Judea Magazine, No. 4.3
Hebron Etzion
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"Rebuilding Jewish Life in Judea, Israel"
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JUDEA ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE Vol.4, No.3 Sivan-Tamuz 5756/May-June 1996
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Contents:
* Israel -- My People Lives
* In Memoriam: Efrat and Yaron Ungar
* In Memoriam: Dovid Boim
* The Election Results
* Jewish Heroes: Wonder Women
* Jerusalem Day: The Magic Western Wall in Jerusalem
* Hebron Day
* Stabbed in the Back
* Saved from the Palestinian Authority
*********************************************************************
After the Israeli Elections:
ISRAEL -- MY PEOPLE LIVES
Yes, we won -- a miracle, an absolute miracle. God and his people
worked together and we did it. We saved Eretz Yisrael for the next
generation. Together we rescued the Land from those who wanted to give
it away, as if it was theirs to give.
On the Sunday after the miracle we had the best celebration
possible. Nadia Matar, co-chairwoman of the Women in Green, had given
birth to a boy and it was the day of his brit mila (circumcision). Talk
about perfect timing. Five busloads of people turned up at the Ma'arat
HaMachpela (the Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron where the ceremony took
place. The blessings were said and the brit was performed and a big sign
suddenly appeared announcing the baby's name -- Yisrael Amihai (Israel --
My People Lives). We are alive and we came so close to destruction.
Yisrael Amihai -- Am Yisrael Hai. The People of Israel are alive and
well.
We danced, we sang. I don't recall ever before having felt such
pure, unadulterated joy. We were about to fall into the abyss when the
reprieve came. Nadia spoke of the work still to be done to educate the
Jewish youth about their Jewish roots. This is true, but on the day of
the brit mila I just let myself bask in the sun which was shining once
more.
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IN MEMORIAM: EFRAT AND YARON UNGAR
Efrat and Yaron Ungar were murdered by automatic weapons fire from a
passing vehicle near Beit Shemesh in pre-1967 Israel on 9 June 1996.
Their 9-month-old baby son Ishai escaped unhurt in the back seat. Yaron,
26, was the recreational director and Bible teacher at the Kiryat Arba
Junior High School. Efrat, 25, taught graphics in the Etzion Bloc
regional school, and later was a graphic artist for the Kiryat Arba
Community Center and _Hatzofe_ newspaper.
*
Shaarei Tikvah, in the Shomron -- home of the Ungar family. The
parents of Yaron -- Meir and Yehudit. Yaron, an idealist, studied at a
yeshiva on the Golan Heights, learned Russian, travelled to Russia, and
taught Judaism there. He married Efrat Dasberg and settled in Hebron
where he taught in the Yeshiva high school -- a special couple, a special
young man. He was planning to leave teaching for a while in order to
learn carpentry. They married on the day that the Oslo Accords were
signed and had two children. Efrat was pregnant with their third child.
Yaron loved Eretz Israel with his whole heart. Just as his wife, Efrat
(Efi) wrote and drew for children in an Israeli newspaper, _Hatzofe_,
Yaron, too, was about to start his own column on hiking in Israel.
Efrat Ungar, formerly Dasberg, from Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc
was a very talented young woman -- an artist and a writer. She married
Yaron and together they moved to a suburb of Hebron -- Kiryat Arba, where
they were raising their two children, Dvir and Yishai.
Efi's parents are Uri and Yehudit Dasberg of Alon Shvut -- a family
rooted in Zionism -- from the Holocaust to Aliya and Jewish revival, and
a brother who fell in the Yom Kippur War; they contributed to the
establishment and growth of Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc, where they
raised their family, and to the building of the B'nei Akiva Yeshiva in
Toronto.
During the period that Efrat worked as a graphic artist, she sent in
some of her drawings to Bezek -- the telephone company of Israel -- as
suggestions for telegram greeting cards. Bezek chose her ideas for
condolence cards. There among the telegrams sent to the Ungar and Dasberg
houses were those which Efi had designed herself and which said "May you
be comforted with the mourners of Zion," and on the side it was signed by
the artist -- Efi Ungar.
