CHAPTER 10 - The Temple at Dor, Two Rival Ideologies and Malka’s Death

An intervention and interlude from Avshalom’s restless ghost.

 

Sara at Dor Beach

‘So, here we are in the ruins of the Temple at Dor, not far from Tantura. Here the little clay statuette, of Aphrodite has her genesis in the Greco-Roman period. Dor, a city fought over by many empires, its ruin and rebuilding over countless aeons, reflecting the history of our entire region. Many shipwrecks have been discovered in the waters off Dor. A Phoenician settlement on the coast of what would become Roman Syria. Here that regal, Tyrian purple was extracted from the murex snail, a curious creature as convoluted as our tale, found here in great numbers. Our Bible too confirms the port and according to the Books of both Joshua and Judges, it was an ancient royal city of the Canaanites, whose inhabitants were put to bondage under the tribe of Manasseh. In the Book of Kings, we are told, Dor was incorporated into David’s Israelite kingdom, becoming the capital under King Solomon. Aphrodite still lay beneath the sands of the city.

Astarte/Aphrodite Figurine from Dor

Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greek and Romans, all came this way. Josephus Flavius, that turncoat Hellenised Jew in his ‘Antiquities’, perhaps a more reliable reporter than our quasi mythical national tale, the Torah, describes the place as a poor, sea port where due to the currents and rocks, goods had to be transported by small boats from ships at sea. Dora - now feminised - was the city where Antiochus, ruler of the Seleucid Empire with the aid of Simon Maccabaeus, laid siege to the usurper Diodotus Trypho. During Pompey’s invasion, it was razed, along with all the coastal towns and rebuilt under the cursed Roman rule. The little statuette still lay beneath the sands. Jews vanish from the place during the Byzantine period. Those lovers of golden icons detested our iconoclastic people. The dislike was mutual, the persecution persistent and much blood was spilled. By the seventh century, Dor became the centre of a bishopric with a number of bishops mentioned in church records. The settlement migrated from the ancient tell to the east, centering on the church complex, which served as a way-station for pilgrims travelling to the holy places in much fought over and eternally bloodied Jerusalem. The fight still going on.

Arab Village Built in the Ruins of Dor

When Islam came, the village of Tantura, a little further south, was established after the church was abandoned and Christians were no longer welcome. The pendulum swayed, as it always does, and when the Crusaders arrived, armed to the teeth with hatred for both Muslim and Jew, a small fort surrounded by a moat was built on the promontory of the tell, overlooking the entrance to the bay. The Crusaders called it ‘Merle’, the Arabs, ‘Khirbet el-Burj’. The fort was in the possession of the Knights Templar when it was conquered by Sultan Saladin. A great battle and much blood spilled. The Templars retook it again - more blood - and in the autumn of the year 1191, Richard the Lionheart stopped here with his army as he waited for his Acre fleet. Next came the the Mamluks - nasty slave rulers, but good builders, and briefly, after they left, Dor came under the Catholic See of Dora. Tantura rose in importance when Arab ruler Zahir al-Umar expanded trade, increasing the capacity of the port at Tantura, as well as those of Haifa and Acre. Nearly forty Muslim graves, dating from that time to the fourteenth century, have been excavated from the area of the ruined church. Graves, which would be added to significantly, by the massacres to come...

Ottoman Map of Palestine

When the warlike Ottomans arrived they would remain here for four hundred years, their last brutal years in our own time. Our fight to the death was with them. Our deaths at their hands.

