Authors: Cynthia Freeman
Her reply was, “I have a very big family here.”
Two days later, trembling on a podium, Golda Meir found herself facing a distinguished gathering of members of that family. They were leaders of the Council of Jewish Federations who had come from forty-eight states of the Union. For the daughter of a Ukrainian carpenter, the task ahead seemed impossible.
Now Golda Meir listened to the toastmaster announcing her name. After that, without a single note, she proceeded to weave her spell…
“You must believe me when I say that I have not come to the United States solely to prevent seven hundred thousand Jews from being wiped off the face of the earth. During these last years, the Jewish people have lost six million of their kind, and it would be presumptuous indeed of us to remind the Jews of the world that seven hundred thousand Jews are in danger. That is not the question. If, however, these seven hundred thousand Jews survive, then the Jews of the world will survive with them, and their freedom will be forever assured. If not, then there is little doubt that for centuries there will be no Jewish people, there will be no Jewish nation, and all our hopes will be smashed.”
She paused, then went on, “In a few months a Jewish State will exist in Palestine. We shall fight for its birth. That is natural. We shall pay for it with our blood. That is normal. The best among us will fall, that is certain. But what is equally certain is that our morale will not waver no matter how numerous our invaders may be.
“I came here to ask you Jews of America, to plead for an almost impossible sum of money. It will take twenty-five to thirty million dollars to buy the heavy arms needed to face the invaders’ inexhaustible arsenals.” Again she paused, taking a sip of water. Then her deep, sad eyes looked out over the crowd and she went on.
“My friends, we live in a very brief present. When I tell you we need this money immediately, it does not mean next month, or in two months. It means right now …
“It is not for you to decide whether we shall continue our struggle or not. We shall fight. The Jewish community of Palestine will never hang out the white flag before the mufti of Jerusalem … but you can decide one thing—whether the victory will be ours or the mufti’s.”
The hush that had fallen over the audience convinced Golda that she had failed. Then the entire assembly of men and women rose in an overwhelming wave of applause. Immediately, while the echoes still rang through the room, volunteers scrambled to the platform with their pledges. Before dinner was over, Golda had been pledged over a million dollars, to be paid immediately in cash.
When the assembly left, Golda Meir sat alone at the long, empty table as the lights of the banquet hall began to dim. She couldn’t quite believe what had taken place this evening. It was as though she hadn’t spoken but that God had somehow whispered the words in her ears and she had merely repeated them. Totally spent, she lit a cigarette, picked up her cup of cold coffee and was about to sip from it when she looked up to see Dovid Landau standing in front of her, with an attractive woman alongside.
She recalled how much she had wanted him to do what she had miraculously managed to do this evening. “I’m happy to see you, Dovid, and delighted you stayed after all the others left … The response was something … I still can’t get over it But, still it’s so good to see someone from home, someone you’ve shared so much with …”
“You were magnificent, Golda. No messenger of God or Israel could have equaled you.”
Golda looked at him closely. She was not a shy woman, but compliments always embarrassed her. “It wasn’t my eloquence that did it. It was the great need that our people have always rallied to.”
“Only half true … Now, I would very much like you to meet my wife, Chavala.”
Golda extended her hand to the attractive woman she’d noticed earlier. “It’s my pleasure to meet Dovid’s wife.”
“And it’s my honor,” Chavala said, and quickly handed Golda Meir a check made out to the National Jewish Federation fund, in the amount of one million dollars.
Golda looked at it, then at Chavala. “In the name of Israel, I thank you.”
Chavala swallowed back the tears. If there had been an Israel, her sister Sheine would not be lying in a shallow grave in a land where even that grave would have been considered a desecration. “This won’t be the last … I only hope it will help.”
Golda Meir answered simply, “It will help.”
Back home, Chavala thought about how once she’d actually hated Palestine. And a million dollars seemed barely a poor gesture in behalf of its rebirth.
Lying next to Dovid in the dark, she said, “When the British leave, there’ll be a war, won’t there, Dovid?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Silence, then: “You know what I’ve been thinking, Dovid?”
“What? You’re always thinking,” and he turned to embrace her.
“No … Dovid … listen … I think I need a vacation.”
