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This was the big courtyard where we exercised
and played soccer. This was a big synagogue,
as big as the Hurva. We lived here.
There's nothing here now.
The women's mikve was here.
The men's mikve was on the other side.
This is where they took the brides
before they got married.
You can still see the steps to the mikves.
Here.
They built over it. We can't go inside.
But you can see the stairs leading down to the mikve,
where they heated the water. Our house...
Come see where we lived.
We lived here.
People lived down there.
We lived down there... -Hold on. I want to hear it.
Now tell the story again, as if you haven't said anything.
What are we looking at?
This is where we lived. This was the entrance.
There was a big courtyard with a narrow entryway.
We had a 3-room apartment upstairs. It was considered very luxurious.
My sister would host parties for her German and English friends
on our large roof terrace. People here lived in small alcoves,
infested with fleas and lice. It was awful.
We moved here from Ha-Yehudim St., where I was born.
We came here a few years later. But the place was destroyed
because they blew up the synagogue.
It was filled with rubble. They've cleaned it up now.
People from the Jewish Quarter
cleaned it up, more or less.
Unfortunately, you still can't see anything.
Then try and describe it to me so I can get a sense
of what your house looked like.
Our house had a long balcony.
We grew vegetables and flowers on the railing.
When the neighbors wanted parsley, coriander or lettuce for Pesach...
You know you can use lettuce as Maror during the Seder.
Then we'd give it to them. We had seedlings for everything.
My father was very rich, but it's all gone now.
He lent people money and they never paid him back.
On top of everything else he was a drunkard and a gambler.
That was what they did in Turkey, where he came from.
We went there 6 years ago and saw it.
They had nothing else to do there but drink and play.
The women work in the fields and everywhere else
while their husbands drink arak and play cards.
Where did your father drink and play?
Here. He also went to the Arab cafe by Jaffa Gate.
He couldn't see very well, so people cheated him out of his money.
He was one of the richest people in the city, but I'm not mad.
That's the way life was lived back then.
My brothers have done very well for themselves.
Yehoshua and David opened factories
and went into business with Lev Leviev.
What can I say? That didn't go so well.
Tell me again what your room was like.
It wasn't my room. We shared it.
My sister got one room.
It was our living room, where we received guests.
At night we pulled down mattresses
and slept on the floor in the other room.
The neighbors' children came as well,
because they loved Grandma Vida. So they slept with us.
Every morning we put our things away
and covered the floor with a nice carpet.
The last room was only for groceries.
My father would give me a grush, 10 mils,
and tell me to come and bring an Arab along.
He'd load up 2 sacks of flour, 6 cans of oil, beans...
And I had to show the Arab
where our house was, so he could bring the goods over.
This was during the better times.
Where did your parents sleep?
What? -Where did your parents sleep?
With us. They had beds,
their own bed,
and we were on the floor. We didn't know what they were doing.
We spent most of our time playing.
Where did you do your homework?
In there. Lying on my stomach with the kerosene lamp.
My parents were religious,
so we used one kerosene lamp for light
and another one
to warm up the cholent.
We'd lie on our stomach and do our homework
by the light of the lamp.
We didn't have desks. Nowadays I say
that I was raised on a melon and now I raise others on a million.
Did you have any chores at home?
My job
was to help Mom, because she had 10 kids to raise.
Occasionally I swept the yard. Grandma lived with us,
and on holidays she'd take some paint and a brush
and paint decorations
so the house would look nice for the holiday.
What sort of decorations?
Paint. A nice blue paint. She painted the mortar joints.
She could barely walk, so she'd sit down,
take some paint and decorate them for the holiday.
Outside you told us that you had to leave once a year.
Yes. To the yard. It was called muharam.
"The Forbidden Day." The day Muhammad was exiled from Mecca to Medina.
What they did to him was forbidden.
Understand? -Can you explain it again?
When Muhammad was proselytizing
the Islamic religion in Mecca,
they exiled him and he went to Medina.
That day was called the Forbidden Day.
And that was when the year ended. On the muharam.
In December.
What's it got to do with the houses? -What?
