Day 5: Fearless Females: How I Met Your Mother

This latest prompt has brought me to the shocking realization that despite the years worth of research I have done on my family tree, I don't know how my grandparents met. I learned how one set of great-grandparents met, Minnie and William Bloomfield, thanks to the memoir she wrote (see: Love 1920s Style), but that's about it. More surprising, I don't remember how my parents met!

My husband and I met on a blind date. It's one of our favorite stories and it comes up all the time. It's a great story and we tell it well. It has to do with a pay phone at a bar, a fireplace and some tea. I tell my side, my husband chimes in with his. We weave the tale like pros and we can get any dinner conversation rolling by sharing our story. We always learn something new about the people we are with, as they proceed to share their own stories. I've asked dozens of friends and relatives to tell me how they met. How come I never asked my ancestors?

Today, I asked my parents. I'm sure they've told me before, but I have long forgotten. I know my mother was an American volunteer on my dad's kibbutz, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak. I assume they met there, when she came to live on Kibbutz for a few months. What remains a mystery, is how they actually met. When did they first lay eyes on each other? How did they came to fall in-love?

My parents on the Kibbutz around
 the time they met

"Abba" (dad in Hebrew), "I have a question for you. Can you tell me about meeting mom for the first time?" I sent my dad a prompt via facebook.

"You want to know How I Met Your Mother?" he asked.

Yes. I laughed and wrote. "I want to know how you met my mother!" My dad is a very funny guy but this time, he wasn't trying to be funny. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about the hit TV sitcom, "How I Met Your Mother." My son dressed up as Barney Stinson recently for a costume party, ducky tie and all, and my dad had no idea who he was supposed to be.

"It was at a party. I met your mother at a party," said my dad. "She came to the Kibbutz with her friends and there was a party to welcome the new volunteers. I was there," he told me. "My friend and I spotted two girls across the room and we decided they would make good potential girlfriends," he said. "I picked your mother and he picked her friend Phyllis. We both ended up getting married to the girls we "picked," so I would say we did pretty well!" he declared.

"Were you still in the army at the time?" I asked my dad who had spent three years in the Israeli army between the ages of eighteen to twenty one. 

"No. I had been out about four months by then and working in the cotton fields," he recalled.

My mother, remembered the encounter a bit differently. It was one of her first weekends in Israel. She was living in Jerusalem and she had a free long weekend because of one of the Jewish holidays. According to my dad it was Sukkot, known in English as the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths. She didn't have any family to spend the holiday with so she chose to go with her new Canadian friends to the Kibbutz where they were scheduled to volunteer later-on during the year.

Probably not "the tree", but a tree on the kibbutz.

"So you weren't living there yet?" I asked her to clarify. In my mind they had met when she arrived to live on Kibbutz. "No, not yet," she explained. "We didn't move to the Kibbutz for another six months. I remember sitting under a tree playing the guitar with my girlfriends. You know, the trees next to the communal dining hall, remember?" she asked.

I did remember the central green next to the dining hall. It was the at heart of the Kibbutz which was founded by my grandparents and where both my father and I were born. The green was multifunctional, it served as playground, soccer field, party space and central quad.

"Your dad came up, listened and sang and then we talked for a long time. I don't know if I can say it was love at first sight," she replied when I pushed, "but certainly we liked each other right away. I know he has a different version. Something about a party. He says that he came into a party with his friends, and they each picked one girl. He picked me!"

"So you didn't see him again for six months?" I asked. "Of course I did. They used to steal a car from the Kibbutz and drive up to Jerusalem to see us whenever they could." "Steal cars? Didn't they have access to cars on the Kibbutz?" I asked. "They did, but they needed permission to take one of the few cars the Kibbutz owned back then. If they didn't have permission, they would just sneak out and take it," admitted my mother.

My parents under another tree, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak, 1967. 

From years of asking people how they met, I've learned that inevitably there are two slightly different version to the story, and my parents were no exception. I'm curious which version their friends will support. They may have met at the party first, but my mom's strongest impression was from talking to my dad under the tree. My dad remembers spending time under the tree during the holiday weekend, but he insists that he first set his eyes on my mom at the party.

