Ben Rubi had a natural artistic spark that enabled the Rishon Lezion resident to express her unique personality in her works. She dreamed of leaving her mark on the world. On October 7, 2023, she was among those murdered at the Nova music festival.
The colorful elephant looks ahead from a painting hanging from a first-floor wall in Rishon Lezion’s city hall. The pachyderm’s blue, green, orange, yellow and red body, depicted in wide brush strokes, may not fit on an African savannah, but it seemed plenty natural to Eden Ben Rubi, the local artist who painted it.
Eden Ben Rubi’s elephant painting
The image so appealed to Meirav Ben Rubi that she wore it on a t-shirt while being interviewed for a short film about the life of her daughter, 23, who along with her boyfriend Ariel Bitton was murdered by Hamas terrorists after fleeing the Nova music festival and taking refuge in a bomb shelter on October 7, 2023.
Eden painted the elephant during a two-week art workshop in India during a visit the last summer of her life. Because the canvas hadn’t dried when Eden left India, the workshop’s director mailed it later. It reached Eden a week before her murder.
Eden’s sketch of the Taj Mahal, which she visited in summer 2023
When the city hall exhibition — displaying works of six natives killed at Nova and in the war since — closes, the painting will return to the Ben Rubis’ home — the only artwork by Eden displayed there. It’s not that Eden particularly loved elephants, Meirav said. Rather, her daughter had been struck by this post in English:
ADVICE FROM AN ELEPHANT
Make a big first impression.
Don’t work for peanuts.
Be all ears.
Know when to put your foot down.
Be gentle, no matter your size.
Have big ideas.
Charge ahead.
“This was Eden: that it doesn’t matter your size — bring big ideas,” she said. “Leave an impression that you won’t be forgotten.”
Some of Eden Ben Rubi’s works at Rishon Lezion city hall (photo by Keren Weisshaus)
The blonde-braided Eden loved to create. “A gallery in New York” read one item on a handwritten checklist of her life’s goals in a notebook found under Eden’s pillow. Eden didn’t live to open a gallery, but Meirav achieved the next-best thing by arranging for Eden’s work to be displayed, along with pieces by other Nova victims, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood in April.
“What spoke to me about Eden’s art was the realness. You can feel her emotions and her connection to different people, places and things that meant a lot to her,” said Julia Levine, who organized the New York event and displays in her apartment a copy of another of Eden’s elephant paintings, this one Indian-themed.
Meirav, above her daughter’s picture, at an exhibition-dedication event in Rishon Lezion (photo courtesy of Meirav Ben Rubi)
Eden painted, sketched and drew. She made tattoos for friends. She seemingly was everyone’s friend, someone who lifted spirits and freely complimented others, who loved to dance and sing and smile — that’s the consensus of the film, After Eden.
The film was made by young Jews in Greece, the ancestral homeland of Eden’s father Uzi’s family. She traveled to Greece most summers to attend a Jewish camp, where she later worked as a counselor. When Meirav and Uzi visited the Acropolis last Passover, a cashier recognized her as Eden’s mother.
“I’m not like everyone else. That’s clear. As a result, I’ll succeed,” Eden said in a clip included in the film.
Eden at work (photo by Meirav Ben Rubi)
Keren Weisshaus, the curator of the Rishon Lezion exhibition, said she’s struck by the movement of Eden’s brush strokes, her utilizing lots of color and the cheerfulness conveyed. Approximately a dozen of her works appear in the exhibition, all of them sketches and drawings but for the elephant painting.
The display “testifies to her personality, that she saw brightness in everything,” said Weisshaus. “We see she’s bubbly, like sparkling water. Just like everyone has a unique handwriting style, so with an artist we can learn about the person’s personality and style. [We] can see that she’s energetic, upbeat and optimistic. You can see by the subjects she chooses that she sees the beauty in the world and in people.”
Eden Ben Rubi
That is apparent, too, in Eden’s paintings that Weisshaus didn’t include in the exhibition — “very colorful, saturated with color, [like] of sunsets,” she said. “You see her passion for life.”
Most astounding about the works and the exhibitions is this: Eden never studied art.
“Everything came from her head, her imagination,” Meirav said.