There is a book "The Hebron Massacre -- 1929" and on page 113 an
incredible story is revealed. Among those Jews slaughtered by the Arabs
of Hebron was a young couple who were survived by two small children and
their name -- Ungar -- Shlomo and Nechama Ungar. Shlomo worked as a
mechanic in Hebron. Like Yaron and Efi Ungar who left behind two babies,
so, too, were the babies of Shlomo and Nechama orphaned in 1929. The
children survived because they were hidden in a laundry hamper and their
aunt saved and later raised them. The two children were called Baruch
and Shoshanna and are still alive today. Baruch, who later changed his
name from Ungar to Hebron, was an officer in the Israeli army and during
the Six-Day War he returned to Hebron to visit his parents grave. His
younger sister, Shoshanna, lives in Ramat Gan. Yaron and Efi, Shlomo and
Nechama -- a shared destiny in Hebron.
(From Adir Zik, Arutz 7 radio, 14 June 1996 - 27 Sivan 5756)
*
Prime Minister-elect Binyamin Netanyahu visited the Dasberg family
in Alon Shvut on 13 June 96. "My wife Sarah and I came to pay our
condolences and came away strengthened," said Netanyahu after he left
their home. "They displayed such heroism after the murders of these
wonderful children. Your heart breaks, but you also come away
strengthend from the outstanding courage of this family so rooted among
the people of Israel and the Land of Israel." Yehudit Dasberg, the
grieving mother, requested that Netanyahu build an additional Jewish
neighborhood in Hebron to honor the memory of Efrat and Yaron.
Sarah Netanyahu, a child psychologist, went over to the two young
orphans, Yishai and Dvir, and then told the family, "Don't hesitate to
call me. I'm at your service."
Israeli President Ezer Weizman and his wife Reuma also visited the
family. At the end of the visit the Dasbergs presented him with two
pictures of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron done by their daughter
Efrat. The mother also told the President, "My daughter designed the
condolence telegrams used by the Postal Service. Yesterday we received
one; it seems as if my daughter is also consoling us."
(_Maariv_, 14 June 96, p. 2)
*
On the day after the murder, Dvir Ungar's day care teacher, Tirza
Edri, brought him to day care and then back to his home. Dvir, 2, opened
the door and asked, "Where's Daddy? Is my Daddy home, Tirza? Is my
Mommy home?"
What did you answer?
I answered, "No, they won't be home anymore. No one will be in this
house anymore. You will be living in your grandparents house."
What did he say to you?
He asked, "Why?"
*
On 10 June 96 at 2:30 p.m., the funeral procession left from the
Dasberg home in Alon Shvut to the cemetery in Kfar Etzion. At the very
same time, at the Ungar home in Kiryat Arba, 9-month-old Yishai woke up
from his afternoon nap. He started crying. Dvir, his 2-year-old
brother, tried to comfort him. He stroked him but Yishai continued to
wail. Dvir ran to bring him his colorful truck, his blue plastic
telephone, and his green rattle, but Yishai wouldn't calm down. "Phone
my Daddy," Dvir said to me [_Maariv_ reporter Chen Kots], and handed me
my cellular phone. "Tell him I want to speak with him. Where is he?
Ask where my Daddy went and when he's coming back."
(_Maariv Weekend_, 14 June 96, p. 12).
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IN MEMORIAM: DOVID BOIM
Lisa Frydman
Dovid Boim, a 17-year old from the Har Nof neighborhood of
Jerusalem, was fatally shot in the head by terrorists on a shooting spree
while waiting for a ride home from his yeshiva high school in Beit El.
As I approach the Har Nof apartment building, I see the hordes of
neighborhood children laughing and playing in the entranceway. Then a
young boy stops playing, looks up at me, and without my asking says
simply. "Fifth floor." He knew, they all did.
I bypass the elevator, walk up, and encounter a wall leading to the
apartment that could easily be the rear view of a politically-minded
automobile. It is covered with numerous bumper stickers bearing the
well-worn right-wing slogans: "The Nation With the Golan" ... "This Isn't
Peace", etc. In the middle of the sticker collage is Dovid's round,
jolly face radiating a smile whose permanence will be preserved only in
snapshots.
The Boim doorway is packed with teenagers. There are so many
filling the large room that Dovid's mother Joyce and I head out to the
balcony. Joyce smiles wanly and says in a still strong New York accent,
"Yesterday we had 80 boys and girls here. It was wonderful to look at
the youth around us, supporting us. It gave my husband and me such an
uplift.