They were rentals. It was to keep you from getting ownership rights.
See?
Like today, when they hire someone for 11 months out of the year.
They send you home for 2 months before you come back for another 11.
On that day we had to remove the furniture from the house,
sleep in the yard and return everything the next day.
Then we got a new lease.
How much was the rent? -6 pounds.
What? -6 British pounds.
How much was that?
A lot.
When I was born... -Can you say it as a complete sentence?
Let me explain how much the British pound was worth.
When I was born my father bought a lottery ticket in my name.
He won 500 Egyptian pounds.
It was enough for a week-long birthday feast.
My uncles tell me people were sprawled on the ground,
that there were mountains of cake, a band, a Mohel, everything.
All that came to 3.5 British pounds. Can you imagine?
Hundreds of guests, music...
He says there were so many guests, they used the washtub for cooking.
Lamb and beans, people eating and celebrating
and drinking 5-gallon barrels of arak. They drank horrendous amounts.
Can you imagine?
Every Saturday I'd go with my father to visit relatives,
where 10 or 12 men would drink 5 gallons of arak
until they couldn't even see straight.
The family all had to gather in Nachalat Achim on Saturdays.
After we finished our prayers at the synagogue,
we'd go there and the celebration would begin.
Let's go to your other house. -Let's go to Ha-Yehudim St.
How do we get there?
Let's go back there.
I'm a little confused. I don't know how to get there.
I think it's that way.
With the marketplace and everything, it's starting to look like Gaza.
Chains, chains and more chains.
You can't escape it.
Let's go to Ha-Yehudim St.
We need to stop for a second.
They've turned this place into a festival.
We'll film the synagogue. Have you filmed inside?
Yes. -Inside the synagogue? -Yes.
You've filmed there?
We'd like to focus on your personal locations.
Here, we need to locate...
That's the main street there.
Up here was the kindergarten I went to after the Heder.
Down that alleyway there.
Those stairs to the right...
Up there was the Tipat Halav (Baby),
where they examined babies
and gave them a dose of fish oil, because many were malnourished.
Where was this? -Up there, to the right.
If I can make a small adjustment... -Yes.
Others told me Tipat Halav was that building there.
No, no, no. It was here.
If you don't believe me, ask about me.
As they say.
But I want to take you to the place where I was born.
First show me where the kindergarten was.
The kindergarten? That's what I was showing you.
It was up there to the right, at Tipat Halav.
It was run on donations.
The kindergarten I went to after the Heder
was in the Tipat Halav courtyard.
Would you like to show us? -Yes. Follow me.
Up here is a girls' school.
At this point it becomes the Christian area.
The Christian Quarter.
There was a blacksmith here.
He made pails and window gutters.
The Kapiluto family, an old Sephardic family.
They've been here for centuries.
This was a small alcove. They expanded it.
Let's go upstairs.
This is the Habad neighborhood. Habad Hassidim used to live here.
They had a special hospital where they treated the elderly.
Here, I'll show you...
You're right. It's there.
This is the Habad neighborhood.
Orthodox people lived here.
Inside was a hospital for the elderly. It was run by volunteers until the war.
We were going to your kindergarten. -It's over there.
What do you mean? -It's on the other side.
You told us it was here.
I thought it was. The new buildings confused me.
Let's go there.
This is where Weingarten lived. Have you heard of him?
He was the mayor of the Old City.
He was the shamash at the Hurva Synagogue
and he had contacts with the British. His daughters were nurses.
If one of us fell ill on a Saturday,
we'd go over to their house to get a pill or something.
Later one of the girls met a British soldier,
so the Etzel grabbed her,
beat her up and shaved her head.
Her name was Masha Weingarten.
People's histories.
Can we talk about the kindergarten here?
Not the kindergarten. This is where the Christian Quarter begins.
But up there on that rise... Some Jews were living by the Arabs.
This was a girl's school. I'd run up there
carrying machine gun plates.
There was a hero named Yitzhak Mizrachi. He was hit by a bullet to the head.
It was half lodged in there, but he removed it and bandaged himself.
You know, he was 2.20 meters tall.
A giant man.
