by Ruth Gruber
Raquela
A Woman of Israel
Ruth Gruber
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
AFTERWORD
PREFACE
On a quest, I flew to Israel to find a woman—not Golda Meir, not a powerful world-renowned figure, but one whose life would define what it means to be a woman of Israel.
Having covered the story of Israel since the end of the Second World War as foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, I knew that every woman in Israel had a story; and nearly all the men I queried said they had the perfect candidate.
“Who?” I asked.
“My wife,” they said.
For countless hours, driving up and down the country, I tracked down candidates. I wanted a woman who had taken part in the so-called “illegal immigration” of ships like Exodus 1947 that broke through the British blockade and brought thousands of survivors home to the Land of Israel; a woman who herself had been on the front lines in all its wars; a woman who had known in her own life the joy and agony of growing up in the biblical land, of being a woman of Israel.
In the end, it was Dr. Kalman J. Mann, then director general of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, who said, “I think I have a candidate for you. She’s a ninth-generation Jerusalemite. A nurse and midwife. She delivered most of the babies born to the Holocaust survivors, the ones who were pulled off the ‘illegal ships’ and imprisoned in the British camps in Athlit and Cyprus. She worked in the Hadassah Hospital during all our wars. And she was so beautiful that every man in Jerusalem wanted to marry her.”
Five minutes after I met Raquela Prywes (pronounced PRIV-ess) in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, I knew my search was over. Beneath her serenity and composure, I sensed a woman of passion. Love was a word that sprang to mind as we continued talking—love for her country, for her people, for her family. Hers was a passion for life.
For nine months, I saw her nearly every day, traveled with her and lived in all the places where she had lived. I wanted to capture a sense of place and time and history in the story of a hitherto unknown but fascinating woman.
I found that she had moved through so many levels of Israel’s history, and that her own life touched so many people, that to get the true measure of who she was and what she did, I spent long hours interviewing scores of people for whom acknowledgments are given at the end of the book. I offer them my deepest gratitude for sharing their warmth, their time, and their memories. Many of them became lasting friends.
It was Golda Meir as well as Raquela, who told me the story of how Raquela had saved the life of Golda’s only daughter, Sarah, dangerously ill from toxemia. “Raquela,” said Golda, putting down her ubiquitous cigarette, “was the best nurse-midwife we had in Israel.”
It was Shlomo Hillel, the Minister of Police and later Speaker of the Knesset, who opened the gates of the British prison camp in Athlit so that Raquela could show me the primitive wooden barracks where she had met her first Holocaust survivors, many of them half-naked, some wearing tattered rags like shipwrecks on an uncharted island. She shared their outrage and despair. They were captives living in a camp behind barbed wire on the very soil of the Promised Land, without water, without privacy, dehumanized. Their crime—they were Jews who had dared to sail on leaky “illegal” ships determined to go home.
Athlit, an ancient and beautiful port just below Haifa, was famous. In 1945, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, then a 23-year-old commander in the Palmach, had sprung the zoo refugees imprisoned in Athlit’s prison camp. Years later, when I began my research for this book, Rabin drew a map in my notebook showing me how, in the middle of the night, he had foiled the British soldiers and police. Carrying a little boy on his shoulders, and commanding 60 young Palmach men and women, he had led the fragile men and women and children, still damaged from the war, up and down mountains, through forests and across tank-patrolled roads to Kibbutz Bet Oren. The kibbutzniks embraced the exhausted people, gave them kibbutz clothing, hot food, and clean beds. In the morning, when the British patrols arrived, searching every possible hiding place, the refreshed refugees acted as though they had been kibbutzniks all their lives.
To understand some of Raquela’s anger, compassion, and love as she nurtured the refugees, delivered their babies, and nursed wounded soldiers back to health, I was able to draw on my own experiences covering, among other assignments, Nazi Germany; the voyage of the famous ship Exodus 1947; Israel’s War of Independence and the wars that followed it; the flights of refugees from Arab and communist lands; and long days and nights in the prison camp in Cyprus where, like Raquela, I felt and smelled and tasted what it meant to be a survivor living behind barbed wire.
