Ilan Ramon, Israel’s 1st Astronaut, and the Meaning of Life

Long before he became the first Israeli to be launched into space, Ilan Ramon, as a 23-year-old fighter pilot, asked Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz: “What is man’s purpose in this world?” Leibowitz did his best to answer

Distinguished Professor!

I have long struggled with many strange questions that can perhaps be gathered under the heading: What is man’s purpose in this world? And the more questions that are asked, the greater the contradictions and ambiguities.

I am a young man—23 years old. I turn to you—an older person with such rich knowledge and experience, whose opinion is so important to me—I turn to you and ask:

How do you see the world we live in?

How do you explain the essence of life?

How do you view man’s purpose and goal in life?

And how is a man to achieve this purpose?

And you, honorable Professor, looking back, do you think that you have achieved the goals or purpose placed before you?

Dear Professor, I know how limited your time is and [that it is] devoted to important matters, and yet I would be very grateful if you could address my questions and perhaps enlighten me on life’s dark path.

With respect,

Ilan Ramon

Ilan Ramon’s Hebrew letter to Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Archive, the National Library of Israel

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The young Israeli Air Force pilot Ilan Ramon sent the above letter to Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz in 1977.

Five days later, Leibowitz sent his reply:

Dear Ilan Ramon,

Your question “How do you see the world we live in?” is not clear to me.  What does “see the world” mean? Do you mean cosmologically, physically, metaphysically or…?

In your question, “How do you explain the essence of life?”—I do not know what you mean by the words “essence of life.” Do you mean biological, psychological, historical or…?

Regarding your question about “man’s purpose and goal in life”—there is no objective answer. In Pirkei Avot the sages say: “Against your will you were created, and against your will you were born, and against your will you live, and against your will you die”—and to these words, there is nothing more to add.

Man exists without having decided to be created or to be born or to live—he has no choice but to make a subjective decision about his goal and purpose in life—and there are countless possible decisions:

There are those who will find their own life to have no value, nor will they find any value in anything within that life—and they will commit suicide.

There are those who will see value and purpose in maximizing pleasure for themselves (material or sexual, or aesthetic, and so forth) all the days of their life.

There are those who will see value and purpose in acquiring knowledge—and will dedicate their lives to this.

There are those who will see value and purpose in helping their fellow man—and will dedicate their lives to this.

There are those who will see value and purpose in the service of their people and country—and will dedicate their lives to this.

There are those who will see value and purpose in serving God—and will dedicate their lives to this.

None of these decisions can be objectively justified, and every person—you and I included—must make their own decision.

Very truly yours,

Yeshayahu Leibowitz

ליבוביץ משיב לאילן רמון. ארכיון ישעיהו ליבוביץ בספרייה הלאומית
Leibowitz responds to Ilan Ramon. The Yeshayahu Leibowitz Archive, the National Library of Israel

On January 16th, 2003, more than 25 years after writing the letter above, Colonel Ilan Ramon became the first Israeli to enter space, aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia. Ramon and the rest of the seven-person crew perished only a few days later, on February 1st of that year, when the Columbia disintegrated upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Israel’s Astounding (and Imprecise) World Record

The unbelievable story of how 1,088 (or was it 1,122?) people flew aboard a single airplane as part of 1991's Operation Solomon

New immigrants from Ethiopian shortly after disembarking from the plane as part of Operation Solomon, 25 May 1991 (Photo: Gadi Cavallo). From the Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Over a 36-hour period in the last week of May 1991, more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews flew to Israel, with some 1,100 of them arriving on a single airplane!

That flight, in fact, still holds the Guinness World Record for the greatest number of passengers ever carried by a commercial airliner, though the exact number remains disputed three decades after the daring mission known as “Operation Solomon”.

As the immigrants boarded the plane they were counted. Official paperwork went to the relevant authorities and served as the basis for the official record of 1,088 passengers.

At a conference hosted by the Ben Zvi Institute commemorating 30 years since Operation Solomon, the plane’s pilot, Captain Arieh Oz, recalled the historic day (Hebrew).

After landing in Israel, Rafi Har-Lev, the CEO of El Al, asked Captain Oz, “How many passengers did you bring?” Upon hearing the tally, Har-Lev exclaimed, “That’s a world record,” and asked for a re-count just to make sure.

The new tally? 1,122.

A woman is assisted off the plane after landing in Israel, 25 May 1991 (Photo: Gadi Cavallo). From the Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Captain Oz soon realized the reason for the rather significant discrepancy.

A number of mothers had hidden their children under their dresses as they boarded the plane, not fully certain where they were going, nor who exactly was taking them.

Many of the passengers, refugees from the war-torn Gondar region, had never seen an airplane before, let alone many of the other reflections of modern society to which they were suddenly exposed.

Their concern was more than justified given the circumstances.