Now that I've heard this story, I remember hearing it before. Thanks +Lisa Alzo for this great prompt and for reminding me to document the story of how my parents met! I highly recommend that if you don't know or don't remember how your parents met, ask them again. Make sure your father tells you HOW HE MET YOUR MOTHER!

I dedicate this post to my mother who agreed to go "public" with this story.

Fellow Bloggers, if you wrote about this prompt today and want to share your story, feel free to paste a link in my comment section!


Visit earlier post in the series:
Women's History Month Day 1: Fearless Females: Favorite Female Ancestor & Genealogy Guru!
Women's History Month Day 2: Fearless Females: Third Great-Grandmother!
Women's History Month Day 3: Fearless Females: The Middle Name That Almost Was
Women's History Month Day 4: Fearless Females: Hats Off to the Top Fearless Female!

To learn more about +Lisa Alzo's 31 inspirational writing prompts in celebration of Women's History Month visit her blog:  The Accidental Genealogist.

Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak

Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak
Continued from Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV


Last week, my son departed for a term in Israel with his high-school class. In honor of his trip I decided to complete the series about his great-grandfather,  my grandfather, Baruch Lavi, who started his journey to Israel in Magdiel, the same place where my son is now living and studying. In the last post in this series, I left my grandfather at Usha, a Tower and Stockade settlement in the northern Galilee. Because of ideological differences Usha began as two independent Kibbutzim, but  the conditions made it apparent, that there was not enough land or resources for two settlements. Luckily, the Jewish Fund, wanted more settlements, and my grandfather’s group, was to be relocated to a deserted hilltop near Natanya for their independent and permanent home for the Tel-Yitzchak group. Three and a half years after arriving in Palestine, my grandfather was finally about to fulfill his dream of building his own Kibbutz. This was a much smaller operation than Hanita (see Part IV). 

David Manela (a founding kibbutz member)
 building the tower on ground breaking day
at Kibbutz Tel- Yitzchak
(Photo from Kibbut Tel Yitzchak Website)

At the break of dawn, July 25, 1938, three lonely tucks, overloaded with equipment, approached the abandoned hilltop. The long neglected, arid wasteland, surrounded by the Poleg River marshes, awaited them. In anticipation, the kibbutz members, spent the night next door at Even Yehuda. There they found shelter and collected the building supplies, tents, food, portable barricades and parts of the tower. Among the young men and women pioneers who piled onto these trucks, were my grandparents. They were twenty-five years old. That night, they embarked on what turned out to be, the rest of their lives. This smal group of Hanoar Hatzioni members from Galicia, won a moral victory for their political ideology and the Zionist youth movements in the diaspora. The hot summer sun beat down as they worked furiously to complete their task before nightfall, when the surrounding Arabs villagers were sure to attack. Together they unloaded supplies and erected the tower. They created a chain, passing buckets of gravel to line and fortify the large wooden wall, the main defense surrounding the fledgling settlement. They did this, without British approval and rendered the Kibbutz an existing settlement, overnight, safe from demolition. Rome was not built in a day, but to the Arabs dismay, another Kibbutz was. 

Hadasah Rosevald
(1920-1938)

The early days at Tel Yitzchak were extremely difficult. The hill was bare, and the sun brutal. The members lived in tents or makeshift boxes, turned homes. The first cement building on the Kibbutz was the cow shed. The mud was deep and vehicles struggled to make their way without sinking in it. They lived in constant danger of attack. As a young girl, I wondered how dangerous it really was on the Kibbutz in those early days. Attacks on the Kibbutz I knew, in the heartland of Israel, seemed unreal, but they did happen. In one such attack, on November 5, 1938, only four month after braking ground, two shots were aimed at the guards, from about eight meters away. The guards returned fire. After they heard the Arab attackers retreat they discovered one of their own, Hadasah Rosevald, had been shot. Hadasa, also from Lvov, joined the Kibbutz in September of 1938. During the day, she worked both as the head of communal projects, and as the nurse since she completed a first aid course. At night, she was in-charge of communications. She operated the spotlight at the top of the watchtower which signaled messages to nearby Jewish settlements. She loved sitting by the campfire with the guards and participating in political discussions. As a important leader in the  Hanoar Hatzioni movement, she was returning from a meeting at the Tel-Aviv central office that night. The movement needed her at the central office and wanted her to move to the city. She refused! She believed in doing the hands on work and was proud to hold such important positions, as a woman, on the Kibbutz. That fateful Shabbat, Hadasa headed towards the post, bringing with her food for the watchmen on call. Only nineteen, she was found dressed in her city clothes, bleeding to death from a bullet-wound to the head. The following morning, grieving kibbutz members buried her, very close to the site where she was found. 