People continue paying tribute to her. A yoga event is being organized in her memory in Miami, and a wine-tasting night in Israel. Acclaimed chef Moshe Segev added an Eden’s Sunsets Cocktail to the menus of his restaurants in Petah Tikva and Hod Hasharon.
“Whoever does something recalling [Eden] really strengthens and excites us. The pain is there, but it helps. It says, ‘Look, they’re not forgetting her,’ ” Meirav said.
“Every time I memorialize her, I feel her close to my heart.”
More Than a Thousand Words: Hannah Senesh’s Photographs
Hannah Senesh had a poetic view of the world, as reflected in her own words – her poems, diaries and other writings. But the young paratrooper also left behind another, less well-known viewpoint, as documented through the lens of her camera.
“Aniko, the serious writer, writing her famous novel.” The inscription behind the black and white photograph is handwritten, easily recognizable from countless other texts written by this young woman – poems, personal notes, diaries and more.
The young woman in the picture, who also wrote the inscription, is “Aniko” herself, better known by her Hebrew name: Hannah Senesh (Szenes). It’s Christmas, 1936. Senesh is pictured in her family home in Budapest. She is sitting at a desk, looking directly at the camera, before her is a notebook and she holds a pen in her hand. Beside her is a picture of her father, the acclaimed writer and playwright, Béla Senesh, whom she lost when she was only six years old.
Hannah Senesh sitting at her desk. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen
Béla Senesh, like his daughter, wrote quite a lot of material during his short lifespan, including stories for children, first read to little Hannah and her brother Giora (George). When Hannah was only five years old, she began to follow in her father’s footsteps and started to write.
At a later age she wrote about him:
“There are stars whose light reaches the earth only after they themselves have disintegrated and are no more.
And there are people whose scintillating memory lights the world after they have passed from it.
These lights which shine in the darkest night – are those which illumine for us the path.”
(Translator unknown)
But along with the notebooks, diaries, writing instruments and the typewriter, the “tools of the trade” that we typically associate with a poet, Hannah also had a camera. This creative young woman, the Zionist who dreamed of making an impact and being remembered, left her stamp in more than one way.
In 2022, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, Hannah Senesh’s archive was deposited in the National Library of Israel as part of the Senesh Family Archive. In addition to manuscripts there are also family photos and many photographs that Senesh took herself – in Hungary on family vacations, and after her aliyah to the Land of Israel. Sometimes she wrote on the back of the photograph, other times the photographs were attached to a letter sent to her mother or brother Giora. The archive also contains Hannah’s camera, an Agfa Box-Spezial Camera in a small leather box lined with blue fabric, her name on it in her own handwriting.
Hannah Senesh’s camera, today preserved in the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen
Some of the photos are arranged in albums organized and kept by Senesh, some with typewritten captions. “Now I will go to sort out my photographs and reproductions. This activity gives me great pleasure,” she wrote in her diary, (excerpt from Diaries, Poems, Testimonies by Hannah Senesh). Senesh had a collection of postcards and artwork reproductions which are also part of the archive.
The albums are evidence of an imaginative young woman who viewed the world as a poet, with a strong desire to preserve, remember and remind.
“I am writing now from San Pellegrino, sitting on grass, with mountains in front of me and behind me. A stream winds through the valley, a wonderful mix of emotions and images. I’ve taken in so many impressions… I am trying to write everything down, to save the memories of these two days as a keepsake.”
(Excerpt from “Diaries, Poems, Testimonies“)
In the summer of 1937, 16-year-old Senesh travels by train to Italy equipped with a camera. The purpose of the trip is to meet her relatives in Menaggio near Lake Como. On the way she also visits Milan, Venice, and San Pellegrino. “I am full of curiosity and have a camera in my hand,” she writes in her diary.
After a visit to the Duomo in Milan, she writes in her diary about the experience, and her photographs of the cathedral fill some two pages in her photo album:
“I’d heard a lot about it, and I even saw a picture…as if I saw it in my mind’s eye. Nevertheless, as I now stood at the edge of its vast square, in front of the towering building in all its glory, I looked in awe, breathless, at the whole church as a work of imagination. I started walking towards it, and entered through the bronze gate with its inlaid reliefs. At the first moment, I noticed in the gloom only the outlines of the giant columns… Slowly my eyes were drawn to the Gothic vaults and the capitals of the columns crowned with statues. The vast dimensions contain human destinies, whose hopes, torments and dreams were cast in these columns.”