He made the machine gun look like a pistol.
I'd like to hear about your kindergarten.
Yes. Come see. -Can we talk about it here?
It's right here.
You should see it.
The Jerusalem train station director, Kobi,
also lived here. The British appointed him.
They closed this up.
Here. This was the kindergarten.
It was also Tipat Halav.
What did you do there? -What? -What did you do there?
What did we do there?
We had gymnastic exercises.
We played with LEGOs.
They tried to teach us letters. I already knew them
because I'd learned the letters during my 2 years in the Yeshiva.
Who went to this kindergarten? Which kids?
4- and 5-year-old kids went there
before they started first grade at our school.
Who ran the kindergarten?
A family called Nitzhia...
Nitzhia was the kindergarten teacher. I remember her well.
Eventually she moved to Eilat. I met her there.
Was it for both boys and girls?
Yes. It was a wonderful kindergarten.
Very organized. Lunches, naps.
At 4 o'clock we went home.
Just like today. It was very advanced.
Now let's see your house. -I've shown you my house.
Oh, you mean where I was born? That's on Ha-Yehudim St.
They used to shut the gates here at night.
At 6 or 7 o'clock
they'd shut the gates to keep the Arabs out.
Policemen would stand guard.
Where were the guards? -By the gates.
If anything happened at night,
if someone had to leave, then they could open the gates.
Usually they shut both entrances.
The only way to enter the Old City was through Jaffa Gate there.
There's an exit there to Jaffa Gate.
Let's see.
You want to go there? -I'm afraid we don't have the time.
See? There's an inscription on the wall there.
Let's walk straight to the house.
There was a big welding shop here.
It was run by a father and his sons.
He was an expert in wrought iron. You know what that is?
It's bending things over a fire.
He was an expert.
This was all covered by dirt.
They only uncovered it after the Six Day War.
The Cardo.
We didn't know about the things that lay under our feet.
When we lived on Ha-Karaim St., 4 or 5 floors below the street level,
there were houses and storage rooms
and all sorts of old tools that we found back then.
Who knows how old they were.
This is the synagogue. Over here was a greengrocer's.
He was a Jew. Over there by the plaque
was my father's fabric store.
Okay, then when we come back this way
I'd like to hear all about your father's store.
He came from Turkey in 1890.
The economic situation was so bad here,
that he went to work in Argentina for 10 years.
While he was there his wife died,
leaving him with two children here.
When he returned they said he shouldn't be alone
because it was distracting him from the Torah,
so he married my mother. She was 13. He was 45.
Because her parents were in dire financial need.
Everyone was.
People were starving to death back then.
It was an awful time.
Did your parents get along? -I asked my mother about it.
My mother was very liberal, so I asked her,
"Given the choice again, would you have gotten married?"
She said, "Yes, I would've married him, because I have such good children
"and I don't know if I'd have gotten them otherwise."
Although you can imagine what it's like for a clueless 13-year-old girl
to give birth to an 11-lbs baby. They both almost died.
The doctors didn't let my mother get pregnant again for 3 years.
So the age difference between her and my eldest sister is 16 years.
His 10 children were all born within 18 years.
They were all 18 months or so apart. It was industrial baby making.
Were you in contact with the eldest siblings?
Yes. He had a son and a daughter. -How?
His first wife. He married her,
she died and they stayed here, so they wrote to him in Argentina,
"Your children are being passed from one family to another. Come back."
That's when he came back and married my mother.
They were 3 years older than her. The son and the daughter.
Where did they live? -In Tel Aviv.
The son he took with him to Argentina to engage in trade
came back...
He worked with his donkey from dusk till dawn,
and got paid half a grush. 5 mils.
He told me, "I'd buy half a pita and 5 olives
"and the donkey would graze in the field."
That was all the food they had. He said he couldn't live like that.
He went to Argentina and came back with a crate,
an iron crate about a 100 cm by 40 in size.
It was filled with dollars. It's all gone now.
He bought land in all sorts of places.
The Arabs use stones to sell lands.
If you wanted to buy a plot of land you'd take a stone and throw it.
The size of the plot was the distance
between where you stood and where the stone had landed.