He had to laugh. Chavala, of course, always had a plan. He could almost hear the gears meshing. “Where are you planning to go?”
“Israel, where else? I haven’t seen my sons, Sheine’s boy, my other nephews, to say nothing of my granddaughter.”
“You’ve gotten pictures—sorry, sorry, a bad joke,” he quickly said when she gave him a rap in the ribs. “How long a vacation?”
“I can’t say, I’m not going to think about time. Now … if you think you could stay until the day after tomorrow, we could fly back together …”
He wanted to shout out his pleasure. They were facing a war, God only knew how bad or for how long, but at this moment none of it could intrude on the feeling he had from holding in his arms the woman that meant more to him than life itself.
When they arrived in Israel, Chavala spent the first few days in Jerusalem seeing Raizel, then Dovid drove her to Dvora’s where she would stay.
At Dvora’s house in Kfar Shalom the pandemonium nearly equaled what had gone on in Tel Aviv the night Israel was voted its partition. Laughter, tears, whoops … and a sudden quieting when Chavala met her nephew, Sheine’s son, Yehudah Rabinsky. Then once again laughter and exclamations at the sight of her granddaughter Tikvah. The child was almost two-and-a-half, and Pnina was expecting again. She laughed and cried at the sight of her handsome sons, and embraced Simone as though she were her daughter, and because soon she would be her daughter-in-law. And most of all because she had made Joshua so happy.
A week later, at Dvora and Ari’s farm, Chavala and Dovid witnessed the marriage of Joshua and Simone. The
chuppah
was white satin, which Chavala sewed, insisting that she had never lost her touch. Everyone agreed she was right.
That morning the bride’s coronet was made of white roses from Dvora’s garden. The short tulle veil was placed beneath it. Her dress was a simple white embroidered organdy, and around her slim waist was a crushed cummerbund of the violet velvet. Simone carried the only thing she had left from her mother, a small Bible. Between the pages of the Book of Ruth was a white satin streamer to which was attached a spray of violets.
Joshua was dressed in his uniform, and wore a white satin
yarmulke.
Standing on either side of him were Dovid and Chavala. Since Simone had no parents, Dvora and Ari escorted her to Joshua. Reuven and Zvi waited near the
chuppah
even after the bride and groom were alongside each other.
The ceremony took place under the spreading almond tree in Dvora’s garden. The rabbi who had married Pnina and Reuven performed the ceremony in front of the community of Kfar Shalom … they were all like family. After being pronounced man and wife, the groom kissed the bride, stomped on the glass, and the festivities began.
Cakes and cookies had been baked by the dozen in Dvora’s kitchen. Homemade breads and rolls, roasted chickens, turkeys, salads and platters of fresh fruit strained the table’s capacity to hold them. But it was a day of days. Even Raizel had consented to leave Mea Shearim and come with her sons, their wives and children. It was a day that would be remembered forever. A day of joy. A day of family.
T
HE BRITISH, AT LONG
last, were leaving.
It was May 14, 1948. British soldiers were leaving the old walled city of Jerusalem. There was a solemnity about them as they marched along the worn cobblestones in formation. At the head and the rear of each column one soldier held a Sten gun crooked in his arm. The sound of bagpipes reverberated inside these ancient stone passageways for the last time.
Along the Street of the Jews from the sculptured stone windows of their synagogues and the mildewed hallways of the sacred houses of learning, bearded old men watched them pass by, watched as their ancestors before them had watched other soldiers march out of Jerusalem—Babylonians, Romans, Crusaders, Turks, and now the last, one prayed, were leaving.
As the last British column moved down the street, it veered left up a twisting cobblestone alley and stopped in front of the Hurva Synagogue. Inside, surrounded by his collection of holy books, Rabbi Mordechai Weingarten, an elder of the Jewish Quarter, hesitated for a moment at the knock on the door of his private study. He got up, put on his black long coat, adjusted the old rimmed spectacles, then his black hat, and stepped out into the courtyard.
In front of the rabbi stood a middle-aged British major wearing the yellow-and-red insignia of the Suffolk regiment From his right hand dangled a bar of rusted iron. With a solemn gesture he offered it to the elderly rabbi. The old man looked down at the object in his hand and then said, “This is the key to the Zion Gate. From the year of 70 A.D. until this moment a key to the gates of Jerusalem has never been in Jewish hands. This is the first time in eighteen centuries that our people have possessed it.”