Pictures of Milan from Hannah Senesh’s photograph album, 1937. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen
In 1938, she writes about winning a prize in a school photography competition: “3 films. That’s second prize.” (Excerpt from Diaries, Poems, Testimonies). In March of that year, Senesh is disturbed by the situation prevailing in Europe. She writes in her diary for the first time about political events and describes the occupation of Austria by Hitler. During this year, Senesh declares in her diary that she is a Zionist.
A year later, in March 1939, she is no longer interested in anything but Zionism. “I would not be exaggerating if I write that the only thing by which I live and which occupies me completely is Zionism… I now take upon myself the right to see only ourselves, Judaism, the Land of Israel and its future. The situation is very serious.”
It is Senesh’s last year at school and final exams are approaching. She writes “I hardly pay attention to them and I don’t prepare”. During this period, she writes a letter in Hebrew to Hannah Maisel-Shohat, the director of the agricultural school for young women in Nahalal. She longs to immigrate to Israel and help build the Jewish settlement, “May they accept me!” she writes in her diary.
And she was indeed accepted. Immediately after her 18th birthday, Senesh received the long-awaited certificate. She said goodbye to her mother and set off alone, two days by train and five more days by ship: “I finally arrived home to Eretz Yisrael”.
She first came to Haifa and then to the Jezreel Valley, to Nahalal, where she worked in the laundry, dairy, kitchen, and produce warehouse sorting grapefruit. She studied Hebrew and agriculture, developed friendships, and even went on trips — along with her camera.
In Senesh’s many correspondences with her mother Katarina, who remained in Hungary, she asked her to send some basic supplies: “Regarding my other requests, I am really very well equipped, and I don’t know what other things I need. Soon, I will run out of soap, toothpaste, film. Could you send me that? (Excerpt from Only You Will Understand by Hannah Senesh)
At Nahalal, Hannah and her camera were inseparable. “Today I had an impressive success with photography. A few girls who were excited about the Nahalal photos bought film and asked me to photograph them. All eight photos turned out very well. Now everyone wants me to photograph them, as if they’ve appointed me the court photographer.” (Excerpt from Only You Will Understand)
Senesh continues her journey in the Land of Israel. She is seeking a kibbutz that suits her mindset, and finally arrives at Sdot-Yam, where she stays until enlisting in the British Army and departing on the mission from which she will not return. She no longer photographs. She reflects on the past, writing, “I’m afraid to look into the depths of the abyss” (Excerpt from Diaries, Poems, Testimonies).
“Only one image draws me back into the past – mother at the train station. Four years. I never believed that the chasm separating us would be so wide.”
The Senesh Family Archive is today deposited at the National Library of Israel and has been made accessible courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
90 Years Late: A Decorated Jewish General’s Book Arrives at the Library!
After a "slight" delay, the National Library of Israel has finally received a book of war correspondence written by the most famous and senior Jewish officer to serve in WWI. Who was Sir John Monash? And what happened to this particular book since it was dedicated to the NLI back in 1935? We set out to find answers…
On an April day in 2024, a suspicious package arrived at the security department of the Australian branch of a well-known international investment firm. The messenger was a dubious individual, known to the security officer as someone who often harassed the company’s CEO. Company policy in such cases was usually to destroy the package, but the security officer noticed that in this case the package was simply a book – so he opened it.
After a quick glance at the book, the security officer contacted the National Library of Israel directly. In correspondence with me, he explained that he understood from the dedication in the beginning of the book that it was supposed to have been sent to us many years ago. Following some more back and forth and technical matters of shipping and handling, the book was received by the Library this past September.
The book in question is War Letters of General Monash, a collection of published letters written by Sir John Monash, an Australian general who served in the First World War. Monash was the most senior Jewish commander of the war in any of the belligerent nations.