Where did he buy this land? Do you know?
He bought land on Shmuel Ha-Navi. He bought land in Rosh Ha-Ayin.
He was so drunk, he didn't know what he was buying and selling.
He sold some of the land to buy more fabrics
after our stores were robbed.
He gave it to the rabbi, to the Shlush family,
if you know it.
The ones who founded Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv.
A beautiful neighborhood. A very well known family.
What was your connection with them?
The Shlush family had a synagogue here.
He was a Hevra Kadisha man.
So can you explain...
We had to stop earlier because of the noise,
but you were telling us about the Shlush family.
The Shlush family
came here from Morocco about 5 or 6 centuries ago.
His children are lawyers, the people
who built Neve Tzedek and all those places.
But he lived in Jerusalem, in Mahane Yehuda.
They say he was such a holy man
that he could go anywhere he wanted to
with the blink of an eye.
The same thing they say about Abuhatzeira.
Why was his name Abuhatzeira? Hatzeira means mat.
He needed to get to Jerusalem and it was already Friday.
He knew he couldn't make it and he didn't want to violate Shabbat,
so he sat on his mat and prayed to God.
He shut and opened his eyes, and then he was in Jerusalem.
That's why his name means "father of the mat" in Arabic.
So how was your family connected to the Shlushes?
We prayed together.
He had a synagogue in the neighborhood, Rabbi Elazar.
And we prayed with him together with my father and grandfather.
When he heard my father's store had been robbed
and that he'd been left with nothing,
he told him, "Give me the deeds to your lands for safekeeping,
"or sell them to me and I'll give you enough stock now
"to provide for 10 people."
That's what brought them together. My father couldn't pay him back
because he'd lost the money...
Etc., etc., etc.
Let's keep going.
Under those windows there.
I was born there.
What? -In that house there.
Where those windows are. -What happened there?
I was born there. -Where?
The windows there.
Above the archway. That's where I was born.
The synagogue where we prayed was right here.
It belonged to the Kookia family, if you've heard of it.
The Valero family.
They were a rich Sephardic family from Turkey.
They built synagogues and donated to the poor.
So this is where we were.
So you prayed at Rabbi Elazar as well?
Yes. That was my maternal grandfather's synagogue.
We also prayed at the 3 synagogues...
Istambuli...
We liked to move between synagogues, especially on Yom Kippur.
Until they closed down.
As children we would study Psalms every Shabbat,
and Kookia would give us notepads and write down the date
whenever we came to pray.
Then he gave us 10 mils.
He gave us money.
Here... It's closed now, but this was the way up
to the house and to Kookia's synagogue.
Do you know if it still exists?
The synagogue? No. I went looking for it.
I told you. The Jewish houses were destroyed.
They lived on the ruins. Later,
when they started planning the Jewish Quarter,
they cleaned up whatever they could.
Was this the door to your house?
This door? No, of course not.
How could it be? It was like an Arab village,
it didn't have stairs.
Can you explain to me where Kookia was?
Kookia was up there, in the inner courtyard.
Their neighbors spoke Ladino. I never learned it,
but I can speak it because I heard them talking.
Since it doesn't exist anymore, can you tell me about the house?
From what I can remember, the house
didn't have beds or mattresses
but... stone niches.
On top of those there were mattresses so you could lie down and look out,
feel the air coming in on warmer days.
Here I was sick with the German measles.
You know what that is? It's a childhood disease.
German measles.
My mother put me next to my brothers so they'd catch it too.
It's a disease you have to get while you're a child.
They all got it from me and that was that.
How did they treat it?
They didn't. They only put gloves on our hands
so we wouldn't scratch ourselves.
If you scratch yourself you can leave marks,
scratches on your face, and those take time to heal.
What did the synagogue look like?
It was nothing much. It was in the yard. It had windows,
a long hall with a place for the Torah scroll.
You got there by climbing up a flight of stairs.
Were there chairs? -Benches.
Benches covered with simple rugs made of rags.
But some of the Torah scrolls were made of gold and copper,
and they were closely guarded.
In some places they even slept in the synagogue to keep thieves away.
