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So you were in the youth movement and at 13 you joined the Hagana.
Yes, we swore allegiance.
When was this? -'46. 1946, '47.
What made you, a 13-year-old girl want to join the Hagana?
It was a challenge.
I wanted to enlist. We were Zionists.
At school, in the youth movement there was talk of the establishment
of a Jewish state, and we had heard of the Holocaust,
and the teachers told us all about the children,
how they had to be smuggled out from Italy, Greece, Bulgaria.
They told us about these children.
Not from Poland and Germany.
They mainly told us about how they were smuggled out.
Our teachers had served in the Jewish Brigade,
we were intent on doing something for these children,
so we'd have a state,
and we knew that we'd one day have a state.
We needed to train for this.
You don't just get a state,
without preparation.
They were Zionists who came from abroad
and from the Histadrut Labor Union.
The club in our yard was established by the Histadrut.
It was established by the Histadrut and Ben Lulu was the counselor.
Ben Lulu who later became a member of Knesset.
Eliyahu Hacarmeli.
He was a member of Knesset in the first Knesset.
In the youth movement we learned all about the Holocaust
and the children and the suffering of the Jewish people,
and that pushed us to join the organization.
We knew there were three underground movements,
Etzel, Lehi and Hagana.
We were in the HaNoar HaOved so we went to the Hagana.
We enlisted in the Hagana.
You mentioned earlier that your parents didn't know.
They felt something
but we never told them where we were going or what we were doing.
They knew my brothers and I went.
What was said at home about the state...
We didn't talk about it. No.
Because we had good relations with the Arabs.
My father had many Effendi friends.
Effendis are high ranking persons.
Because he worked at the railway station
where he had many Arab and British friends
and they'd visit our house. He was in close contact with them.
and my father would take us to their houses.
My father even took my mother to meet the Mufti.
The Mufti lived on the Temple Mt. and Jews were not allowed there.
The Mufti wanted...
The Mufti and his wife came to our house
and he wanted my mother to come and visit them at their house,
but Jews were not allowed on the Temple Mt. in those days.
Who said so?
Jews didn't go there, up to the Temple Mt.
Why, because of their religion? Because of the British?
No, the Arabs wouldn't allow it. They didn't want the Jews to go there.
We didn't even go to King David's tomb.
They showed us the tomb of some sheikh and we prayed there.
They told us it was King David's tomb.
After the state was established, they discovered King David's tomb
and today people go to King David's tomb
and not the sheikh's tomb.
In order for my mother to go to their house she dressed in a "Layesh,"
which is a kind of long black dress,
very wide with a face cover,
much like the covers women wear in Iran today.
So my mother wore this and went to visit the Mufti.
Later they escorted her to Damascus Gate...
Zion Gate, and she took it off at home.
This comes to show
that we had a friendly relationship with the Arabs and the British.
They'd come to our house because of my father's job.
So your parents didn't know
what people were doing to achieve a Jewish state?
They knew. They felt it.
My father also contributed,
I remember people from the Jewish Agency
who'd come to the house,
even Yitzhak Ben Zvi came to our house when I was a little girl
and a couple of sheikhs who'd come to make arms and land deals.
My father used to ask my mother
to take us out of the room when they came
so we wouldn't see what they were doing.
These were deals of the Jewish Agency.
Back then there was no government,
the Jewish agency was the government.
So there were things which took place secretly at our house.
What kind of deals were made there?
I found out later that they bought land,
the Jewish Agency and the Keren Kayemet [JNF] bought land.
Jews were forbidden to buy land from Arabs.
By whom?
The Arabs didn't want to sell.
Most of them didn't want to sell to Jews.
My father acted as go-between for Muslims and Jews.
For the Knesset... No, the Knesset didn't exist, for the Jewish Agency.
Why didn't your mother want the children to know?
Not my mother,
my father didn't want us to know what they were doing
because it was forbidden, it was illegal.
It was a sort of underground activity
and that is something that is kept secret.
My father was a great Zionist.
So was my mother.