This is Raquela’s story. I wrote it with truth and love.
RAQUELA
A WOMAN OF ISRAEL
ONE
JERUSALEM, AUGUST 1929
The handsome black-robed woman walked regally, carrying on her head a basket laden with eggs and freshly picked figs.
Five-year-old Raquela flung open the garden gate. Mama was already waiting in the little flagstone patio.
“Salaam aleikum, Aisha,” Mama greeted her friend, in Arabic.
“Salaam aleikum, Mrs. Levy.” Aisha lowered the basket from her head, easing it onto the stone floor as though it were filled with precious jewels. Mama brought out the shiny copper tray with demitasse cups filled with Turkish coffee.
Raquela stood, feet apart, in the center of the patio, an eager participant.
“Aisha”—Mama put down her cup—“I need the freshest eggs you have. My husband has the flu, and all he wants to eat is soft-boiled eggs.”
Aisha drained the little cup. “Today I brought you eggs so fresh, this minute the chickens laid them.”
“Then give me twenty-five. And I’ll take a kilo of figs.”
From her basket Aisha lifted a small wooden scale, measured the figs, and threw in an extra handful. “My present for your son Jacob. Because he gives me pine twigs from your garden for my cooking.” She dropped her voice. “And because I love him.”
“If your husband hears you love my son”—Mama’s eyes were mischievous—“he will beat you up.”
Raquela waited with familiar anticipation; it was a game they played every day.
Aisha smiled. “I won’t tell my husband.”
She bent to hug Raquela. “And you, little beauty, you will break many hearts in your time.”
Raquela closed her eyes, letting Aisha wrap her in a cloak of musk and incense. She loved both these women, who could hardly have been less alike: Mama was tiny—barely five feet tall—with high-boned, Slavic cheeks, a delicate carved nose, and long chestnut hair radiant with sunlight. In her white blouse and pleated navy-blue skirt she looked like a young schoolteacher; she had, in fact, been teaching kindergarten when she married Raquela’s father, her former teacher. Aisha, squatting on her heels, was exotic, mysterious, her body loosely robed in the voluminous Bedouin gown, her hair shrouded in a muslin shawl, her charcoal eyes burning inside the kohl lines she penciled around them.
The morning transaction was over. Aisha gathered up her basket and scales and disappeared down the street.
Early the next afternoon, Raquela was helping Mama pick flowers for the dinner table when the garden gate flew open.
Zayda, Mama’s father, bolted in, the black coat-tails of his Hassidic garb flying behind him.
Mama dropped her shears. “What are you doing here on Friday afternoon before Shabbat?”
Zayda tried to catch his breath. He was slightly taller than Mama, with the same high Slavic cheekbones and the same sharp twinkling eyes. But today his eyes were different. Now they held fear.
Raquela had never seen him so excited. At home, in his threadbare cottage in a courtyard in the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem, he was always bustling, laughing with Bubba, Mama’s mother, singing Hassidic melodies, so happy even his beard seemed to bob with joy.
Now his beard was damp and sprinkled with perspiration.
“Trouble in Jerusalem,” he panted. “I caught the bus to come up to warn you. I can stay only a few minutes—I must get home before Shabbat.”
“But what happened?” Mama asked shakily.
“The Arabs are rioting in the Old City.”
The panic in his voice sent Raquela hiding in Mama’s skirt. Mama lifted her into her arms. “It’s all right, child.”
“I was praying at the Wailing Wall. I heard shouts and loud screams. So I ran down the street to see. There were maybe two thousand Arabs marching from the mosques. Carrying banners like they carry on their holy days. Shouting ‘Death to the Jews; there is no God but Allah; death to the Jews.’”