Pierre Jacotin's map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine 1799

By the late 18th century, Empire was eyeing the shores of Palestine and French cartographer, Pierre Jacotin, director of the survey for the Carte de l'Égypte compiled the first accurate, relief map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, in 1799, utlising astronomical observations and descriptions of longitude and latitude. Among other useful information, it shows ruins, lakes, swamps, rivers and stables and our own ‘Tantourah’ as the French knew it. Naming, of course is possessing and Bonaparte wanted the Levant. Napoleon's visit to our shores when he besieged Acre, and used Dor/Tantura as a supply depot, came in May of that year. The dates of his battles are listed conscientiously on Pierre Jacotin’s map, including those of Nasareth, Cana, Safed, Mount Tabor, Jaffa or Joppé, Gaza and our Tantourah - the French spelling. The countryside was burnt to the ground, harvests went up in flames, villages were razed. Dying men littered the way, followed by looters, opportunists and arsonists. The date of Napoleon’s camp here was May 21, 1799. It is easy to imagine the great general standing on the shore in his great coat, regarding his hungry and dying troops and praying for victory. A garrison was stationed here for the rest of the campaign. Officer Lambert reported that it had a population of two thousand, who seemed sympathetic to the French. There was neither water nor food, but there was plenty of plague. French dragoons died like the flies that clustered around their stinking corpses. After the failure of the campaign, troops retreated to Tantura, where the little Corsican hoped to evacuate by sea, but the fleet never arrived. To free up horses for carrying the wounded, Napoleon ordered that his own horse be given to carry a wounded dragoon and others apparently followed his example. He ordered heavy ordnance dumped in the bay for there were no more horses to carry the canons. Artillery pieces, muskets and ammunition were blown up and dumped in the foaming water in order to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. On the beach, caissons of gunpowder were set alight, exploding into the sky like violent comets. The inhabitants of Tantura thought the djinns had come to earth. In one such explosion several soldiers were burnt to death. Their screams adding to the certainty that demons had indeed escaped from hell into the night sky. Canon balls can still be found on our shore, rolling in after a particular rough surf, and in your time, they are exhibited in the little museum, ‘The Glass House’, once Baron Edmond’s famous winery.

Map of Dora/Tantourah

A British traveller, who visited in the early 19th century described al-Tantura as a small village with insignificant port and a khan or caravanserai. Thirty years later, Mary Rogers, sister of the British vice-consul in Haifa, reported that there were about forty houses in the village, with cattle and goats as source of income. Another intrepid Englishman, William McClure Thomson wrote of Tantura/Dor with rather less enthusiasm: ‘Tantura merits very little attention. It is a sad and sickly hamlet of wretched huts on a naked sea-beach, with a marshy flat between it and the base of the eastern hills. The sheikh's residence and the public menzûl for travellers are the only respectable houses, Dor never could have been a large city, for there are no remains. The tell, with a fragment of the Kùsr standing like a column upon it, was probably the most ancient site’.

The Ruins of the Temple at Dor

By the end of the century, Mordechai Bonstein, a Russian Jewish pioneer, moved to Tantura to farm a tract of land owned by the Baron. Bonstein, his wife Haya, and their nine children were the only Jews in the village. The farm was moderately productive and the family had apparently, good relations with their Arab neighbours. The village then had about eight hundred inhabitants, all Muslim. A boys’ school was built there to service the population’s needs and in 1898, the German Emperor Wilhelm II visited the ruins of the Crusader castle which he admired greatly. By the end of the century, when French archaeologist Victor Guérin visited, he found the village to have twelve hundred inhabitants, noting that the village itself was built largely with materials taken from the ancient city of Dor. During that last destruction of the ruin, our little Asherah, Astarte/Aphrodite, was probably dislodged from her centuries old hiding place...’

  ****  

The Temple Ruins at Dor Beach with Sara, Rifka, Avshalom & Aphrodite

Sara and Rifka climb among the rough stones of the ancient temple ruins at Dor Beach, thick with sand and sea grass. Avshalom stands behind one of the pillars and surprises Sara. He holds out - a little pottery figurine of a Greek goddess: “Look what I’ve found.”

Sara reaches for the little statuette.

    “Aphrodite - goddess of love.”

The small clay figure is no more than two inches high. She is not a great beauty, her features modeled in the fired earth are generic and stylised, the clay itself, pitted and porous from its years of hiding. Her hair however is intricately styled, her arms outstretched, her breasts pointed, her sex a perfect dark triangle, worthy of Euclid.