Did you tell anyone when you joined the Hagana?
Your siblings knew? -They were there, too.
Our parents knew,
but we didn't tell them about training, etc.
especially when it happened on Shabbat.
Can you imagine,
driving to Ma'ale Ha'Hamisha or to Mt. Scopus on Shabbat?
We came from a home where the Sabbath was respected.
So you decided not to keep the Sabbath?
No, it wasn't like that.
I came from a traditional home but we were not religious,
and I was in the youth movement so on Saturdays I trained.
People in the Etzel would train, too,
and the Lehi would even go outside of the Old City.
We chose to join the Hagana.
Because of the Histadrut and because of the youth movement.
We were educated in the youth movement.
What kind of training did you go through?
We learned to climb ropes
and walk on ropes, too.
We learned how to dismantle a weapon,
and HTH,
that's hand-to-hand combat.
We trained at night,
how to move under fences and how to deal with ambushes.
Let me see, what else...?
We learned how to behave in the field.
Attacks.
We'd even practice attacking
old ladies in their houses.
We'd shout: "Attack on Gittaleh!"
Someone would give the signal and we'd charge (as if...).
One poor old lady who lived in Batei Mahse would beg us to stop:
"Children, please, no more. Enough of this."
People thought we were playing, but we were training.
Someone reminded me about a year ago
of how we used to train in the big yard
and how we used to shout, "Attack on Gittaleh!"
and she'd get mad and ask us to stop.
Through all this training, were you afraid?
I felt it was a mission, We were not afraid.
We even climbed the walls of the Old City and jumped on them.
That was part of our training,
to run on the walls in case something...
back then it wasn't "in case something happened,"
that was part of our games, to run on the walls,
to Zion Gate for example.
Like climbing onto the domes on the rooftops.
No, that was to see the views, to take pictures,
that wasn't training.
That was our playground.
It was a famous spot.
Besides the streets and alleyways, we looked for an unusual background.
so we went up there
and took pictures.
And when you were training with the Hagana
did you think you'd have a state?
We hoped. We hoped.
We did all that in the hope of having our state one day.
We thought the British would leave one day and we'd have a state.
That's what we thought and that's what we believed.
As soon as the British left
we took over the British posts.
The Etzel, Lehi and Hagana took their posts
and then they organized the rest of the kids,
the Etzel, Lehi and Hagana organized kids from the age of 13,
but they brought kids who were younger than that, too.
One of them, Nissim Ginni, a 10-year-old, was killed.
He was one of our soldiers, our fighters.
Fighters, back then there were no soldiers,
only fighters.
I'm talking about the time before that,
before the war.
Yes, before.
When you were still living in the houses and playing games...
What did you think?
Did you think it would happen?
How did you view the future?
We didn't really think of the future.
We went with the flow of things, we didn't know what would happen.
We were still at school, 14-15 years old,
we didn't imagine anything really big.
We didn't imagine what was to come.
With time...
When the British left the country, we were organized in the Hagana,
but even before that,
the underground movements fought against the British so they'd leave.
We didn't expect it to happen so soon,
but the Etzel and Lehi gave the British
such a hard time that they decided to leave.
You told me there had been British people at your house, friends...
Not on a regular basis.
Occasionally, once a month maybe...
they used to come to my father.
So what did you personally think of the British?
No, never personally. These were friends
and people my father did business with.
They worked with him at the railway station
so they'd come to the house.
Effendis and sheikhs would also come to the house,
because Arabs also worked at the railway station,
they were managers and clerks.
My father and one other man were the only Jews
who worked at the railway station in Jerusalem.
He was a driver from Yemin Moshe.
He worked in the railway as a driver.
I'm talking about your personal experience with the British.
What did you think of them?
I didn't think anything.
There was no... no thought.
We'd be frightened when something happened,
when there was an explosion or a curfew.
People would not go out
because they were afraid of the British
who'd walk around with their batons and guns,
they were frightening.
We were afraid because we had to lock the houses
so they wouldn't come in, because they would.