A mother with her children shortly after disembarking from the plane in Israel, 25 May 1991 (Photo: Gadi Cavallo). From the Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Captain Oz could certainly relate. Decades earlier, a Dutch family had hidden him for three years in their attic, saving him and his sister from being murdered during the Holocaust.

As he prepared to go to the Land of Israel after the war, the child was asked what he would do there:

“Will you be a shepherd? A camel herder?”

Arieh (born Harry Klausner) responded, “I will be a pilot!”

For decades Arieh Oz did just that, serving Israel and the Jewish people in ways his childhood self could not have even imagined, including taking part in the famous mission to free the hostages at Entebbe.

Arieh Oz as a young pilot (Source: Tkuma Leshchakim)

Long retired from active service in the Israeli Air Force, Oz was already senior staff at El Al when he was called to take part in Operation Solomon, flying the first Jumbo 747 ever to land at Addis Ababa airport. According to Oz, who had also spent time in Ethiopia training pilots in the 1960s, three Jumbos were set to land in Ethiopia’s capital as part of the operation. After two came in, local authorities complained that the weight of the massive aircraft had damaged the runway and the third Jumbo was forbidden from touching down.

This setback, as well as a technical issue with another plane, meant that the plan had to be changed. More passengers needed to join Captain Oz’s flight.

Captain Oz of course welcomed them aboard, later honoring the passengers’ request to inform them when the plane flew over Jerusalem.

At some point during the flight, after realizing that the Israeli team was kind and caring, the mothers who had concealed their children on the way onto the plane let them out of hiding.

Uncounted passengers? Mothers with their babies shortly after disembarking in Israel, 25 May 1991 (Photo: Gadi Cavallo). From the Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

When the flight finally landed in Israel – after flying over Jerusalem – there were some three dozen “new passengers”, Captain Oz recalled.

Though the higher number of 1,122 is noted by Guinness World Records, the lower number remains the official figure, as it is what appeared on the flight documents.

Kept secret for months, Operation Solomon would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of the global Jewish community and supporters worldwide; the countless Israelis who took part in all aspects of the mission, from planning through implementation; and, of course, the immigrants themselves, who longed for Zion and left all they knew to realize their dreams.

Regardless of whether the true number of passengers on that 747 was 1,088 or 1,122 (or something in between), Operation Solomon remains a rousing example of what can be accomplished when solidarity meets determination and sacrifice.

An Ethiopian Israeli at the Jewish Agency Office in Tel Aviv celebrates after hearing that his parents have just arrived as part of Operation Solomon, 26 May 1991 (Photo: Vered Peer). From the Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.

Jerusalem During the War of Independence—Now in Color!

The blockade of Jerusalem began during the first few days of the War of Independence, spreading from the Old City's Jewish Quarter to the rest of Jerusalem. These color photos from 1948 show us what life was like in the city that was cut off from the rest of the country…

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Going down to fetch water from the reservoirs during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

It was the early days of Israel’s War of Independence, and Jerusalem was under blockade. The city had been placed under siege many times before. First came the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, followed by the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Muslims, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, and that’s not even a complete list . Yet, this time, things were a bit different. For example, Jerusalem by this time had finally grown beyond the walls of the Old City. Another difference was the existence of the camera.

At first, it was just the Old City’s Jewish Quarter that was cut off from the rest of the city, but very soon, the Arab forces realized that all of Jewish Jerusalem was entirely dependent on the road to Tel Aviv and the coastal plain remaining open – this was the only route for bringing in critical food and supplies. In fact, a November 30th, 1947 attack on a bus traveling from Netanya to Jerusalem is often seen as the opening shot that set off the War of Independence. Later, the situation grew more severe when Jordan’s British-trained Arab Legion force took command of the campaign, following Israel’s declaration of statehood in May 1948. In late May, following a siege of several months, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City finally surrendered to the Jordanian forces, while the blockade of the road leading to Jerusalem remained in place. The convoys that struggled to reach the city (and also the nearby Etzion Bloc), the Israeli military operations which aimed to lift the blockade, the Battle of the Castel and the construction of the alternative “Burma Road” route to the coast—all these remain symbols of the War of Independence to this day.

As fate would have it, a man by the name of Moshe (Marlin) Levin was living in the city during the blockade period of 1947/48. Levin, born and raised in the United States, arrived in Mandatory Palestine with his wife in 1947. He quickly got a job as an assistant editor at the Palestine Post (which eventually became the Jerusalem Post), and later became the newspaper’s Jerusalem correspondent. During the War of Independence, he covered the war for the United Press news agency. Later, he founded and managed the offices of Time-Life Magazine in Israel, and worked there until he retired in the 1990s.

While the battles raged for control of the city and its access roads, Jerusalem’s Jewish residents—numbering nearly one hundred thousand at the time—got on with their daily lives. At least they attempted to keep up some semblance of routine. After all, they had to continue making a living. Levin’s camera gives us an extraordinary glimpse into those moments—and in color!