Sara holds the little goddess in her open palm. Avshalom clasps her hand - just as Rifka reaches the spot and Sara slides away from his too ardent grasp.  Upset Rifka runs down the mound away from them.

Sara is upset too: “She’s very sensitive. You must never do anything to hurt her.”

    “Why would I? She’s so sweet and so vulnerable.” He pockets the little head.

    “Will you come with me Sara, there’s a meeting at Tel Adas tomorrow night.”

    “I’d like to see Toba. I’ll come if you want me to.”
    
    “I want you to very much. But we’ll have to ask Aron for the car.”

****

Tel Adas Settlement

Tel Adas Night

Night. The watch tower at Tel Adas silhouetted against the darkness. A strong wind blows. Young guards play cards by lantern light. A fire burns brightly. They sing socialist songs, dance and drink home-brewed beer. Musicians play fiddle. Shochat dancing with his  soon to be wife Manya. 

Toba & Nissim

Toba with her young man, Nissim Rutman, and her pack of cards.

Avshalom and Sara drive up in the truck. A hush. Avshalom opens the door, with a flourish, Sara steps out into the full view of the assembled company. All eyes on the two of them. Sparks from the fire fly in the wild wind, like angry demons into the night sky. Antagonism hangs thickly in the air.

Shochat bars their way: “To what do we owe this pleasure - comrade!”

Avshalom stands his ground firmly: “Leave it Shochat, we’re on the same side.”

Shochat is belligerent: “Are we? We don’t accept gifts from dirty capitalists! We don’t want to be colonialists in our own land!”

Sara takes Avshalom’s arm: “Let’s go.”

Toba stops her: “Stay darling, He’s a brute but he doesn’t really mean it. Come, let’s tell your fortune.” 

Toba and her Cards

She spreads her cards in front of Sara. An act, she calls ‘the casting of fate’. Sara who is not drawn to the supernatural, is sceptical, but she wants to please her gypsy friend who favours a mix of mystery and metaphor. Toba does not tell the future but reads instead her friend’s fears and hopes. She shuffles the cards and lays them out. Sara selects three cards: the Ace of Hearts, the Ace of Spades, the two of Spades. Each tells a story on its own, but together, Toba sees malicious gossip, deceit, separation and heart break. She also sees death, but she focuses instead on the tall dark, handsome man who will change Sara’s life.

Very late, a starry sky. Sara and that tall, handsome man at the dying fire engaged in an intimate conversation. The desert wind blows stronger. A shower of sparks rises like those little demons of long ago. Avshalom takes his jacket and puts it around Sara.

Then he says in a dreamy voice: “But where do we come from and where do we go and where was God when the dinosaurs were around? What do you think Sarale?”

She stretches her hands out over the flames: “I only know what I observe - how warm this fire is, how bright the stars are.”

Avshalom takes her hand: “How warm your hand is, how bight your eyes are - ”

Sara pulls away: “We see things too differently - for you everything is yearning and then silly jokes - for me it is all too serious. We live, we die, then we’re gone!”
    
    “I want to live with you darling Sara. Forever.”

    “You’re mocking me. Always silly jokes,” she concludes the dialogue and hands him back his jacket.

      ****

Sara driven home through the dark night by Avshalom. In the light of the headlamps, we see thorny scrub and a dirt road. The eyes of little animals glow in the dark. The wind has ceased as miraculously as it started.

Sara begins: “I am drawn to their idealism.”

    “You mean share everything? It’s against human nature! People are selfish at heart. If I have a woman I want her for myself alone!”

Sara deflects the conversation: “How kind of my brother to let us use the car.”

Avshalom answers: “Aron isn’t selfish. He’s the most unselfish person I know - but he didn’t lend me the car.”
                
    “Then how - ?!”

Avshalom swerves for a night creature in their path: “He’s in Jerusalem. I borrowed it. Temporary redistribution of means, Shochat might call it!”    