"Dovid was a boy who loved life, he was happy, loved Eretz Yisrael,
volunteered at Magen David Adom (Israeli Red Cross), and couldn't wait to
begin the army. He wanted to be a medic in Golani."
Ezer Weizman, the President, had paid his respects and pledged 5,000
shekels toward the writing of a Sefer Torah, which his yeshiva friends
are commissioning in Dovid's name.
Joyce says she is not very politically active, but attends Women in
Green demonstrations and meetings when called upon.
Joyce points again to the cloister of teenagers gathering at the
other side of the balcony. "They are here all day long. They come for a
minyan, they go out, they come back. See that looseleaf book over there
on the table? I asked them to write something they remember about Dovid.
Poetry, anything. It is filled."
(From _In Jerusalem_, 23 May 96, P. 4)
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THE ELECTION RESULTS
Final Election Results: Jews - Netanyahu 55.5%, Peres 44.4%; Arabs -
Peres 94.7%, Netanyahu 5.2%.
World reaction to the Israeli elections reflects a number of major
misunderstandings. Many seem to be unaware that the very reason Israel
was established was to create a national home for the Jewish people --
and that the Arabs initiated repeated wars to destroy Israel.
For the past three years, a government representing a minority view
among Jews tried to force its will upon the majority, advocating a
messianic "Peace" for a particularly violent corner of the world, with an
outlook as off-the-wall and detached from reality as those who believed
in world Communism. (No U.S. leader would ever have dreamed of
proclaiming unilateral "Peace" in the face of a hostile Soviet Union.)
It should have surprised no one when the people took to the streets in
protest. But now the elections have ratified the democratic will of the
majority of the Jewish people in Israel, and the wounds of the national
split can begin to heal.
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Jewish Heroes:
WONDER WOMEN
Nitsan Shorer
The women of the border police squad snapped to attention for their
Corps Commander's review, and their grips tightened on M-16 rifles.
Twenty-six female Border Police combat fighters had finished the first-
ever women's combat training course, a grueling 15-week course equivalent
to the training given IDF combat soldiers. The women, who form part of
the anti-terror combat unit, practiced overpowering terrorists inside
buildings, learned martial arts, climbed ropes, marched endlessly, fired
their M-16s at targets 300 meters away, ran 1,000 meters against the
clock, and battled their way over an obstacle course with a daunting wall
barrier. Besides undergoing arduous fitness and combat training, the
women were taught to conduct searches and carry out arrests.
Said one of the newly graduated soldiers, "You'll be surprised to
learn that we did much better than the boys. For example, our target
shooting average with an M-16 was higher than theirs. The women have got
fighting spirit, morale, we stick together, don't give up and... we've
proved it. Each of us now feels that the moment we need to, we can
attack a target, engage in combat, react fast, exactly like the men."
On graduation day, the women all talked of how fantastic it felt to
discover depths of physical and mental strength they never knew they had.
The discovery was accompanied by a great sense of self-confidence. Hanna
Shimon, who graduated at the top of the platoon, sees herself as a
fighter for women's emancipation in general. "If I were attacked by a
rapist in a dark alley, I would now know how to deal with him.
Instinctively, I would choke him, one blow and he'd get the message.
He'd find out he's not dealing with a loser."
(Jerusalem Post Magazine, 7 June 1996, P. 16)
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Jerusalem Day:
THE MAGIC WESTERN WALL IN JERUSALEM
Elli Wohlgelernter
The Western Wall is the one place a first-time sightseer to Israel
has to visit, no matter what else is on the itinerary and no matter what
their religion. This is the symbol of Israel, of Jerusalem, of Jews.
Indeed, it is one of the top 10 tourist spots in the world. No
matter how removed from spirituality the tourists might be, they know to
come here and stare and wonder. It might not look like anything more
than an oversized, stone handball court, but they recognize that it has
much meaning to Jews.
In the last decade before the Common Era, Herod built it to enlarge
the area inside; the Jews lost it to the Romans in 70 CE; and then one
day in the middle of a war 1,897 years later, recaptured it, liberating
and unifying this holy city and reclaiming their most holy site, on a day
celebrated ever since as Jerusalem Day.