They'd come to search the houses
for people involved in terrorist activities,
at the railway station, at the King David Hotel,
in office buildings like the Palestine Post
on Hasolel St. there was a bomb there
and many British were killed.
In their headquarters.
So people were afraid because they'd search the houses
for the people who bombed...
their offices, their headquarters, their police station.
And what did you think about these terror attacks against the British?
That this is the way it should be. That's the way it should be.
No thoughts. That's the way it should be
and we were organized in groups, the Etzel, Lehi and Hagana.
Each person chose who to join.
What do you mean when you say that's the way it should be?
Because we wanted a Jewish state and we fought for it
because the British wouldn't let us have it.
And the Arabs gave us a hard time, too.
There had been riots and they killed Jews, too.
Not like today,
but they killed a teacher
in Gei Ben Hinnom,
and they also killed Jews on their way to pray near the Kotel.
They killed Jews in Hebron...
The Hebron massacre.
Many fled Hebron.
They came to the Old City from Hebron.
They suffered a lot.
There were a lot of settlements...
I'm talking about the Old City,
but there were many other places where there had been riots,
Akko and Jaffa.
Let's go back to the riots and the troubles
and what you recall from that time as a young girl.
I don't remember anything from my time because that was in 1929
and I was born in 1933
so I can't really remember riots.
I recall pleasant things
such as going to the market.
We'd go to buy chickens.
On Yom Kippur you need to buy a live chicken for Kapparot.
We'd go to the Shochet.
We'd get the chickens from the Arabs,
but after Kapparot
we'd take them to the Jewish Shochet.
So everything was very nice and pleasant,
there was a pleasant atmosphere.
You don't know...
You don't remember in the 1930's There were... -There were no riots.
That is in the Old City, I don't remember any.
The first Christian they killed, that was just after '47
after the vote on the State on November 29th,
they killed an Armenian they thought... -Who killed him?
The Arabs thought he was a Jew.
Because he was fair skinned with blue eyes...
That's what I remember.
I don't remember killings before that.
They used to *** girls, but there were no killings...
We had a gate that separated the market, where the Muslims lived
from the Jewish Quarter.
There were four gates which would close in the evening.
They'd close around six or seven:
Jaffa Gate, Zion Gate, Damascus Gate,
and they built a special gate
separating the Jewish Quarter from the Muslim market.
It wasn't sealed because people used to come and go through it,
and bus no. 2 used to get to the Old City.
OK...
There was a time during the 1930's
when many Jews left the Old City because...
Because Moshe Montefiore built the Yemin Moshe neighborhood.
No, because of riots. That's what I heard, anyway.
You don't remember anything? -I don't remember riots.
There were incidents here and there with kids,
with people, when we went out,
but I don't remember anything happening in the Jewish Quarter.
You mentioned earlier that they'd harass young girls?
They'd whistle at them, Jews did, too.
They'd whistle and shout out...
Mahla lan...??
Mainly to the older girls, not the young ones.
Girls who were 15-16 who were elegant,
not us, we were sporty, we looked like kibbutzniks.
Girls who wore lipstick at 16-17,
the more elegant ones with the hairdos,
they'd whistle at them.
They wouldn't touch them or anything.
What did you think about men, Arabs or Jews, whistling at girls?
How did you feel about that?
I remember there were some Armenians who used to whistle at us
when we'd go out to play,
but especially...
Jews could have done it, too...
But not us in the Old City, no.
Every group kept to itself.
We were in HaNoar HaOved.
There were Scouts, too.
They had a branch of the Scouts movement.
I didn't join the Scouts because I went to HaNoar HaOved.
Before that I'd been to the Scouts outside the Old City.
There were clubs in the Old City where boys and girls...
Each went in their way.
But I don't remember any serious incidents.
I heard that you had, in certain situations,
mixed groups of boys and girls,
at what age or...
how was it in your group?
Our group was mixed.
Did you go out...? -No, at school...
the boys went somewhere else, to a Talmud Torah or yeshiva
and we went to a girls school, Girls' School Bet.