The copy of War Letters of John Monash, which just recently reached the National Library of Israel
Monash wrote the book’s letters mostly to his wife and daughter, detailing the important historical events in which he took part from December 1914 to December 1918. The book starts with his departure from Australia and his voyage to Egypt, where he led the 4th Brigade. He goes on to tell of how after a few months in Egypt, the brigade left to take part in the Gallipoli campaign. Following a defensive mission along the Suez Canal, the brigade sailed to France to fight on European soil. From there, Monash sailed to England, taking command of the Australian 3rd Division. He spent most of 1917 and 1918 in France, commanding forces in some of the most decisive battles of the war. In May 1918, he was promoted in rank and made commander of all Australian forces on the Western Front.
Australian soldiers in the area of the northern Belgian city of Ypres, 1917
Meet John Monash: Engineer and Decorated General
John Monash was born in 1865 to Jewish parents who immigrated from Germany. He studied engineering at the University of Melbourne and joined the university’s military unit. Following his studies, he went on to have a civilian career in engineering, while also moving up the ranks in the army. He specialized in working with concrete and building bridges and rail lines. In the military, he commanded an artillery battery and later moved on to serve in an intelligence role. A year before the outbreak of WWI, he received command of an infantry brigade.
During the war, Monash demonstrated his command skills, standing out for his creative thinking and his ability to plan matters down to the smallest details. Many are familiar with the difficult descriptions of what this war was like – rows of soldiers emerging from trenches and charging towards the enemy, only to be cut down by machine gun fire. In the face of this grim reality, Monash placed an emphasis on the importance of combining different kinds of weaponry – tanks, planes, mortars – to help the infantry soldiers achieve their objectives safely, rather than sending them to their deaths in pointless and ineffective missions. He truly cared for his soldiers.
General Sir John Monash, 1918
Monash was greatly respected for his military skills, and some believe that if the war had lasted longer, he would have ended up in command of the entire British Army in Europe.
Monash died in 1931 from a heart attack at the age of 66. Following a funeral attended by throngs of people, he was buried in the Jewish lot of the Melbourne cemetery. His wife had died 11 years before, and only his daughter, Bertha Bennett, survived him.
General Monash and the National Library of Israel
Today, we know that it was Bertha who donated that copy of War Letters of General Monash to the National Library in 1935, the same book which somehow ended up at the Australian offices of an international investment company. Bertha wrote a dedication at the beginning of the book, which reads: “to the Jewish National and University Library in memory of my later father, General Sir John Monash – a Jew, who commanded the Australian Army Corps in the Great War.”
But for some reason, the book never left Australia – until now.
Bertha Bennett’s dedication of her father’s book to the National Library, June 1935
Even before Bertha’s donation, which was ultimately delayed for almost a century, other donations made by Monash himself reached the Library long before, even opening up a separate saga in and of themselves:
Here’s how it all unfolded.
We shall begin by briefly shedding some light on another interesting figure from the past:
Abraham Schwadron (Sharon) was born in Galicia in 1878. He was a thinker, writer, musician, and recipient of three doctorates from the University of Vienna. Schwadron made Aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1927, where he primarily worked on his collection of portraits and photographs. For decades, Schwadron requested and received letters, postcards, and other documents written or at least signed by important figures, especially from the Jewish world. He also collected pictures and portraits of famous people from across the globe. He donated it all to the National Library, where he worked for many years. In 1920, Schwadron published an item in the British newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, announcing that he was collecting portraits, letters and souvenirs of famous Jews around the world and that he was requesting the readers’ assistance in expanding his collection.
Schwadron’s request for help in expanding his collection, The Jewish Chronicle, November 1920
Monash saw the request in the paper, and in September 1921, he sent Schwadron a postcard with a self-portrait and his signature. In an attached letter, Monash added that “It will doubtless be known to you [Schwadron, D.L.] that I was in supreme command of the Australian Army in France in 1918. I am well acquainted with Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner in Palestine, and with his legal adviser Mr. Norman Bentwitch.” The letter and the postcard were entered into the Schwadron Collection at the National Library.