My grandparents in their back yard
under one of the trees the proudly planted
1991

How and when my grandparents met, I am not sure. I know my grandmother Rose Celnik (known as Ruja to all, and Shoshana in Hebrew), was among the founding members. She made Aliya from Tarnov, Poland with Hanoar Hatzioni around 1934, but when exactly she joined my grandfather’s group I am not sure. One of the things that impacted my grandmother the most, and that she loved to tell me about, were the malaria infected mosquitos which where endemic to the swamps in the area. As we walked through the green lawns of the kibbutz, she loved to point out, how when they first arrived, there was absolutely nothing there. On our monthly visit to the Kibbutz my grandparents would greet us as we parked under the tall eucalyptus trees. We could rely on them walking arm in arm receive us. The aged Eucalypti welcomed us with their unique aroma and my grandmother would recall nostalgically: “We planted these tree and many others to dry up the swamps. Back then there was mud, swamps and lots mosquitos” she would say, “and not much food.”

Basic food such as bread was in short supply on the Kibbutz early on. The orange grove was one of the first things they planted. Those oranges quenched their thirst and their satisfied their hunger when there was no bread to be found. At some point the Kibbutz built a bakery. They made enough bread to sell to neighboring villages. Benek (Baruch Sharoni), another founding member, rode the Kibbutz’s horse drawn wagon, on the dirt roads, selling fresh loaves of bread to near-by settlements. As he delivered the bread, he began exchanging books with the neighbors, and that is how the kibbutz's library was born. 

While war was raging in Europe and Israel was fighting for independence, all the kibbutz members were doing their part. My grandfather served as Muchtar, the contact person with the British. I find it funny to think of him communicating with the British, considering his English was very limited. Because of his official responsibilities with the British as a Muchtar, my grandfather was not among the Hagana members who worked in the underground munitions factory on the Kibbutz. Moshe Viser, now the Kibbutz's secretary still recalls Ben Gurion's visit to Tel Yitzchak pre-1948. Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister came to inspect the secret weapons factory. This clandestine factory eventually became part of the Israeli Army's Munitions Industry.

My father (bottom right) with his brother and parents
Around 1950

They lived every aspect of their lives according to their ideology. While they grieved the loss of their families in Europe they absorbed holocaust survivors who were arriving in Israel in droves, and they began having family of their own. My grandfather focus was the Hebrew language. He became a Hebrew expert, and an excellent Hebrew teacher. He taught Hebrew as well as geography at the local elementary school, where he eventually became the principal, educating children from various Kibbutzim and settlements in the area. His proficiency in the Hebrew tongue amazed me. He spoke better than most natives, without any detectable accent. He patiently corrected my Hebrew, constantly pointing out subtleties in the proper use of the language. There are many more stories I can share about my amazing grandfather, but this concludes the series of his early years in Israel, a part of his life which I've had to mostly gather on my own, since he was humble about sharing the details with us