 Aron’s car draws up outside the Aronson house, Sara gets out of the car.

    “I call it stealing!”

At the window, we see a small head silhouetted, Rifka’s face peering between the curtains.

     ****

It is dawn. A pebbles hits Sara’s bedroom window. She opens the window. Peers down.

Avshalom stands beneath a tree in the dark. He mouths: “Come down.”

First checking that Rifka is asleep, Sara in her nightgown, wrapped in a shawl, comes out to Avshalom.

He takes her by the shoulders: “Sara, don’t be angry, but I can’t live without you! ”

Sara pulls away: “You misunderstand me, Avshalom. I feel you’re always making fun of me. I want only a quiet life and to do what is right.”

    “Then marry me.”

He raises his voice: “Marry me. I beg you, Sara - ”
    
    “Sssh! You’re crazy Absa! You’ll wake them!”
                      
She turns to go: “Perhaps you’d better have Rifka, she loves you, anyone can see that.”

Avshalom’s reply may seem as puzzling as Sara’s riposte: “Sarale, I love you with all my heart, but if you really won’t have me...”

Giving up on Sara so easily, his prevarication, playing with the hearts of two women, was it mere light-hearted flirtation? It might also be seen as weakness. He was, after all, very young and impulsive, and definitely reckless. He acted on the moment. And Sara had given up on him, or so it appeared by her own admission.

****

Delilah sunning herself in the Aronson courtyard, pigeons coo in the dovecot. Rifka, on the bench, embroidering a design of wheat on a long table cloth.

Avshalom rides up to the house on his Arab mare. 

Sara Making Bread

Sara rolling out bread dough, looks out through the kitchen window, as she throws the compulsory portion of dough on the fire.

Rifka points inside - to where Sara is. Avshalom shakes his head. Rifka’s look of pleasure and surprise. Has he come to see her? Inside, Sara filling bread tins with braided challah bread, helping Ayla to stoke the fire in the iron stove, placing the plaited loaves inside the oven. Her face flushed from the heat of the oven, it is hard to guess the turmoil in her heart.

     ****

Rifka & Absa Courting

Rifka and Avshalom sitting together on the bench in the courtyard. Rifka shyly looking at Absa over the skeins of embroidery thread she is making him wind on both hands. Avshalom ties himself into knots with the skeins of silk thread as giggling Rifka tries to unentangle him.                      

****

Sara at Dusk

It is dusk. Sara alone - sits on the beach at Dor, as the sun dips over the horizon. It is hard to guess her feelings. She shuts her eyes, perhaps realising her folly in giving up Avshalom, perhaps it is just a grain of sand in her eye. The sea shimmers gold and she seems to see the spreading branches of an immense date palm, like a gigantic fireworks display in the sea.

****

The Aronson house. Efraim and Malka by lamplight in the bed room. Malka in bed, her illness, very advanced, Efraim reads from his Bible. They converse in low tones.

Malka speaks first: “They want to be engaged.”

Efraim asks: “Sara?”

    “No. Rifka.”

    “If God wills it, they can be engaged.”

Malka replies firmly, brooking no dissent: “But Rifka cannot marry before her older sister.”

****

Rifka and Avshalom’s Engagement Party

Rifka and Avshalom’s engagement. A long table in the courtyard with Rifka’s embroidered cloth, branches of palms and ripe dates, dishes of food, glasses and home-made wine. Delilah runs along the table, delicately stepping between the glasses and plates. Malka, in her black knitted shawl in a bath chair, Efraim, Zvi, Aron, Sara, Avshalom and Rifka in a pretty white dress. Ayla and Abu Farrid serve the table. Slightly tipsy Avshalom spills a glass of wine. A red stain spreads across the cloth. Rifka’s dismayed face.

Alex rides up on his horse with a huge basket strapped to the horse’s side. He dismounts and unstraps the bundle and reveals a magnum of champagne labelled 'Baron Rothschild’s Estate'.

    “Never mind our homemade stuff - Look what the Baron has sent!”