If you wanted a higher level, you would go to the Mission school,
or to Evelina de Rothschild,
Miss Landau,
those were higher levels.
The boys who didn't want to study only at a Talmud Torah
would go to Ratissbon, to Terra Santa, St. Joseph.
Everyone went their way,
depending also on the family values, of course.
Some went to Alliance.
So the Jewish boys went to Terra Santa and St. Joseph?
Those who wanted to get ahead.
Those boys whose parents
wanted them to get a higher level of education.
My brother, for example, went to a Talmud Torah in the mornings
and in the afternoons he'd go to Berlitz to learn English.
My father wanted my brother to advance
and he got him an Arabic tutor, an Armenian, to teach him Arabic.
Monsieur Rolo was his name.
He taught Arabic but he was Armenian.
He used to come to our house twice a week
to teach my brother Arabic after school.
When he finished his studies at the Talmud Torah
he went to Kibbutz Na'an with HaNoar HaOved.
He was a shepherd there and we used to go and visit him.
I told my mother: "Everyone is going to Na'an..."
Those were the older kids, I was still with the girls...
I'd say: "Mom, everyone is going to visit the kibbutz,"
because there were a few guys from the Old City there,
"I want to go and visit my brother."
So she said: "Who's going?"
So I told her: "Haim Avidan," who later became my husband,
"Haim Avidan, Tzion Hemo, Rafael Amar, Israel Hashmonai,
"I want to go with them."
She said: "Call Haim Avidan."
Let's just wait a second for it to stop ringing.
I want to hear you say, "Call Haim Avidan..."
So I went to their club, the older kids.
At the time I wasn't with them, that was later on.
I called Haim: "My mother wants to speak with you."
"What's the matter?"
"You and Rafael Amar come with me, to speak to my mother."
"What is it?" "Are you going to Na'an?"
"Yes, on the train from Jerusalem to Na'an."
"Shoshanna wants to join you, will you take her?"
"Sure, why not?" "But you'll keep her safe?"
So Haim Avidan, that's before we were married,
"I will look after her."
After we were married he'd jokingly remind me
that he had promised my mother to look after me.
So I went with them and from then on
a group of 5-6 of us would go and visit my brother.
Was that normal at the time?
Before the establishment of the state.
Was it normal for boys and girls to travel together?
Yes, we were in the same club.
The Ze'irei Har Zion Club,
the club for older kids was called the Ze'irei Har Zion Club.
The younger kids would have their activities a couple of hours earlier.
Then the older kids would come and I'd join them
because I wanted to be with the older kids.
The "older kids," that is the 16-17 year olds.
And that club was called Ze'irei Har Zion.
What does it mean?
Young people of Mount Zion.
Har Zion is Jerusalem.
To this day there is a Zion Gate and Zion is Jerusalem.
So, what did you do at the... -Jewish Quarter?
No, at this club, Ze'irei Har Zion.
It was a club, where we sang and danced
and there were different activities,
we were told stories about Zionism about Berl Katznelson,
Haim Nachman Bialik.
We were told a story and we'd have to repeat it.
Like in any club or youth movement.
We learned songs,
songs with Russian melodies.
That was very nice and exciting.
What was it like for you, coming from a Sephardic home,
to learn all these Russian things?
We were born into it, we grew up with it.
We mixed with everyone,
the Kurds, the Sephardim, Ashkenazim.
There was nothing special about me being Sephardic.
There were Iraqis.
We went to school together and we didn't care if they were Iraqis...
People from Iraq, Kurdistan, Georgia,
we didn't think anything of it.
There were Kurds, we were Sephardic or Ashkenazi.
Sephardim were the ones who originated from Turkey, Bulgaria,
and spoke Spanish at home.
The ones who spoke Kurdish were Kurds.
We didn't know there were people from different countries.
We didn't know they were Iraqis or Kurds or Syrian
or Egyptian.
There were no Jordanians but a lot of Jews came from Egypt.
We grew up together and it was all mixed.