My grandfather (Center) with a group of his students in 1977

Part IV: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

Breaking Ground: Tower and Stockade Period

Continued from Part I, Part II and Part III

The previous posts about my grandfather's life brought us to the period in Israel's independence called the Arab Revult. My grandfather was living in Magdiel at the time awaiting land from the Jewish agency for their new settlement. But, at the beginning of the Arab Revolt, Jewish settlements came to a halt. One group, similar to the Magdiel group was scheduled to settle Tel Amal in Beit Shan Valley. Insecurity and lack of protection from Arab attacks postponed their ground breaking date. Unwilling to give up their dream, the pioneers of this group, came up with a creative solution circumventing settlement quotas imposed by Mandate law. They found a loophole: existing settlements could not be destroyed. They proposed to the Haganah (the Jewish underground) to build a guard tower and defense wall within one day. This would allow the young settlement to defend itself immediately. Though imposed quotas did not allow for new settlement, there was also an existing law which did not allow for disassembling of existing settlements. The challenge was to build a settlement overnight so it would be able to protect itself from unfriendly neighbors. Their success, on December 10, 1936, was the birth of the tower and stockade campaign. Fifty-two fortified agricultural settlements were established during this campaign which lasted until the end of the Arab Revolt in 1939. The establishment of a continuous territory populated by Jews, was to become the basis of the Jewish State, as it was declared by the United Nations partition plan.

From the Spielberg Collection, a rare silent film 

of the construction of a tower and stockade settlement 

(Kibbutz Ein Gev). 

To Arab dismay, and without British support, Jewish settlement continued. To build a settlements so quickly, the Haganah recruited reinforcements. For this reason, among others, Magdiel members—in a secret, undisclosed location—were sworn into the Haganah. In a candlelit ceremony, headed by the officer Eliezer Ziv-Av, my grandfather, took the following oath: 

“I hereby declare that based on personal voluntarism and my own free recognizance I am entering the Hebrew defense organization [Irgun Hahagannah Ha'ivri] in the land of Israel. [Eretz Yisrael]. I swear to be faithful all the days of my life to the Hagannah organization, to its constitution and to its duties as defined in its foundation doctrine by the high command.I swear to stand ready to serve the Hagannah organization, to take upon myself its discipline unconditionally and unreservedly, and, upon its call, to enter into active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its commands and to fulfill all its instructions. I swear to dedicate all my powers and even to sacrifice my life to defense and to the war for my people and my homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion.”

Note the typical uniform and the hunting gun of the Notrim. 

Why he never told me about partaking in this ceremony and enlisting I'll never know. Maybe he assumed I knew? I've concluded that he was among those who enlisted that night, thanks to the research I've done on the period and two photos of him guarding the kibbutz.

During this period of unrest, the Palestinian Police, composed of British, Arabs and Jews, was proved inadequate in the face of the surmounting violence. In response, the British authorities recruited two auxiliary forces. The Supernumerary Police which worked for the British, and the Ghaffirs. Ghaffir, an Arabic term left over from the Ottomans, means watchman. These armed guards were furnish with uniforms almost identical to the police and wore the typical Kolpak hat with a metal emblem (very much like the one my grandfather is wearing in these photos). These guards were paid for by the Jewish settlements and Jewish institutions directly. In general, they were subject to less supervision by the British, as they were employed by Jewish agencies. Equipped with hunting guns, they were permitted to enter territories between the Jewish and Arab settlements. The Haganah—still an underground illegal self defense force—saw the new Supernumerary Police as an opportunity to legally arm and train a Jewish defense force. The Jewish Agency, supported the enlistment of Haganah members, into this force, thereby creating the first ever legal armed force of Jews for Jews. By June 1936, the various armed auxiliary forces were uniformly called Notrim, and were paid for by the British as well as the settlements. Each settlement could hire extra security, on a case to case basis. The commanding officers were British and the privates were Jewish.  

My grandfather, guarding the Kibbutz dining hall
 at Tel-Yitzchak's first location in Usha.
1937