Letter and postcard sent by Monash to Schwadron in 1921
Eight years later, in May 1929, Monash sent his book, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, to the National Library. The book, which he wrote two years after the war, describes the battles of the Australian soldiers in the war’s final year. It includes photographs, maps, and an appendix including battle orders and logistical instructions on the battlefield. Monash attached a brief letter addressed “To the Jewish National and University Library” in which he described his donation as a humble contribution to its literature of the Great War, which he said “brought freedom to the Jewish People in Palestine.”
The book’s inner cover contains a label in memory of Rose and Barnett Altson. This family lived in Australia, but their connection to Monash is unclear. Monash seemingly got his hands on a copy owned by the family, which he decided to send to the National Library. My efforts to find a connection via our genealogical staff between the two families came up empty.
Monash’s dedication in the Altson family copy of his book (according to the label on the left)
Pleading for Help
A year later, Schwadron wrote a long letter to Monash in Australia. He thanked him for the postcard and the book and provided a detailed picture of the situation in the Land of Israel. He noted that he belonged to no political party, but that as a concerned Jew, he felt compelled to correct Monash’s mistaken words regarding the freedom of the Jews in Palestine.
According to him, the British Mandatory government had spent the past 11 years doing everything it could to make the Land of Israel a very unfree place for the Jewish People. Schwadron wrote that the Mandate authorities supported the local Arab residents, who were responsible for the pogroms launched against the Jews of the country. He argued that 95% of the British officials were anti-Zionists and were causing great dismay for the many Jews who had left their lives and families in Europe following the Balfour Declaration to build up the Land of Israel through hard work and toil, in hopes of a better future. Schwadron brought examples of the unfairness of the British government towards the Jewish population, including the relatively low taxes paid by Arabs compared to Jews.
Schwadron’s letter to Monash, March 1930
Schwadron may have hoped that Monash could use his influence and contacts to help his brethren in the Land of Israel.
Three months after Schwadron sent his letter, Monash responded with a letter of his own, noting that he was disappointed and surprised at Schwadron’s criticism of the British Mandatory government. Monash expressed no opinion regarding Schwadron’s accusations, explaining that he would study the situation from additional sources. He added that he was a very busy man and that although he was very interested in “communal matters,” he didn’t have time to deal with the subject. He thanked Schwadron for the information regarding the Mandate’s activity, information which had not even come to his attention.
Monash’s response to Schwadron, June 1930
But Schwadron did not give up, and he wrote another letter to Monash in August of that year. Schwadron explained that after studying the material, he was certain that Monash would help bring about a significant change of the situation in the country. Schwadron updated Monash on the deterioration of the situation since his previous letter, mentioning the Shaw Commission which investigated the 1929 Arab Riots, the limitation of Aliyah, the White Paper, the preference shown for hiring Arabs in government positions (Arabs made up 94% of the non-British civil service in the country), lack of aid to Jewish farmers and the antisemitic statements of the Mufti of Jerusalem.
Schwadron ended his letter with a question: “How will a national home arise when those charged with its establishment are openly or covertly violent?” If there was a response to this letter, it is not in our possession. Monash probably did not have the time to deal with Schwadron’s complaints.
General Monash was widely respected in Australia, and was commemorated in a variety of ways following his death in 1931. His name adorns a university, a medical center, a highway, and a municipality. In Israel, the agricultural community known as Kfar Monash in the Hefer Valley was named after him. Monash has been the subject of multiple biographies, which include discussion of his victories in World War I and his contribution to Australia’s development.
The copy of Monash’s collection of letters which his daughter dedicated to the National Library was not the first to reach us – we already had a few copies. But now we have a particularly special one, a copy dedicated by his daughter.
Bertha apparently never got around to actually sending the book to Jerusalem, and it appears to have wandered across Australia before reaching the offices of the investment firm – a truly strange story, the details of which we may never know. What ultimately matters is that the book finally reached its destination, and is now on the shelves of the National Library in Jerusalem.
Close-up of Monash’s book, dedicated by his daughter to the National Library of Israel
The Balilius Affair: What Was Jerusalem’s Main Synagogue?
In the late 1920s, a fierce debate erupted between the Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Jerusalem over which synagogue should be considered the main Jewish house of worship in the city. This controversy escalated to an international legal battle that lasted many years.