Rifka, Alex & Absa in the Orchard

Alex opens the bottle and poses with Avshalom and Rifka who fill their glasses. The photograph make one a little unsure who exactly the engaged couple are. Rifka leans her head against Alex, her eyes shining, her lips in a perfect, satisfied pout.

Aron rises: “A toast, a toast to my little sister and her new beau! To their eternal happiness! To life!”

    “Mazeltov, mazeltov!” shout the assembled family. 

Avshalom and Rifka's Engagement Photo

A photograph is taken of the engaged couple. One you can still see today. Alex clicks the shutter. We freeze on the sepia image of Avshalom and Rifka, their heads inclined towards each other, Avshalom looks glum but defiant and Rifka, manages to looks both victorious and demure.

 ****

Aron in his new truck drives down the main street of Zikhron Ya’akov. Little boys chase the car, hanging onto the shiny, silver fender. At the café, ‘The Gossips’, Tsipporah, Adele, Gita and Perl, look on with a mixture of envy and tight-lipped disapproval.

 ****

Zikhron Ya’akov Synagogue

Inside the town’s synagogue - built by courtesy of the Baron - the town elders meet - among them head of the Zikhron Ya’akov Committee - Mayor Meir, with Rabbi Kornfeld and Dr. Yaffe.

Voices are raised. Mayor Meir utters the first condemnation: “The authorities are sure to see it as a provocation!”

Rabbi Kornfeld agrees: “We cannot afford to upset the Turks!”    
                
The Doctor chimes in: “The American funding is sure to infuriate them!” 

    ****

Abu Farrid in the back of the truck on the road from Haifa, with a tarpaulin covered load of supplies. The wind whips the tarpaulin. Aron and Sara up front, Aron driving, his forehead creased in thought, his teeth gritted.

    “The situation is impossible. We have to do something.”

Sara shushes him, gesturing to Abu Farrid in the back.

Aron responds: “It’s not Abu Farrid we need to fear. His people want the Turks out as much as we do.”

They pass a Turkish road block and stop. Aron hands a few Turkish notes to the impoverished Officer and they are waved on. Baksheesh is a way of life.

     **** 

HaShomer Settlement Watchmen

The Watchman settlement at Tel Adas. A group of young workers, including Zvi Nadav, Shmulik Hefter, Shochat and Toba, at a HaShomer committee meeting. The meeting is intense, tempers flare; the rivalry between the two camps apparent.

Shochat addresses the group angrily: “We have to ask why does someone outside official circles has access to American funding!?”

A young woman pipes up, in an aggrieved tone: “And that truck!”

Shochat: “Feathering his own nest, I shouldn’t wonder!”

Toba responds: “Comrade Shochat, you’re too hard on him.”

Shochat retorts: “And you Comrade Toba are too soft!”

Toba who is after all, the sister in law of Zvi Aronson is taken aback. She likes to see herself as a tough socialist but she finds herself defending the Aronsons.

    “The Aronson’s are not all bad,” she says.

Shochat snap backs: “You’re part of their camp, Comrade Toba, and you might as well leave right now!”

Toba is shaken and this unpleasant conflict make her reassess her loyalties. From now on, she becomes active in what will come to be called, the Nili organisation. This is partly due to her disaffection with Shochat and her general disillusion with HaShomer and also to the fact that she is Sara’s best friend and that her sister, Sarah Hinda, is Zvi’s wife. The shared little niece and nephew, Yardena and Malachi, are beloved by them all.

Like Sara, Toba will travel across the country in search of intelligence. She will be arrested in the Turkish campaign against the villagers with her fiancé Nissim Rutman, of which more later.