The Valero and Kookia families were big donors.
All of Jaffa St. starting from Mahane Yehuda belongs to them.
They bought the land there.
Did the women have their own section?
Where? -In the Kookia synagogue.
No... The regular worshippers all came from the neighborhoods.
It was never packed.
Nowadays people are too tired to make it to the morning service,
but come evening, especially on Yom Kippur,
they all come to seek God's forgiveness for skipping the morning prayer.
What do you remember about Kookia?
I remember the cookies
he handed out after prayer.
And the hard-boiled eggs they'd bring.
And the spices. He always brought...
what's that plant called?
Basil.
We thought of it as a flower. We never used it in our cooking.
Using basil and rosemary for cooking only came later.
Who ever thought of it?
I still can't bring myself to think of it as food.
Let's go to your father's store.
Here...
This street here
led to our house.
The place I showed you by the synagogue.
I don't understand. -This street
leads back to the synagogue,
where we lived. Where we moved later.
Which synagogue do you mean?
The one that was destroyed. The one I showed you.
We stayed there until 1948.
My father's store was here.
The storeroom was in that alleyway,
where you climb up the stairs.
It was a long basement
with shelves that were stacked with the fabrics
he imported from Turkey.
So tell us more about the store.
Most of the customers were Arab Bedouins.
He had silk and wool fabrics.
They lived in tents and they needed a lot of flannel.
He measured the cloth using an iron yardstick,
like this. He was so honest,
he'd always add a little bit more just to make sure he wasn't cheating.
That honesty cost him a lot.
People came and asked him for loans.
Then the lender became a borrower.
What did the fabric store look like?
There were shelves with bundles of fabrics on them.
What did the fabrics look like?
There were all sorts. What do Arabs like?
When Germans came here from abroad,
they brought with them chamber pots which the Arabs used for cooking.
Understand? Those ceramic chamber pots
were so beautiful,
the Arabs thought they were decorative and they used them for cooking.
The Germans used them for their body waste at night.
I'm asking about the store. Tell me about it.
What can I say? It was very lively.
Farmers came from all over the place.
They knew him as Abu Hader.
Abu Hader means "father of greenery."
Like a garden.
That's what they called him. Father of gardens, father of flowers.
He got along with everyone.
Sometimes they came from the Temple Mount ...
Sorry. They came from Temple Mount
and attacked the Jews.
Then the British calmed them down and we'd return to our homes.
Did I tell you I remember the Arab revolt of 1936?
Arabs attacked Jews here in the Old City.
Everyone ran to the Hurva Synagogue
and gathered in the yard. There were hundreds of people.
Then we came back home and found they'd taken everything.
Then in 1939... -What did you do in '39?
That was worse. They killed Jews in Hebron.
In 1929.
But what happened here, in the Old City?
Everyone here ran outside the walls.
We went to relatives who lived
on Bezalel St.
We were there for 2 months until things settled down.
We came back to nothing.
The Department of Health used to come here
looking for the source of the lice and fleas
that were rampant here. They examined everyone.
Near the end they helped the elderly, got involved in people's lives.
Who ran the Department of Health?
It was a Jewish charity. The British helped too.
The Central Department of Health was in Mahane Yehuda.
They were in charge of everything.
Bad food and the like. A lot of people got typhus.
Who funded it? The British?
It was partly the British and partly a charity
based on foreign donations, Montefiore...
For example, on Pesach people couldn't afford to buy matzos,
so they announced that on such and such day
they would hand out wine and matzos for the holiday.
So people could... But they were very poor.
Now, the Arab marketplace was abundant.
Their people were also poor,
but they had a butcher's market, a spice market,
an upholstery market, a clothing market...
You could go there and buy all sorts of things.
Anything you wanted. 10 eggs for a grush.
I'd like to go back to what you were saying
about the people who came from the Temple Mount to cause a riot.
When did this happen?
Usually on their holidays, like the Ramadan. -What happened?
They came... and attacked us.
They harassed us, threw stones. There were several murders.
Not here, but in Hebron. The massacre.
The Mufti had given them an order
to attack the Jews on a certain day.