At this place was the Temple Mount, the largest site of its kind in
the ancient world. Here, above this wall, the Temple stood in a
trapezoid of 144,000 square meters that was big enough to fit 12 soccer
fields inside, including bleachers.
The Wall itself: the visible part in the square is 80 meters long, a
fraction of the whole stretch's 485 meters; it stands 18 meters high,
made of 19 layers, or courses, that Herod built, each stone placed atop
the other without mortar.
It is the No. 1 house of Jewish worship in the world and operates 24
hours a day, every day of the year. There are those who come here
freqently, three times every day, and others who come here once a day or
once a week, like Friday night, or once a month, like Rosh Hodesh. There
are also those who come when the spirit moves them to visit, not only the
religious coming to pray but secular Jews as well, who feel the sense of
Jewish pride and history so symbolized by these stones. It is the one
place that is both Jewish and Israeli, religious and secular, a symbol
for any Jew.
Says former New Yorker Moshe Schlass, "The shechina [God's presence]
is as much here as it is anywhere else, but there is another level of the
shechina that's here that brings out the neshama [soul] of a person.
That level of the shechina is harder to find in other places."
"I once saw a man walk up to the Kotel (the Wall), looked to me like
a boxer, maybe in his 50s, pushed-in nose, cauliflower ears, tattoos. He
was looking around maybe to find what was meaningful here. He walked up
to the Wall, and his body started to shiver, and then came a pool of
tears, within minutes of walking up to the Wall. After he was composed,
when he started to walk away, I asked what happened. He said to me, 'You
probably don't think I'm Jewish, but my name is Baruch, and I come from a
Jewish family. I've been a Merchant Marine for the last four years.
Maybe I've taken on the looks of my buddies. My boat docked in Haifa, we
had a day off. They said, go to the Western Wall. I didn't know what
the Western Wall was. They said go up to it, something will happen.
"'So what happened? I saw my bubbe (grandmother), who was my only
Jewish connection. I used to go to her on Shabbat night, she used to sit
me on her lap, give me fish. The only love I remember came from her.
When I walked up here I saw her, I felt her....So I was overcome.'"
Whatever mood you're in, you can find your space within the confines
of the Wall's courtyard. You can be by yourself or be with others, be a
loner or a leader or a follower, pray with a minyan or form your own,
whisper to God or scream at Him, or just sit mum.
Every weekday of the year you can witness the continuous gathering
of 10 men to form a minyan. It is quite extraordinary; 10 strangers -
Hassidim, Mitnagdim, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, modern Orthodox - whose lives
would ordinarily not cross paths, here depend on each other to perform
the mitzva of praying with a quorum.
On the women's side it is altogether different. Here they stand
alone before God, no minyan required. There is little idle chatter among
these women as there often is on the men's side. These religious women
have set aside time to come here to speak to God. Often they can't get
away during the week, but on Friday, these women steal away for a brief
visit. Two hours before Shabbat, the men's side is practically empty; on
the women's side, they stand five rows deep.
On Friday night and holiday eves as well, a mosaic of minyanim
(prayer groups) happens all at once. In the twilight just before the
onset of Shabbat, 10 to 15 minyanim start forming in the plaza, a cross
section of the Jewish world: Vishnitz Hassidim in the front left corner,
a minyan of newly religious behind them, Bratslavers just inside to the
left. Belz Hassidim stand at the front right of the Wall, and next to
the mehitza - the dividing wall between men's and women's sections - the
Shlomo Carlebach minyan, in the spirit of their rabbi, starts later than
everyone else. Each minyan sings "Lecha Dodi" in its own melody,
overlapping with each other across the plaza.
While the singing goes on in the courtyard, other songs are heard
coming from beyond the plaza; dancing down the steps from the Jewish
Quarter are students from Yeshivat Hakotel, emerging for the Shabbat
prayer. In the weekly Friday night production with its cast of
thousands, this is the big scene, the one eagerly awaited by the tourists
standing behind the barricade.
(From Jerusalem Post Magazine, 17 May 96, pp. 10-11.)