By 1937, there were some major ideological differences among the intellectual leadership of Magdiel Beit and little support from the main settlement of Magdiel. The original Hanora Hatzioni group split. A core group of die hards, joined by two others, from Petach Tikvah and Cfar Saba, formed the first Hanoar Hatzioni Kibbutz, Kibbutz Usha in the western Galilee. The ideological split which continued lead to an eventual compromise. The larger group, with a practical agricultural outlook, formed Cfar Usha. Simultaneously, only a few hundred meters away, a second settlement was formed by a smaller group of settlers. This group with a reputation for their high ideological standards, continued to refuse to join the Histadrut, the General Federation of Laborers in the land of Israel. They remained affiliated to the centrist Zionist political party which united the Zionist movements, called Brit Hatzioniyim Haclaliyim (The General Zionist) and formed Tel-Yitzchak. On November 9th, 1937, each group broke ground. They were allotted 900 donam (about 220 acres) of land each for fifty families. The built two independent camps, and the rest of the development was completed within a few months. Usha, located in the northern Galilee, was not strictly built in the tower and stockade fashion, yet it is considered part of this group of settlements. My grandfather held the responsibility of Gaffir at Usha, and manned the security post outside the dining hall. There was not enough work at Usha. Usha Members had to search for jobs outside the Kibbutz to help support the new development. My grandfather worked at several odd jobs such as a porter job at the newly completed Haifa port.

Loading Crates at the Haifa Port
(Baruch Lavi, bottom left corner)
1937

Haifa Port Workers
(Baruch Lavi, top row, second from the left)
1937

Hanita Breaking Ground 1938.

On March 21, 1938, my grandfather, was among five hundred young men and women, drafted to help raise the wall and tower of another Kibbutz, Kibbutz Hanita, also in the western Galilee. Fifty trucks carried volunteers and supplies. There was no road leading up to Kibbutz lands. They had to break a trail just to bring the trucks as closer. Finally, they walked the last strip, carrying the supplies on their backs the rest of the way. The one hundred men who remained on post that first night, were attacked by Arabs and two were killed.

To be continued in Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak

Part III: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

First hut from Magdiel (restored).

Continued from Part I and Part II: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

This story, is not how my grandfather's sense of humor, and how he laughed at himself for wearing  glasses which clung to his nose by a piece of tape. It's not about how he drove "a Mercedes" around the Kibbutz. After suffering heart failure, my grandfather was awarded a golf cart. He truly enjoyed the luxury of driving it around the narrow pathways and dubbed it his Mercedes. It's not how he wore his khaki colored shorts high above his belly button of his bulging belly and displaying his skinny legs. It's also not about how he kept his false teeth in a cup of water in the bathroom, the water magnifying the dentures and scaring the hell out of young grandchildren. It's not about any of those things, because those things I witnessed myself. They are my memories of my grandfather. This post is a continuation of the series of stories I learned from digging up the past, the pieces of the puzzle I discovered as I researched my grandfather's life.

In 1934 when my grandfather arrived in Palestine, he was part of a core group of Hanoar Hatzioni members who formed an independent settlement in Magdiel, called Magdiel beit. Magdiel, was a small agricultural community in the heart of Israel (now part of Hod Hasharon). This fall, my son will be spending three months studying in Hod Hasharon. Of all the places in Israel, his program is located in the exact same location where his great-grandfather landed in Israel almost eighty years ago. He will find not find the sand dunes and swamps his great-grandfather encountered there, but maybe he can visit the first hut of the settlement, now restored and nestled among the modern apartment buildings.

From its inception the Hanoar Hatzioni group, envisioned an independent Kibbutz belonging to their youth movement and not affiliated to the Histadrut Organization, the General Federation of Laborers in the land of Israel (Israel's Labor Unions Organizations, in charge of workers activities among them settlements). This was to be the first Kibbutz of the Hanoar Haztzioni and a source of pride for the passionate movement members. Remember those youth group summer camps my grandfather headed as part of the youth movement? (See Part I). The youth group was everything to them. The idea that a group of young people can actually have their own Kibbutz was revolutionary and they didn't want to give that up to the control of a the fast growing and powerful labor union. While awaiting a permanent location for their kibbutz, they worked and received support from the more established agricultural settlement of Magdiel. The intense preparations abroad, did not quite prepare these young, pale, urban intellectuals, for the hard physical labor involved in farming the land. When hunger plagued, they searched for supplemental jobs outside Magdiel. My grandfather to enlisted to dig trenches in Cfar Etzion, a settlement planned for newly acquired lands of Gush Etzion.

Baruch Lavi top left with
a group of fellow Magdiel settlers. 