There was a great difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
People who were of Eastern descent were Sephardic,
like today, when it's felt more.
Even people who came from America were considered Ashkenazi.
Even though we had a lot of relatives in America,
the Abbadi family and the Kobis,
I'm from the Kobi family.
So we had relatives in America, in the U.S.
"The family from America is here!"
They'd come to visit you? -Yes.
Before the establishment of the state? -Of course.
So tell me about their visits.
When they came
they'd get all excited about the fountain we had
in the middle of the room.
They'd take pictures from every angle.
They'd take a lot of pictures of this fountain that we had.
When they went back home they'd write letters
telling us how impressed they were with our luxurious house.
My mother studied at Alliance, and there were...
back then we didn't call them Moroccan,
Mugrabis who had relatives in Morocco,
and they'd ask my mother to write letters for them
to send to Morocco,
and she'd write letters for them.
Later on there was someone else,
a girl who also wrote letters for people,
so the people in Morocco who got the letters asked their relatives
to get the first lady who wrote the letters to write them again
because they couldn't understand what this girl wrote.
They said the first one wrote better
and her handwriting was more legible.
What language did you speak at home?
Spaniolit. Later, there were signs everywhere:
"Speak Hebrew, Jew."
In public places,
in cinemas, cafes or schools.
We never spoke our language during recess.
In the beginning we spoke Spaniolit, the language spoken at home,
but when they started punishing us for speaking our mother tongue
we only spoke it at home.
Not in public places. But when we played we spoke Spaniolit with each other.
Spanish or Ladino? -Ladino. Back then we used to call it Spaniolit.
What is the difference?
Sephardim, Argentines, Bulgarians, they speak it in a different manner.
Turks speak Spaniolit. Ladino.
Ladino is a mixture of several languages,
We have words that come from Arabic,
some words from Turkish, because the Turks ruled here,
so a few Turkish words got into the Spaniolit language.
Arabic, too. We also have a few words in Yiddish,
a few countries,
but the basis is Spanish from Spain.
So you spoke Ladino at home and with your friends.
My Sephardic friends, the ones who were not...
I told you, I had friends outside the school, too.
They were a bit older than me.
I spoke Spaniolit with the ones who went to Alliance or the Mission.
They were my friends.
I had friends who went to Alliance, Mission,
Evelina de Rothschild.
So with the Sephardic friends I spoke Spaniolit.
What language did you speak with your Ashkenazi friends?
Hebrew.
Outside the Sephardic circle we spoke Hebrew.
My mother always said:
"You should speak Spaniolit at home. You'll learn Hebrew at school,
"on the street, in the neighborhood,
"we have to make sure you do not forget your Spaniolit."
I regret not having spoken Spaniolit with my children.
It's a shame because they lost a language.
They picked up a few words...
Because in the beginning I spoke Spaniolit with my husband,
with my mother-in-law,
with my grandmother, my aunt.
That's my aunt, there, and my grandmother.
We spoke Spaniolit in the beginning
and my kids picked up a few words here and there,
just by listening to us speak,
but I didn't make a point of speaking Spaniolit with them.
Tell me, you mentioned you'd be punished for speaking Spaniolit.
You mean at school? -What would they do to you?
No, they wouldn't really...
We'd have to write something.
But what were the rules? What did they want you to do?
They wanted us to speak only Hebrew.
Can you tell me about that, please?
There were signs everywhere, at school, in cinema theaters,
"Speak Hebrew, Jew."
We tried to follow that and do as we were told
so we wouldn't get punished.
In the mornings we used to stand in a line for prayers, Shema Israel,
and for inspection, if our fingernails were clean and our shoes polished.
They'd check if you had your handkerchief, here, with a pin.
Anyone who didn't...
The cleanest class would get a star.
We had a display cabinet and we'd get stars.
The cleanest class that morning would get a star.
Silver star, gold star... It was a grading system.
After morning prayers we'd all go to our classes.
Could you please describe a day at school?
What would happen during the day? What did you study?
As I said, in the morning we'd pray before going to class.