Presumed portrait of Sima Balilius by an unknown artist. Courtesy of Susan Hyam
Mrs. Sima Balilius died in Hong Kong in 1926 when she was nearly 90 years old. Sima was the daughter of David Joseph Ezra, the leader of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Calcutta, India. When she was around 20 years old, she married Emmanuel Balilius, who was also from one of the city’s aristocratic Jewish families. A few years later, Emmanuel moved to Hong Kong to work in the opium trade. There, he fell in love with a young Chinese woman, and married her. Sima found out but wasn’t willing to give up on her husband. She sailed to Hong Kong to find him. There, the couple reached an agreement that Emmanuel would stay married to both women, and they would all live together in the same house.
Emmanuel died in 1905, and Sima continued managing her husband’s business vigorously until her death, with the elders of Jerusalem gossiping that opium was the most respectable aspect of her dealings. Before his death, Emmanuel arranged in his will to bestow significant sums of money towards the field of education. Two schools were opened in his name: one in Calcutta, which has since closed, and one in Hong Kong, which still operates today. In contrast to her husband, Sima left the money in her will to the impoverished of Jerusalem. She donated 75,000 pounds sterling, the equivalent of several million Israeli shekels today.
Sima was likely influenced by an incident that had occurred a few years earlier, when Elias Kadouri, another wealthy Jew from Hong Kong, left behind money for the purpose of establishing an agricultural school in what was then still Mandatory Palestine. However, the British authorities claimed it wasn’t self-evident that Kadouri intended for it to be a Jewish school. Ultimately, two agricultural schools were established: one Jewish school near Kfar Tavor and one Arab school near Tulkarm. Wanting to avoid a similar situation, Balilius dedicated her bequest to Jerusalem’s poor, through a fund to be managed by the board of trustees of the main synagogue in Jerusalem. However, Sima didn’t explicitly clarify which synagogue she intended to donate the funds to. When news of Balilius’s will reached Israel, a fierce debate ensued between the Ashkenazi community, supported by the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Rav Kook, who argued that the main synagogue was Beit Yaakov, more commonly known as the Hurva Synagogue. The Sephardi community, supported by the Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir, claimed that the main synagogue was the one named after Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, known as the Ribaz. The Mea Shearim Yeshiva also joined in the dispute, claiming entitlement to the funds, but none of the other parties accepted their claims.
Rabbi Yaakov Meir’s visit to the Secretariat of the Sephardi Community in Jerusalem. The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel
Moshe David Gaon, a scholar of Eastern Jewry whose archive is housed in the National Library in Jerusalem, was involved in the trial as the secretary of the Sephardi community and as an expert witness. He testified in court about the location and significance of the Ribaz Synagogue.
Each community presented its arguments, some stronger than others. For instance, the Ashkenazim claimed that the Hurva Synagogue was the largest in the city, while the Sephardim argued that the building of the Ribaz Synagogue was the oldest in Jerusalem. The Ashkenazim asserted that the British authorities recognized the Hurva, citing the fact that the High Commissioner Herbert Samuel participated in prayers there. For their part, the Sephardim had proof that the High Commissioner had taken part in prayers at the Ribaz Synagogue, including festive prayers held there to commemorate the King’s birthday and the conquest of Jerusalem during World War I.
Entrance ticket to attend prayers at the Ribaz Synagogue with the High Commissioner in attendance. From the Moshe David Gaon Archive, the National Library of Israel. This collection is in the process of being cataloged and will be made accessible at the National Library of Israel, thanks to the kind donation of the Samis Foundation, Seattle, Washington, dedicated to the memory of Samuel Israel.
The Sephardi community brought what they considered conclusive evidence: Mrs. Balilius was of Sephardi descent, and therefore it was clear she intended to leave her donation to her own community’s synagogue. In contrast, the Ashkenazim argued that the name Sima was an Ashkenazi name, and thus she must have been Ashkenazi. It is unclear whether the Ashkenazim made an innocent mistake or intentionally misspoke, but Mrs. Balilius’s first name was actually Simcha; Sima was just her nickname. Regardless, the Ashkenazi claim was dismissed after Sima Balilius’ sister testified that the family was of Sephardi origin.