Did you ever witness any of these things?
Of course I did. I'd sit up in bed, shaking,
while they went into courtyards with drums and lights, making noise.
I'd tremble in my bed and my mother would say,
"Oh God, oh God, just let it be over."
They were in a frenzy.
They were religious fanatics.
They hated Jews and Christians. To this day
they abuse the Christians and harass them.
They just murdered a few in Egypt.
Let's focus on your own experiences. What happened to you?
I was beaten up a few times by the young boys.
They'd wait for us in their alleyways
and throw rocks at us, beat us.
On Peasch they'd chase Jewish children
and try to stuff bread in their mouth.
Understand? -Did that happen to you?
Not to me, but to my brother.
Whenever they hit us, a grownup would come and say,
"Don't you have anything better to do than to beat up Jewish kids?"
But he'd wink at them, hinting at them to keep going.
He was only making a show of trying to protect you.
The grownups and the kids were in on it together.
Now, girls who had to walk down Jaffa St.,
by Jaffa Gate...
What did you do when a group like that showed up? -Nothing.
I went and brought my mother or my burly uncle.
He'd go into their houses and beat them up.
In Arabic he'd say to their father, "Are you kidding me?
"You pretend to be mad at your son for hitting us
"while hinting at him to carry on?"
He understood their way of thinking.
He was strong and tough and he paid them back.
What did you do?
Nothing. I went home and cried. I was just a boy.
They'd hide behind the courtyard door
and wait for me to come in,
and they'd beat me up and run away.
Then my uncle would go and take care of them.
Rocks and... They weren't saints.
We never bothered them or did anything to them.
My mother would breastfeed...
One of my neighbors had no milk to give,
and my mother had milk pouring out of her.
"A milkmaid," so to speak. The neighbor asked her
if she would nurse her child as well,
so she breastfed both him and my brother.
In the end, my brother's best friend tried to kill him.
I was standing by the house
when I saw my brother, who was a British policeman,
and that he was waiting for him with a gun.
Who's "he"?
The neighbor, his friend.
Understand?
"We're brothers. We fed from the same breast."
It was all crap.
When they needed to kill,
they tried to kill him. So I called the boys from the Hagana
who lived upstairs. They grabbed him and beat him up,
took his gun away and gave him away to the British.
The British police station was over there.
When did this happen?
When he came to visit us. This was a little before the siege,
when the Hagana and the Etzel were no longer afraid
to walk around armed in front of the British.
He came from the alley. I watched him from the doorway
while I was waiting for my brother to come with his police kit bag.
What did you do?
Nothing. I told my mother and she called the men.
She used to hide their weapons for them.
There were 10 of us, and she cared for another 40 kids and 20 elderly.
I just don't know how she did it.
Why am I telling you this? She died in '94 when she was 86.
I think that with everything she did, she should've made it to 150.
It's a real shame that you can't...
There was no one like her. She was called "the mother of mothers."
You say that the people who lived in your courtyard
were your friends, your parents' friends. -Yes.
Did you get along? What did you do?
On warm Friday nights we'd sit on mattresses together
to feel the breeze
and tell stories and fairytales until dawn.
Sometimes we went straight to the synagogue after that.
Who sat there?
The neighbors all sat together.
No one shut or locked their doors.
Everyone sat together.
Who were the neighbors? Describe them to me.
They were neighbors. What else?
There was the wife of the Brigade soldier who'd died in Tripoli.
She came to live with us.
Her mother lived above us.
Families tried to stay together.
Did the Arabs sit with you too?
Yes. They sat with us.
We had parties and songs in Arabic and all sorts of things.
But after 1948 it turned out that some of them...
The greengrocer
turned out to be a sergeant in the Jordanian army.
They were engaging in espionage.
They pretended to sell vegetables while they listened to people.
It's called "Dassus."
They'd learn what was happening in the Jewish Quarter,
who belonged to the Etzel and who was Hagana.
They had an underground movement, same as us.
He said it. "We learned it from you."
Now the Lebanese are saying the same thing.
"You taught us how to fight you."
Who said it? -The Arabs.