In the first years we learned the alphabet and some arithmetic.
In the beginning we learned arithmetic with beads...
We had an abacus with colorful beads
and that's how we were taught arithmetic.
In 3rd grade, when we were older,
we got the book of Genesis, and we started studying the Bible,
arithmetic and Hebrew.
We studied Geography of Israel, too.
We'd get homework and do it at home
and bring it back the next day.
Each of us had to present the homework she did.
We did a lot of memorizing,
especially in Bible studies,
which is good,
because now I know many parts of the Bible by heart.
The Song of the Sea and...
the Song of Deborah, and Miriam.
We did a lot of memorizing and that makes me very proud,
especially when I see kids today who hardly know anything.
We studied the Bible and Rashi, too.
We had a break and then we'd go outside and play games.
We liked to skip rope and we'd play a game called Eretz,
where we'd draw on the floor and play using a small stone.
We also played Smel, where you had to bend and then jump over...
Like leapfrog, jumping over the girls...
we'd get into sacks and race each other.
We played many games.
We played Five Stones and marbles on the floor.
When the bell rang we'd go back to class.
We had an art teacher, Mr. Yarritch,
and we had music lessons with Mr. Brandsdorfer who played the violin.
He taught us to sing and he once took us to visit a radio station.
In 5th grade we went to the radio broadcasting station
on Queen Helena St. and we sang there.
I told my mother that we were going to the radio station to sing,
but in those days we didn't own a radio,
my mother and my brothers had to go down to the café,
a place for men only,
there were no cafes for women in those days in the Old City,
only for men,
so they went down to the cafe to hear us sing on the radio at two o'clock.
One or two o'clock we sang.
We sang the song: "I Hold a Flower in My Hand."
When I got home and they asked how it went,
my brother, wanting to annoy me, said:
"They sang a song about a flower...
"What happened to all the good songs we learned in the youth movement?"
I burst into tears, of course,
because I was offended that he didn't like our choice of song.
He really hurt my feelings.
That was my older brother,
the one who went to live on a kibbutz.
Did he change his mind?
No, why would he change his mind?
Even when he saw me in tears.
And my mother comforted me:
"Don't mind him, pay no attention.
"That's a good song, what does he know?"
Do you remember the song? -Of course. -Will you sing it?
I hold a flower in my hand, do not look at it,
but try to guess its name by its scent,
I hold a red flower in my hand, smell its scent and guess
He who guesses its name shall have it...
That's beautiful.
And...? -What?
I'm waiting for you to ask a question. -Okay, yes, I want to ask you about...
You told me about your day at school,
can you tell me about a favorite game?
Tell me how...
Teach me how to play this game.
We had games with dice
like Ritch-Ratch or Monopoly,
and we'd sit and play with a stone.
We'd place the blocks
according to the numbers on the board,
it was cardboard.
We played in twos, and sometimes four girls would play.
All sorts of games like the ones I told you about.
There were no favorites,
it was spontaneous,
we didn't decide in advance what we'd play that day.
We'd go outside and if someone brought a rope, we'd skip.
I meant this game with the dice,
tell me how you played it, describe the game.
A cardboard box, drawings,
colorful circles,
red, green, blue and...
purple, if I'm not mistaken.
We'd throw the dice
and if I got four it would be my turn to play.
We had to jump with the dice all the way to a certain point,
a colored circle on the board.
I think that's how we used to play.
Each of us on her turn.
It was nice.
We also played Five Stones,
you had to throw 5 stones
and then throw another one higher and catch it.
First one, then two and three, as many as possible.
The more you caught, the higher the score would be.
We'd also play with a...
Stick. A stick with two pointy ends
that we had to hit with another stick and throw as far as possible.
We had wooden paddles with which we hit the stick and threw it.
The further you threw it, the higher your score was.
And all sorts...
Games like those...
I'd like to go back to something else,
the religious rituals at home,
do you remember?
The holidays and special occasions,
Bar Mitzvas...
Tell me about your brother's Bar Mitzva.
