everywhere apparent, and despite our ongoing concern for husbands, brothers and fathers at the front, the Jewish calendar goes on as usual. New Year’s greetings are in the air and on every digital platform – notes, memes and wishes bearing faith, comfort and hope for a year of victory, peace and tranquility.

📬 There’s nothing new under the sun. For generations, New Year cards have gone out in times of war, struggle and persecution. People strengthened one another with words of hope and courage, linking present suffering with faith in a rosier future.

💌 We’ve chosen just such a card as our New Year’s greeting to share with readers; its illustration depicts one particular – and radical - shift in Jewish history.

The card was sent in 5675 (1914), soon after the beginning of World War I. It reflects a rare combination that characterized many Jewish soldiers during that war: an uncompromising religious Jewish identity coupled with a previously unprecedented devotion to their national homeland or the empire to which it belonged.
Jewish soldiers prepared for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, sending postcards to their families back home. Jewish chaplains provided shofars and prayer shawls and improvised spaces for worship. Wherever possible, food was collected for holiday meals and dining areas prepared to host the many soldiers hoping for some semblance of Jewish festivities.

Rabbi Georg Salzberger of the German Fifth Army recorded his impressions of the war and the part he played during the High Holy Days in his diary. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, he recorded, all the soldiers were busy fighting and he had to pray and dine alone. In his mind’s eye, he saw our forefather Abraham taking his son to the Binding of Isaac to give him up as an offering, just as fathers were now sending their sons to the Great War.

✉ The New Year’s greeting card pictured above shows two Jewish soldiers: one Austrian, the other German.
Both are wrapped in prayer shawls and holding prayerbooks, while Austro-Hungarian and German flags flutter in the background. The text includes the German slogan Sieg und Ruhm unseren Waffen – “Victory and glory to our weapons,” and the blessing Glückliches Neujahr – “Happy New Year,” and alongside these the traditional Hebrew greeting L’shanah tovah tikatevu – “May you be inscribed for a good year.”

To read more about historic New Year’s cards sent during wartime and other periods in Jewish history, see Segula Magazine’s article on Haim Stier’s collection: https://segulamag.com/en/one-hundred-good-years/

Wishing all of our loyal readers a Shana Tova: may it be a year of victory, of peace, of tranquility and security! 🇮🇱🐦🌿🍏
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15/09/2025

Every year, as the month of Elul draws to a close, an air of festivity tinged with a solemn nostalgia envelopes Kibbutz Kfar Etzion: its members mark Yom HaAliyah, the day of return, when the children of Kfar Etzion, now grown, came back after nineteen years of exile – from its capture and destruction in the War of Independence until its liberation in the Six-Day War.

The place that had become synonymous with loss and longing was now home once again.

Fifty-eight years ago today, Kfar Etzion was re-established.🌳

“As orphans, all through our childhood we pointed in the direction of Kfar Etzion. It was the center of all our games. There we’d find consolation, for what we had lost. All those years we spoke about Kfar Etzion, pointing out the site that was beyond our reach,” recalled Yeruham, one of the orphans whose father had fallen in Kfar Etzion.

The Six-Day War put an end to those days of yearning.

On Shabbat, 18 Elul, Hanan Porat gathered the sons and daughters of Kfar Etzion to get ready to resettle illegally, after the government had refused to approve their return. But on Friday, in a meeting with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, consent was finally given:
“Nu, kinderlach, if you want to go up – go.”
Hanan pressed further: “Can we pray there, then, on Rosh Hashanah?”
Eshkol smiled:
“Yes” – and was immediately invited to come join in the prayers.

For the younger generation of Kfar Etzion, this was no mere detail. The High Holiday prayers were the beating heart of their childhood memories; the familiar old melodies had the power to restore to them something of the family they’d lost in that final battle in 1948. 🎼

The traditional tunes sung in Kfar Etzion on Shabbat and festivals had their roots in Sławków, Poland, where the members of Kvutzat Avraham – idealistic youngsters who’d later form the founding core of the kibbutz – developed their own unique blend of Hasidic melodies with Zionist touches to inspire their prayers. When they settled in Kfar Etzion, they kept to it with almost fanatical devotion.

“Prayers in Kfar Etzion were something special,” remembered Ora, the first child born on the kibbutz.
“They had a Hasidic spark, with singing that went on forever and a fervor that caught everyone up, even those who hadn’t grown up in Hasidic homes.”

Shalom Karniel, one of those killed in the Lamed Heh relief convoy, served as cantor.
“He was a truly gifted cantor – we’d sit and listen, utterly transported as he prayed,”
recalled the children who’d been raised on those special melodies with longing.

Even those who were too young to remember the original prayers and tunes absorbed them from the surviving adult prayer leaders, who carefully passed on the tradition for future generations of Kfar Etzion.

“Yaakov Yisrael was our neighbor, and every Elul we we’d hear him practicing the High Holiday melodies – that’s how it pierced our hearts,” remembered Haim Levinovitz, one of the orphans of Kfar Etzion.

On Rosh Hashanah 5728 (1967), just days after the children of Kfar Etzion came back to rebuild their childhood home, the sound of the High Holy Day melodies wafting upward finally bridged the gap between their painful past and their hopes for the future.

📷 Photo: Kfar Etzion’s synagogue today, by Michael Jacobson.
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