Extending a trembling hand, Weingarten held the hand of the British major as the British major accepted the gesture, then stood at attention and saluted. “I regret to say that our relations have often been strained, but let us part as friends. Good-bye and good luck.”
The Englishman turned and marched his men out of the courtyard as the rabbi intoned, “Blessed art thou, Oh God, who has granted us life and sustenance and permitted us to reach this day.”
Scenes elsewhere that day were not quite so benign or touching. As Sir Alan Cunningham, the last British High Commissioner for Palestine, sailed from Haifa he deliberately left behind a chaotic land without police or public services, confident that the Arab superiority of numbers would fill the vacuum.
On that day in another part of the world, London to be exact, Whitehall had been hopeful almost up until the very end that, after the ratification of the partition and with the problems that had fallen on the Jews, the Yishuv would turn to the British for help. But the Yishuv that had stood up to the terror and bloodshed of Haj Amim el Husseini would not ask the British for its help now….
In another part of what was now the State of Israel, five Arab countries were poised like vultures at the borders of Israel, only waiting for the British to evacuate so that they could wage their holy war against the Israelis….
At Israeli General Headquarters, Israel’s commanders had been assembled. They listened now to their leader, their Commander-in-Chief, Binya Yariv. Yariv looked at the young faces of his commanding officers and said, “I hardly need tell you that by tomorrow morning we will be at war. It will be an undeclared war. We need no formal declarations, we know who the aggressors are. Now let us get down to it.”
Yariv took a sip of water, cleared his throat and looked at a few notes. “The strength of the invading Arab armies has been estimated at twenty-three thousand five hundred. They are equipped with British and French tanks, airplanes, heavy artillery, spare parts and ammunition. We have some three thousand regulars under arms and approximately fourteen thousand inadequately trained recruits, most of which have come from the camps. The others are newly arrived immigrants. They may be raw, but they are on fire with the conviction that we have no alternative except to win.
Never again Masada
is their faith, and ours.” Yariv flipped over the sheet of notes and went on. “Now, what we have in the way of arms is only ten thousand rifles with fifty rounds of ammunition each, no tanks, four ancient cannons smuggled in from Mexico, and thirty-six hundred submachine guns … and a very unusual piece of hardware called the Davidka.”
Yariv smiled. “We can thank God for its inventor, David Leibovitch. It’s made up from waterpipes and packed with explosives, nails and bits of scrap metal, and it’s about as effective as David’s slingshot when it comes to destruction. But it’s at least accurate and it makes a hell of a lot of noise, enough, we hope, to make the Arabs run.
“Now, with the British gone, Dovid Landau tells me that those arms that have been stored in Alexandria by him are already en route, and that he’s making progress in Czechoslovakia. He told me this last night. This morning when I spoke to him from Paris he had purchased two small one-engine planes. A little obsolete, but they can at least drop hand grenades … All right, gentlemen, let’s break for lunch and then we’ll get on with the campaign.”
After a brief luncheon, the men stood around the campaign table and scanned the maps.
Pointing to the sectors, Yariv said, “You, Daniel Avriel, will take command of the Negev … Ehud Biton, you will defend the Galilee … Dov Laskin, the Huleh … Nachman Messer, Tel Aviv up to Haifa. You will all have your instructions shortly.” He looked at Reuven. “I don’t have to tell you what we’re up against, or that the most important of all is Jerusalem … anything we gain will be a loss unless Jerusalem holds … without Jerusalem there will be no Israel. Reuven Landau will take command. Joshua Landau will be second in command, and Zvi Ben-Levi will act as liaison.”
Yariv paused and tried to put out of his mind what these young commanding officers would be facing … outnumbered, with a small cache of arms, they would truly have to fight like the lions of Judea …
“And you, Yehudah Rabinsky, will be in command of Tiberias, Hebron and Safed … Safed is the most vulnerable.” And almost in a jocular tone he added, “I suggest to you, Yehudah, that you equip yourself with a Davidka … the Arabs are firmly in control of those cities. Now, I wish you God’s speed. And more than your share of good luck …”