Our financial situation was good so we held my brother's Bar Mitzva,
the one who was killed,
in the kindergarten.
People usually held these events at the synagogue and in their houses.
We had it in the kindergarten,
like today you'd have it at a banquet hall.
It was held at the kindergarten
and my father commissioned the radio orchestra...
That brother's Bar Mitzva celebrations lasted seven days.
On the first day we had the radio orchestra,
and on the second day a private ensemble with drums and an oud.
There were different celebrations every day for eight days.
There was a singer, an orchestra.
It wasn't an orchestra like we have today,
just four or five musicians
and a man called Galmidi
who used to play the oud.
There was a singer and someone who played drums
and an accordionist.
It's not an accordion, really, more like a harmonica.
All the girls and I watched this orchestra play
in the kindergarten where the party was held.
In the entrance there was a hall
and to the left and right, the classrooms.
So we watched this orchestra play
and this man, Galmidi, played and sang:
"Come out to the garden, my bride, it is time for loving..."
Every time he'd sing this line,
"Come out to the garden, my bride, it is time for loving..."
he'd look in our direction and wink, "Come out to the garden..."
My mother saw this and told me to move away from there.
The words and their meaning and the way he sang them
made her so nervous that he might do something.
She told me to take the girls and go elsewhere
where he wouldn't see us and sing to us like that.
We did as we were told, but we were little girls
and we wanted to see the orchestra play
and I remember that to this day
especially when you hear stories about pedophiles and rapists...
my mother feared something might happen to us.
Did you have a Bat Mitzva?
No, that's for Goyim.
People started celebrating Bat Mitzvas
many years later,
after the establishment of the state.
We'd envy the Christian girls...
the Muslims don't celebrate this,
in their pretty new dresses and hairdos.
The Christian and Armenian girls
all dressed up and carrying a bouquet that matched their dress,
in pink or white or blue.
And they'd be escorted to the church
and we'd follow them, too.
We didn't go into the church,
but we liked to watch the procession
because it was so beautiful.
There was no orchestra, but it was nice to walk with them.
They were dressed in their best clothes,
the women wearing hats decorated with black tulle.
It was something special because our clothes were very simple.
People were very poor, especially in the Old City.
For us, to see girls dressed in beautiful elaborate dresses
and their hair done up like that...
Our own hair would be held by a simple pin.
Did you envy them
because you didn't have a Bat Mitzva party?
People didn't celebrate Bat Mitzvas, only the Goyim.
Later, when new immigrants came from Europe,
they introduced the custom to celebrate Bat Mitzvas.
I had birthday parties.
I loved birthday parties.
I'd invite my schoolmates and other friends
and we'd put on a show
and... to get presents,
a ribbon or a hairpin,
we'd collect tinfoil wrappers.
You know what that is?
Chocolate was wrapped in colorful tinfoil...
After eating sweets
we'd smooth the wrapper with our fingernail
and put it between the pages of a book.
We collected them,
there were red ones and green ones and blue...
Some had a pattern on them.
I had a collection of large colorful wrappers
because Father would give us big chocolate bars and candy.
The other girls had small wrappers,
but I'd get...
and I'd share with my girlfriends.
I'll tell you about something else,
I never liked the food we were served at school
so I'd ask the girls to eat my food,
because the teacher would walk around
making sure everyone ate their food.
So I'd pass my food to the girls
and ask them to eat my food
and I'd promise to give them
wrappers or ribbons,
hairpins or crayons if they'd eat my food,
so the teacher would see my plate was empty.
I'd only eat bread.
If there were olives I'd eat olives,
a pickled cucumber, maybe,
but not the cooked food.
I have this problem to this day,
I don't eat anywhere.
It's not something I'm proud of...
Sometimes it's embarrassing.
Why don't you?
Why don't you eat?
I don't know. My mother was the same,
she'd only eat food that she had cooked herself.
I'm like that, too. I eat what I cook.
I can be at a five-star hotel and eat only olives and bread.
All my friends know this.