   ****

Gideonite Watchmen with Alexander on his horse Kochba

Rival group, Zikhron’s Gideonite Watchmen, both men and women, at a meeting of their own in the vineyards. Alex firmly in charge. Among them, a young Russian, Lyova, actually Levi Isaac Schneersohn, descendant of the famous Alter Rebbe. ‘Leo’ whom they call ‘The Owl’ - a gentle, blond man with the face and metal-rimmed glasses of a melancholy intellectual or indeed, that wise bird, the owl. He wears a bow tie and boater hat and is awkwardly carrying an incongruous, unwieldy rifle of some vintage. Indeed, they all carry weapons - old Turkish rifles in most cases, British revolvers and Alex wielding a smart Smith and Wesson - brought from America - some in Arab dress, some in farmer’s garb, except for Leo who looks very out of place in his Edwardian gentleman’s outfit. Leo’s brother, Mendel, a practical youngster, unlike his poetic brother,  has also joined the group.

‘Leo’ Lyova Schneersohn

According to the Founders’ interviews conducted years later, by Leo, with the early members of Hadera, most settlers were elderly or adults with families of their own, at the time of their settlement. They loved everything Russian: sipping tea in the evenings from the samovar with a cube of sugar, melting on the tongue, reading Russian novels, and, of course, they were lovers of Russian borsht - both milkike and with meat. Leo writes of the the persecution in their countries of origin - the Kishinev pogrom and the growth of antisemitism after the 1905 Revolution. The inbuilt hatred of Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, as he explains, many of Hadera’s residents travelled between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, and were influenced by the political and social developments in both empires.

Leo, himself, is born to a well-off family in Nevel oblast near the town of Pskov. His, very religious parents, made aliyah when he was a child. Naturally, like any sensitive, educated Russian, he wrote romantic poetry and revolutionary essays. As a teenager he even returned to Russia to write the official matriculation examinations in Petrograd. Whilst there, Leo became involved with the anarchist movement, and had to escape arrest by hiding in the home of some relatives in Dvinsk. After falling ill in St. Petersburg, Leo’s doctor advised him to return to a warmer country, for which purpose ‘no better place existed than Hadera’. On his return voyage, Leo stopped off to attend the Zionist Congress in Hamburg before he settled permanently in Palestine. Such, is only one of the stories of this diverse and heterogeneous assembly brought together by a shared goal.

Alex, always aware of the usefulness of discreet propaganda, with much effort gets them to muster some order and takes a photograph of the motley group. We freeze frame on the unlikely gathering with all their multifold baggage and different ideologies, who are intending to defend the Land by any means at their disposal.

  ****

Night. A white sheet hangs in the courtyard between two trees on which silent, black and white images from a Charlie Chaplin movie are projected. Sara covers Malka’s knees with a rug, the family with Toba, and Avshalom, laugh and eat roasted sunflower seeds spitting the skins onto the floor as they watch Chaplin’s antics. Ayla - open mouthed at the magic of the moving image - and wide-eyed Abu Farrid, watch with fascination. It’s the first film show they have ever seen. Alex the debonair film-maker, works the rudimentary projector, announcing in a loud voice:

    “In America, moving images are the future!”

    “America, America,” mutters Zvi.

But Alex is not deterred: “I’m going to tell our story through these pictures!”

Just as the film breaks down in a shuddering halt and a flare of celluloid flame consumes Charlie Chaplin’s face. Everyone looks very disappointed.

Aron can’t resist a dig at his brother: “First, you’d better learn how to use the equipment.”

Everyone laughs. Alex looks crestfallen.

Sara, the peace-maker,  reassures him: “Oh Alex! Never mind.”

Avshalom and Rifka hold hands in the darkness and he whispers in her shell-like ear:

    “Marry me, little Rifka.”

Rifka removes her hand and looks affronted:  “You know I can’t until Sara marries first.”

****

Malka Tended by Sara

Malka lying in the big bed, coughs blood into a handkerchief. Sara wipes her brow with a cloth from a basin of water and covers her mother with the black knitted shawl.    
    
    “I haven’t long left - Promise me you’ll marry, as soon as possible - For your happiness and Rifka’s.”

Sara takes Malka’s hand, tears in her eyes: “God willing, you will be at both our weddings, Mama.”