The parties then moved on to discuss a broader question: What determines whether someone is Ashkenazi or Sephardi and which of these is the main Jewish community? Bernard (Dov) Joseph, the lawyer representing the Hurva Synagogue, and later a minister in the Israeli government, testified in an affidavit to the court that all Jews around the world are Ashkenazi unless born in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Morocco, or Persia. In response, Meir Hay Genio, the lawyer representing the Sephardi community, declared that all Jews are Sephardi, unless they are Ashkenazi.
The parties then debated which community could claim the larger percentage of Jews in Jerusalem. The Ashkenazim claimed they constituted 80% of the city’s Jews, while the Sephardim contended that only 55% of the city’s Jews were Ashkenazi. The Ashkenazim added that all public institutions in the city were Ashkenazi, and the Sephardim responded with a list of all the educational and charitable institutions belonging to their community.
Each community tried to downplay the other’s importance. The Ashkenazim argued that the Sephardi community seemingly represented only the descendants of Spanish exiles, while Jews from other Arab countries were organized into separate communities, and the Ribaz Synagogue didn’t represent them. In response, the Sephardim contended that the Ashkenazi community also wasn’t one unified entity, but rather divided into numerous groups. The Sephardim pointed out that the inscription on the entrance of the Hurva Synagogue read: “Synagogue for the Ashkenazi Perushim kollels in Jerusalem,” which proved that it didn’t represent the entire Jewish public in the city, but only certain Ashkenazi factions.
The Hurva Synagogue. Photo: Efraim Dagani. Source: Nadav Man, Bitmuna. From the Dagani Collection. The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel
The main hall of the Yohanan Ben Zakkai Synagogue, Jerusalem. Source: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi (Israel Revealed), L’Avenir Illustre Newspaper Collection, Morocco. This item is part of the Archive Network Israel project and is made digitally accessible through the collaboration of Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.
The arguments continued back and forth, and journalist Nachum Melitz, who covered the case, wrote as follows: “The books Luchot Eretz Yisrael and the volumes entitled Jerusalem by Rabbi Luntz, Moses and Jerusalem by Sir Moses Montefiore, books by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, German and English Baedekers [travel guidebooks], etc., seem to have been created not for their own sake, but rather to serve as Tanna Demesay’a [evidence] for the parties discussing the Balilius inheritance.”
The courts in Hong Kong weren’t sure how to resolve the conflict. The judges sought assistance from the British Mandate authorities, but those preferred not to intervene and offered only an ambiguous response noting that “there are two main synagogues in Jerusalem”. An envoy sent by the court to Jerusalem returned with the same answer. The trial continued, and both sides, the Sephardim and Ashkenazim, began to fear that the British government would end up exploiting the dispute and expropriating the funds for its own purposes.
Ultimately, through the mediation of British-Jewish lawyer Norman Bentwich, they reached a compromise to establish a joint committee of both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The committee would include twelve members— nine Sephardim and three Ashkenazim—and would manage the estate’s funds, which would be distributed at a rate of 75% to the Sephardim and 25% to the Ashkenazim. Although the estate’s funds were depleted due to the lengthy legal proceedings and the stock market crash during the economic crisis of 1929, the estate council succeeded in purchasing several buildings throughout the city, dedicating their income to the poor, and seemingly everything was resolved peacefully.
However, about 25 years later, the case resurfaced due to claims from the Ashkenazim that the Sephardi committee was discriminating against them and transferring less funds than it was obligated to. The matter was brought back to the courts – this time rabbinical courts – and indirectly led to the resignation of two Sephardi Chief Rabbis, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Ultimately, the issue gradually faded away. Today, the only thing that remains of the entire affair is a modest street sign bearing the name Sima Balilius in downtown Jerusalem.
I would like to thank the author Simon Choa-Johnston for his assistance in preparing this article.
The Moshe David Gaon Archive is in the process of being cataloged and will be made accessible at the National Library of Israel, thanks to the kind donation of the Samis Foundation, Seattle, Washington, dedicated to the memory of Samuel Israel. Arik Kitsis is the archivist in charge of handling the Moshe David Gaon Archive.