In the beginning I was embarrassed,
people would invite me to meals and I'd only eat...
simple things.
I'd have birthday parties at home,
every Shabbat. I had a birthday party every Shabbat.
I thought it was nice to get presents.
The girls would bring small gifts, crayons, a poem,
sometimes... we used to collect pictures,
of dogs or dolls
so the girls would give me pictures for my collection.
And I had a birthday party every Shabbat.
We'd sing and dance
and that was fun.
So we didn't envy the Christian girls for their Bat Mitzvas,
it didn't mean anything to us,
it's a Christian thing.
What did you like about your religion?
In kindergarten? -In your religion.
My religion? It wasn't a religious issue,
we were Jewish.
We were the same.
What did you like?
Did you like the ceremonies?
Going to the synagogue?
Getting together with friends, the youth movement,
there wasn't something specific I liked about the religion.
I liked the food my mother cooked on the Jewish holidays.
Apart from that
there was nothing in particular that I liked about the religion.
During the holidays
I liked to listen to the prayers in the different synagogues.
The Ashkenazim, the Sephardim,
I loved to listen to the Yemenites.
The Kurds didn't pray in a special way, but it was in Aramaic.
When they'd get to the book in the Torah...
but there was nothing in particular about the religion.
Can you please describe...
After this.
Can you describe one specific holiday,
either Passover, Rosh Hashanah or Succot?
Tell us about one holiday that was special or...
Passover. I loved Passover
when we had to read the Haggadah,
and we'd have to imagine being slaves
and put the matzo on our shoulders while we read the Haggadah.
When it was the next person's turn to read
we'd pass the matzo to them.
On the last day of Passover we'd get from my father's Arab friends,
not just any Arabs, my father's friends,
a large tray with honey and jam, lettuce and cheese
and homemade bread
and soft drinks.
There was a drink made from melon skins.
They'd grind the skins and make juice.
Like Almond juice, that's what they used to make.
They'd bring this tray with huge amounts of food on it
to wish us a sweet green new year.
They put a lot of greens on that.
My father would return the favor during the Ramadan.
How did you feel, living in Jerusalem
and hearing the prayers that describe the longing for Jerusalem
during the Seder?
After the war?
No, you grew up in Jerusalem while most Jews lived elsewhere,
most of the Jews lived in the Diaspora before the state was established.
But I lived in the Old City. -That's what I mean,
you grew up in the Old City
and you prayed and read that you were in...
I didn't pray. I didn't pray.
Why? -I just didn't.
As a child I'd only go and listen,
but I never opened a siddur or prayed.
Not even in kindergarten, and I went to religious kindergarten,
we never learned to read the prayers from a book.
We learned the alphabet by heart.
We memorized the Shema Israel as children.
I didn't have a Torah that I'd read from.
When we went to school we learned Hebrew and arithmetic,
general studies.
Geography, history, music, art, physical education,
but never a Torah book...
even when I went to the synagogue I'd sit in the women's section
and watch the others pray
or take the Torah out.
On special events and festivities
children would throw sweets down from the women's section,
especially on Bar Mitzvas
when they'd bring the Torah out from the Holy Ark,
and that was exciting.
On special occasions we'd climb onto the window...
We'd also climb a ledge near the window
to get a better view of the people praying downstairs.
I'll ask you again, in a different way,
did you know that the prayers expressed
a longing to be in Jerusalem?
I was already in Jerusalem so I didn't feel that longing.
That's exactly what I asked.
I had nothing to long for.
I didn't feel a need to pray for that.
Even when they'd say. "Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem"
we thought it was a rhyme with the words written in the Torah.
But I was in Jerusalem, my family was in Jerusalem, we were born there,
I was the 17th generation in Jerusalem,
why would I wish to be in Jerusalem in the future?
That applies to people living elsewhere.
I know that now.
Back then I didn't feel the need to say those words.
My father is from Tiberias,
he comes from a very religious family,
the Kobi family, which is famous in Tiberias...
Today there are people from different origins,
immigrants from many different places...
We'll stop here.