Malka is fifty three years old.

She shuts her eyes and sighs. She knows her time on earth is short.

Through the window she sees Rifka with Avshalom and troublesome Alex in the orchard under a cloud of white blossom and she prays for all her beloved children.

****

Baron Edmond's Residence in Jerusalem

Baron Edmond’s residence in Jerusalem. A long low building of pale Jerusalem stone in Ottoman style, with Edwardian blue metal grilles and railings, set in beautiful gardens overlooking the valley.

An exquisite room with long day beds, priceless Renaissance drawings, some French Impressionist oils and shelves of archaeological remains. The very gracious, Baron Edmond and Baroness Adelaide entertain Aron to dinner but Aron is there to petition them, and this he does whole-heartedly.

The Baron addresses Aron: “I hear your concerns but, we cannot afford to upset the Sultan. You must be patient.”

Aron responds: “With respect, Baron, the time for patience is over!”

A servant enters and whispers in the Baron’s ear.
    
    “I am afraid, Aron, there is grave news for you - Your dear mother has returned her soul to God.”

****

Aron drives very fast.  A Turkish roadblock across the road. He brakes to a dusty halt.

Captain Aziz steps out from the barrier: “Ah, Mr. Satan - we have been waiting for you. It seems it has become necessary to requisition your vehicle - the Muftir has demanded it.”

Aron furiously: “Damn you man, I’m late for my Mother’s funeral!”

Captain Aziz is quick to respond: “We will escort you then!”

Soldiers immediately jump onto the running board.

****

The Cemetery at Zikhron Ya’akov c 1912

The cemetery at Zikhron Ya’akov. The date is January 31st 1912. Malka’s burial, a mound of freshly dug earth.

Old man Efraim, Zvi and his wife Sara Hinda, Sam and his spouse, Miriam - ‘Miri’, various grandchildren, Toba, Sara, Alex with weeping Rifka and faithful Abu Farrid with also weeping Ayla, as well as Zikhron notables and elders with Rabbi Kornfeld officiating, all stand at the graveside.

    “A woman of worth,” chants the Rabbi. “A true woman of the Land. Now we await this dear mother’s sons to say the mourners’ prayer.”

Everyone waits uncomfortably for Aron, who everyone knows, has been summoned from the Baron in Jerusalem. Will he be back in time to bury his mother?

Sara, with her mother’s black shawl over her head, her face calm, her hands folded like a bird’s wings in her lap; no indication of the sorrow and turmoil she is feeling.

At last, Aron arrives and hurries to the graveside. A visible sigh of relief as the Mourners’ Kaddish, the Remembrance Prayer, is chanted by the men of the family; the father, Aron, Sam, Alex and Zvi.

Each male takes a spadeful of earth to fill the grave. 

Everyone files past, placing a pebble onto the newly covered grave and Sara kneels at the foot of the grave for a last farewell.

Malka's Grave

     ****

The screech of brakes as the Muftir Hassan Bey, driven by his driver in Aron’s pick up truck, stops at the Army Post where Turkish Soldiers click their booted heels and salute.

The townsfolk watch as the Muftir gets out and inspects the Guard.

The troops yell: “Allah Akbar! The Sultan is king, the Sultan is king!”

     ****

The family sitting Shiva on a low couch. Aron, Efraim, Zvi, Sam, their wives, Alex and Sara, with weeping Rifka consoled by Absa. Relatives and family friends, including Toba, have gathered. A table spread with food, boiled eggs and butter cookies. The mourners eat and talk in subdued tones.

Toba to Sara: “What will you do now, darling Sarati?”

Sara responds: “What I have always done. Cook, sew and keep the house,” she says with a slight, self deprecating smile. “What else should I do?”

But in her heart, her pain is all enveloping. Her mother gone, makes her a prisoner in the home. Her sister, in love with dashing Absa, prevented from furthering her relationship because, she, the unmarried, older sister stands in the way. She wants to give Rifka her freedom and so, at the end of that miserable year when Aron, takes her aside and asks her if she would like to travel to meet ‘some friends’ of his in Paris and Hamburg, she finds herself agreeing. Perhaps she will find a husband there?