Gush Etzion, nestled between hostile Arab lands of Bethlehem and Hebron, failed to establish Jewish settlements in many years. In 1929 a group of Orthodox and Yemenite Jewish settlers were forced to flee their settlement, Migdal Eder, after only two years. A wealthy Jewish businessman, Samuel Yoshef Holtzmann, purchased the land for Cfar Etzion in 1932 and helped finance the construction which began its in 1935. The laborers were paid seven Palestinian pounds for each hole they excavated. They were laying down the infrastructure and foundation for the planned settlement. According to my grandfather's writing, they were paid for digging seven holes daily. The workers faced the harsh elements during the day. At night they retreated to the nearby Russian monastery for refuge from the belligerent Arab villages which surrounded them. The members of Magdiel Beit, performed this backbreaking work, twice, for several month each time, sending much needed income to Magdiel. In 1935, after the second enlistment, they treated themselves with a field-trip to Hebron. They were amongst the first Jews to step on the biblical lands of Gush Etzion and visit the city of Hebron. Sadly, Kfar Etzion’s fate was not dissimilar to its predecessor Migdal Eder. By 1937, the Arabs, destroyed much of what the philanthropist Holtzman paid for. The next attempts to establish Kfar Etzion, lasted from 1943-1947 and met with one of the bloodiest and painful events in Jewish history. The small religious settlement, found itself on the Arab side of the partition plan. As British forces pulled out, it was placed under a heavy blockade. When the remaining residents tried to surrender to the Arabs, they were massacred. Controversial settlements in what is known today as the West Bank territory, did not resume until after the Six Day War of 1967, and continue to be a sore issue in the Palestinian Israeli peace process today. It is not my intention to get into a complicated discussion of the current political situation in Israel. I do however want to say, that my grandfather was a big proponent of peace. In his lifetime, he got to see his dream of establishing a Jewish state fulfilled. He always hoped that Arabs and Jews could coexist in peace.

Building Magdiel
Baruch Lavi, bottom row, second from the left (with the cap).

Making construction bricks at Magdiel
Baruch Lavi, bottom left.

Despite the difficult conditions at Magdiel, my grandfather was very happy. He enjoyed the company of his ideological and intellectual friends, he loved the camaraderie and the support they gave each other. There was much emphasis on the Hebrew language and its revival, as well as cultural life. There were constant lectures and shows. The men and women worked hard during the day, and took turns guarding at night. As plans continued for breaking grounds, Keren Kayemet, the Jewish National fund sent a representative to Magdiel Beit to discuss among other things, the name of their future Kibbutz. Though the members prepared a banquette for their distinguished guest and impressed him with a tour of their settlement, the visit did not go as well as planned. They wanted to name the Kibbutz, Tel-Yitzchak after of their beloved spiritual leader Yitzchak Steiger. Steiger was a visionary, founding member and leader of Hanoar Hatzioni back in Poland. When he died prematurely in 1936, his friends and colleges were determined to never forget his sacrifice. The general strike which was part of the Arab Revolt, strangled many Jewish communities among them the small community of Haifa. The arabs were not purchasing Jewish products, not selling anything. Basic services such as garbage collection, mostly done by Arab laborers were severely disrupted. At the time, Steiger was part of the Kibbutz Usha's group preparing at Cfar Ata. He was one of the first to volunteer for the dirty job of collecting trash and founded the Jewish trash brigade, infusing his enthusiasm and embodying his solidarity to help the Jews of Haifa. Within a few short days at the job, he contracted typhus and died. The perpetually hungry youths, cleanup every last crumb of food from the unusually elegant banquet. Before departing, Mr. Oshoskin (the Keren Kayemet representative) relented and instructed them to submit the name Tel-Yitzchak to the naming committee. Their request was met with further resistance and they were asked to reconsidered a more historically significant Jewish figure for the name. Exhibiting youthful stubbornness, they  refused to budge and returned to the naming committee several times with only one option, Tel-Yitzchak. History is witness to their eventual success.
To be continued in Part IV and Part V

Yitzchak Steiger1904-1936