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HEBRON DAY
The 28th of Iyar (17 May 96) is Jerusalem Day, the 29th anniversary
of the liberation of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967. The
following day is the anniversary of the liberation of Hebron. One of the
first people at the Western Wall in Jerusalem during the war and the next
day, in Hebron, was the then Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces,
the late Rabbi Shlomo Goren. Rabbi Goren spoke in Kiryat Arba (a suburb
of Hebron) about eight months before he died and told a number of stories
concerning Hebron.
Rabbi Goren was present with Israeli forces as the IDF conquered the
Western Wall in Jerusalem. Holding the rank of general, Rabbi Goren knew
that the army's next mission was Hebron. Wanting to be among the first
Israelis in the ancient City of the Patriarchs, he joined the armed
forces stationed at the recently captured Etzion Bloc, on their way to
Hebron. On the night of 28 Iyar, before retiring for the evening, he
requested to be awoken when the soldiers began their march to Hebron the
following day.
The next morning he awoke, only to find himself alone with his
driver. Realizing that he had been "left behind," he ordered his driver
to begin the short (20 minute) journey to Hebron, expecting to meet the
rest of the army, already on their way. To his great surprise, he
reached Hebron without finding any other Israeli soldiers on the road.
Driving into Hebron, Rabbi Goren was greeted by the sight of white
sheets, hung from rooftops and windows, throughout the city. He was
astounded, but understood. In the summer of 1929, Arab residents of
Hebron had massacred 67 Jews and wounded another 70. The 1967 Arabs of
Hebron were, very plainly, scared of Jewish retaliation. So, not one
shot was fired. Instead white sheets were hung from windows and
rooftops.
Rabbi Goren quickly made his way to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Finding the huge doors bolted, he tried breaking in by shooting at the
lock, firing his Uzi submachine gun. Finally, after entering the 2,000
year old building, he blew the Shofar, as he had done 24 hours earlier at
the Western Wall.
Where was the army? They didn't know that Hebron's Arabs would
surrender without a fight, so rather than enter Hebron directly, they
went around via a different route. In other words, Rabbi Goren, a single
Israeli soldier, single-handedly conquered a city of 80,000 Arabs. Jews
had returned to Hebron!
*
Following the liberation of the Temple Mount in east Jerusalem, the
soldiers hoisted an Israeli flag which flew high above the Western Wall.
When then-Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan arrived at the Wall, the first
thing he said was, "Lower the flag." When Dayan arrived in Hebron to
accept the Arab surrender, he returned the keys to the Cave of the
Patriarchs to the Arabs. Rabbi Goren brought a Torah Scroll and Holy Ark
into the Herodian-era structure and hung an Israeli flag outside. The
next day he received a telegram from Dayan containing the following
orders: 1. Remove the Torah and Ark; 2. Lower the flag; 3. Anyone
entering the building must take off his shoes, because it is a mosque.
Rabbi Goren sent him a telegram back with the following response: 1.
The Torah is holy - it stays. 2. "The flag means to me what it means to
you - if you want to take it down, you do it. I'm not touching it.
Dayan sent an officer into Hebron to remove the flag. On his way
back to Jerusalem, the unfortunate man was killed in an auto accident.
Dayan then rescinded the other orders he had originally given.
Presented by The Jewish Community of Hebron POB 105 Kiryat Arba,
Israel 90100 Tel:972-9925333 Fax:972-2-9925304; E-mail: hebron@jer1.co.il
News site: http://www.jer1.co.il/lists/archives/hebron
Web site: http://www.jer1.co.il/orgs/communities/hebron/index.htm
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STABBED IN THE BACK
On 1 May 1996, Nisim Gudaei, a 72-year-old resident of Kiryat Arba,
was stabbed in the back and critically wounded in Hebron. Known as a
brilliant man, Gudaei studied at Ponovitch Yeshiva and later served as
the secretary of the Tel Aviv Rabbinic Court. After moving to Kiryat
Arba he studied and taught at the Hesder Yeshiva there. He speaks many
languages, including fluent Arabic. He has been a regular patron of the
Arab vendors in the Casbah for years and talked with them often. (Hebron
Press Office)
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SAVED FROM THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
"The Palestinian residents of Hebron and Jerusalem see Netanyahu's
victory as having saved them from the hands of the Palestinian
Authority." -- Bassam Eid, researcher for the B'tzelem human rights
organization, _Maariv_, 6 June 96.
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JUDEA Magazine is a bi-monthly electronic magazine produced and
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