****

Sara & Mrs. Soskin in Paris

‘Despite coming from what some might consider to be a one horse town in the middle of nowhere, Sara was no country bumpkin and so as we have heard, in 1912 when she was twenty-two and recovering from the death of her mother, dear Malka, Aron sent her on a European trip to try and cheer her up and perhaps to find a husband. A visit to Europe’s capitals was considered the height of middle class aspiration for one's children. Actually Ephraim, did not approve but Aron wanted Sara to expand her horizons and ‘see the world’ and eventually permission was granted from the reluctant and so recently widowed, parent and a suitable chaperone was arranged. An educational rite of passage, a break from our little Eastern backwater, a visit first to the City of Love and a welcome replenishment of Culture and Art - with capital 'C' and 'A'. Sara, despite the pretty picture of our heroine with her chaperone, in a just bought white muslin dress and feathered hat, photographed in a Paris Studio, she only wanted to come home as quickly as possible! The dress hung in her wardrobe for many years, quite pointless for the life she would choose back home in Zikhron. I never saw her wear it...     

She went next to Hamburg, arriving on October 18th. There a Mrs. Soskin, the wife of Aron's colleague Selig Soskin, came to pick her up at the railway station.  

Sara & Mrs. Soskin at the Train Station in Hamburg

Sara wrote to Aron: ‘The beautiful Hamburg welcomed me with a great weeping, darkness and pouring rain in the streets. I was hoping to find a letter from you here, but there wasn’t one. It’s been more than two weeks since you’ve written to me. Why? I suppose that you are very busy these days. You must have been at the trustees’ yearly meeting. Let me know what was decided and if the Americans were happy with you.. My dear, I spent so much money in Paris, which is awful. I don’t really know where it all went! I have to confess that the people I met in Hamburg were not exactly to my liking particularly the women, who are not very cultured and usually have a sweet tooth and thus are fat like cows..’

In Berlin, where she arrived on November 7, 1912, under the care of another family friend, a Mrs. Berman, Sara wrote of the unpleasant slushy snow, the expense of everything and that she wants nothing more than to return home.

‘To tell you the truth, I will be really happy when I am home. Here I am at a Jewish pension with Mrs. Berman and her family, there are many Russians, everywhere Russians, wherever you move, you find them. Mrs. Berman’s sisters are modern girls and, of course, look askance at people like us. They study in the conservatoire, play music, are very much concerned with their appearances, but I find them rather ignorant. I am, of course, ignorant, too and yet, even to my surprise, my aspirations are different than those of other people. When I am surrounded by people who are inferior to me, I cannot stand it. I like to be among people who are superior, so that I can draw from their knowledge and hear interesting things.’

She complains too of the lack of letters from Aron: ‘It has been several weeks and I haven’t heard any news from you, or your secretary... I don’t have any other news. I am healthy but it seems that I have gained too much weight. I am not happy about this. I will try to lose some weight at home.’

So was my darling’s opinion of the of the bourgeois ladies of Berlin and Hamburg and of her expanding waistline. And of course she did not find a husband or a romantic liaison of any shape or size on those expensive travels...’

****

Despite his increasingly busy schedule, Aron continues with his plans and many machinations for his sister’s happiness.

A few months later he asks her: “Would you like to go to Constantinople? To be our eyes on the ground, so to speak.”

Sara is intrigued and curious. Yes, she yearns for something new and the notion of being involved in some way, with helping the Yishuv free itself of Ottoman dominance, is not a new one.

And when Aron adds: “I think I have found you a husband.”

She raises her eyebrows a fraction, her eyes full of questions but she asks nothing more.

    “His name is Haim Abraham. I very much hope that you will like him...”

Sara knows nothing of the man in question but she seizes the opportunity, knowing her brother has her best interests and those of the Yishuv, at heart.

****