Zayda was frantic. “Don’t waste a minute, Tova. Get your family together. Run.”
Mama patted Raquela on the back reassuringly. “We have time. We’re three miles away from the Old City.”
“Three miles! You think up here, in Bet Hakerem, with your trees and your gardens and your playgrounds, you’ll be safe? They can get here in an hour. Run, I tell you.”
Raquela saw a shadow on the stone floor. Papa’s six-foot-tall body filled the doorway.
“What’s all the commotion?” His voice was raspy.
The August sun baked the patio, but Papa, wrapped in his burgundy winter bathrobe, was shivering.
“Nissim, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” Mama scolded. “With your fever, you’ll catch pneumonia.”
Papa stepped away from the door and towered over Zayda. “What terrible things bring you here before Shabbat?”
“Sick or not, Nissim”—Zayda shook his finger—“you must get the family to safety. Mobs of Arabs are leaving the Old City. They’re fanning out in different directions, carrying guns and sticks. Some are already in Mea Shearim. Houses are burning. Who knows how many have been killed?”
“My mother?” Papa asked. “Do you have any word?”
Zayda shook his head.
Raquela shut her eyes, clinging to Mama. Were mobs of Arabs attacking her tall, beautiful grandmother?
“I don’t know what parts of Jerusalem they’re in now,” Zayda said, his voice edged with hysteria. “We’ll know soon enough.”
“Is no one stopping them?” Papa demanded. “The British? The Haganah?”
The Jews of Palestine had formed small groups to defend themselves. They called themselves the Haganah—the Hebrew word for “self-defense.”
“I saw some Haganah men with guns,” Zayda said. “Wherever they appeared, the Arabs ran away. And I saw some British policemen on horseback chasing them. But they were only a handful; the Arabs are thousands. They must have been brought into Jerusalem from all over the country. Nissim, take the family and hide. Now I have to leave. It’ll be sundown soon. If I can’t get a bus, I’ll have to run all the way home to Mea Shearim.”
Zayda flew out of the garden gate.
“We have no time to waste,” Papa said. “We must go straight to the Seminar.” He looked out the gate, down Boulevard Street. “I see people running already. The news must be spreading fast. Ah, thank God, here are our boys.”
Twelve-year-old Jacob and nine-year-old Yair entered the garden. Jacob was a runner for the Haganah. He looked at Papa. “You’ve heard?”
Papa nodded.
Jacob caught his breath. “We’re expecting trouble from Deir Yassin and Ein Karem.” These were nearby Arab villages. “I have five blocks; I have to tell the people to go to the Seminar immediately. I’ll meet you up there.”
Papa held Raquela’s hand. Mama and Yair hurried out with the two baskets each family kept ready for just this emergency—one filled with clothing, the other with food. They ran down their street, then turned into the circle and raced up the Street of the Circle to the David Yellin Seminar, a teachers’ seminary and school.
Raquela had watched the Seminar rise, like a romantic castle, on the highest hill. Not yet completed, it cut the sky, a huge bird of honey-colored stone with three arches in front and two long wings folded back. Someday there would be broad entrance stairs; now there was a concrete incline, and, inside, wooden planks formed a slanted runway from floor to floor.
Looking up at the parapets, Raquela saw two seventeen-year-old boys she knew, holding rifles, scanning the road for Arabs.
Grasping Papa’s hand tightly, she ran up the concrete incline with Mama and Yair trailing with the two baskets and a pile of blankets. The building was already filling up with people as they mounted the wooden plank to the second floor.
The neighbors had long ago decided that if trouble came, the Seminar would be their sanctuary. Taking a lesson from the American pioneers, they had built it like a fortress. Here they could stand together and defend themselves. Each family’s space had been carefully staked out according to the number of balatas—eight-inch-square tiles—on the floor. Papa had been given space in the unfinished synagogue, where other families were already camping in little clusters.
Mama spread some blankets on the tiles and bedded Papa down. His tall, strong body was burning.
She took a swift survey of the narrow synagogue. Arched windows with no glass, no protection. Cold balatas, cold tiles. Jerusalem days could be broiling in August, but the nights were always cool, and sometimes freezing.
“I’m going home,” Mama announced, “to get more blankets and my warm featherbed quilt.”
“Tova, don’t go. It’s too dangerous out there.”
Raquela heard the anxiety in Papa’s raspy throat.
“Don’t worry, Nissim,” Mama said. “I’ll be careful.”
Raquela clung to Mama’s skirt. “Don’t go, Mama. Don’t go.”
“I must, child. Papa is sick. I don’t want him getting sicker, lying on that cold floor with the wind coming in at night.”
“I’ll give him my sweater. Give him my blanket. I can sleep on the tiles. Please, Mama, don’t go.”
“I’ve got to, Raquela. And I’ll bring back your crayons and your picture books.”
Raquela stumbled down the wooden plank after Mama. “Wait, Mama, don’t go.” She followed Mama toward the door.
Papa called out, “Yair, go after Raquela. Get her back.”
Yair dragged her back into the fortress-school, still weeping.
Within half an hour, Mama was back, carrying blankets and a thick featherbed quilt. Through the open windows the family could see the sun beginning to sink behind the hills. Mama took two small candlesticks from one of her baskets, set them firmly on the white cloth she had spread on the tile floor, covered her eyes, and recited the Sabbath prayer.
More candles were lit in the little campsites all over the half-finished synagogue. The families joined in chanting the love song to the Sabbath, the poem that Jews all over the world sang at dusk:
O come, my friend, to meet the bride,
O come and welcome the Sabbath queen.
The magic of Shabbat cast its familiar spell over the school. Raquela forgot the terror outside.
Shots rang out from the roof. A cascade of bullets rocked the building. Raq
uela hid under the blanket and squeezed herself into Papa’s protective arms.
Instantly the women blew out the Sabbath candles. The sun was gone; the room was in total darkness. The families huddled together. Were they safe, even in their fortress-school?
Footsteps resounded on the wooden planks. The front door opened, and banged shut.
Mama whispered to Raquela, “Come, child. Get under the featherbed and try to sleep.”
Raquela lay with her eyes shut, but she could not sleep. From a family group next to theirs, she heard a woman weeping. “Did we move up here to Bet Hakerem to be slaughtered?”
“Sh-sh”—Raquela could almost see Mama trying to calm the woman—“don’t talk that way. We came here for our children, to get away from the crowded city, to give them good air and room to grow in.”
“Good air!” the woman mocked. “Room to grow! They may never grow. We may all be killed.”
Raquela lay under the warm quilt, frozen with fear.
Raanan Weitz, one of the seventeen-year-old sentries, entered the synagogue. He was carrying a rifle and a flashlight.
“We’ve driven them off,” he announced.
Raquela, still awake, could hear little prayers of thanks going up around the room.
“We saw them from the roof,” Raanan explained. “A whole gang of Arabs coming across the wadi from Deir Yassin.”
Deir Yassin, an all-Arab village, was known to be a hotbed of fanatics. Playing on the rocks in Bet Hakerem, Raquela could look right across the riverbed to the Arab village she and her friends dreaded most.
Raanan tried to put the people’s fears to rest. “We scared a whole bunch of them with our rifles, shooting from the roof. Then we ran down to make sure they hadn’t penetrated Bet Hakerem. Sure enough, they had got into some of the gardens and were entering the houses.”
Raquela listened, her heart beating wildly, as Raanan went on.
“When they saw us, they beat it back across the wadi to Deir Yassin. We’re safe now. You can all go to sleep.”
Saturday afternoon, flames lit the sky.
“Motza is burning!”
The words raced through the crowded halls. Everyone knew someone in Motza, the picturesque little resort village in the Hills of Judea.