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A Red Cross flag flies over the Terra Sancta building in Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

Most of Levin’s photos from the siege are personal ones: in them, you can see his wife Batya (Betty), and their friends Gershon and Ethel Agron, going about their daily activities during the war. Gershon Agron was the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Post where Levin worked, and later the mayor of Jerusalem. Even someone like Agron had to find ways to make ends meet during the blockade.

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Gershon and Ethel Agron during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

For example, in one of the photos, Betty Levin is seen walking with the couple’s housekeeper to fetch water in jugs and buckets—the regular water supply was cut off and people had to ration clean water. Another picture shows the three women carrying home a large water tank, one of many photos in the collection which feature Jerusalem’s residents carrying water in jugs. Water tanks were also installed on roofs in order to collect and store rainwater.

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Going down to fetch water from the reservoirs during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Betty Levin, Ethel Agron and the Agron’s housekeeper carry a jug of water during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Moshe Marlin Levin carrying a jug of water during the blockade of Jerusalem. The Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Tanks for storing water on Jerusalem’s roofs during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

During the blockade, water shortages were a serious problem, and one picture shows Betty Levin exchanging half a loaf of bread with a monk in return for water. Food was also scarce, and in another photo, Levin holds up a bag of food rations she received. And what were the cooking conditions like during this time? Moshe Levin photographed his wife preparing food on an improvised stove in their backyard.

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Half a loaf of bread in exchange for water. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Betty Levin and a monk. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Betty Levin cooking on an improvised stove during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Betty Levin receiving a food rations package during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

The food allotment was not always enough: Moshe Levin also documented people scavenging for food in trashcans, or a beggar sitting on a street corner asking for help from passers-by.

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A man searches for food scraps in a trashcan during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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A resident of the Nahlaot neighborhood during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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A beggar during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

 And in the midst of all this, daily life continued. Moshe Levin also documented the mundane, whether it was during a period of ceasefire or at other times. He photographed children playing in the street, his wife walking down Jaffa Street, and even nuns walking with parasols on King George Street. Despite everything, life went on.

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Children playing during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Children on Ben Yehuda Street during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Betty Levin walking on Jaffa Street during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel
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Nuns walking on King George Street in Jerusalem during the blockade of Jerusalem. Photo: Moshe Marlin Levin, from the Meitar Collection, the National Library of Israel

All the photos in the article are from the archive of Moshe (Marlin) Levin, part of the Meitar Collection at the National Library of Israel. Moshe Levin’s archive has recently been cataloged, and many more photos are available for viewing on the National Library of Israel website.

Were you able to identify anyone in the pictures above? If so, please contact the National Library of Israel.

Jerusalem’s “Prussian Island in an Oriental Sea”

Letters from Edith Gerson-Kiwi, the Grande Dame of Israeli musicology, reveal particular and universal truths about the 'age-old capital of the world'

Edith Gerson-Kiwi and the Jerusalem "garden suburb" of Rehavia, where she lived (Images: Gerson-Kiwi in 1933, from the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music / Photo of Rehavia in 1937 taken by Shmuel Joseph Schweig, from the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel)

It is December 5, 1935, when a young woman from Berlin arrives in Mandatory Palestine.

Equipped with an alert mind, a fair amount of ambition and astonishing energy, she has decided to turn her back on her homeland and build a new life in the ‘Land of the Fathers’. It seems she takes great pleasure in what she finds: in a letter written shortly after her arrival to her friend Eva, who was then exiled in Amsterdam, the young woman effusively describes the purifying and uplifting effect the country has upon her, drawing on the arsenal of Zionist metaphors and images:

“There are also wonderful people here, the country embraces and nurtures them; for many of them it was a complete rebirth, I myself have gone through it in a very intense way. And then: all these young people, suntanned and strong, and a rhythm of work, freedom and hope that is inspiring and quite intoxicating.”

The author of the letter is the German-Jewish musicologist Edith Gerson-Kiwi, remembered today as a pioneer of Israeli musicology; one who made lasting contributions to the field, and connected Israel to the wider world.

Letter from Edith Gerson-Kiwi to Eva Newman, 1936. From the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music. Click to enlarge

It was written on September 29, 1936, and is just one of over 6,000 letters being catalogued as part of a research project at the European Center for Jewish Music (ECJM) in Hanover, Germany. They are part of the extensive Gerson-Kiwi Estate, the bulk of which is housed by the ECJM. A smaller number of documents can be found in Israel, including the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Archive at the National Library of in Jerusalem.

It is the earliest known letter written by the young woman after her arrival in Palestine, and reflects that fateful turning point in her story: referring to the life she left behind, while at the same time mapping out the horizons of her future.

 

From Berlin to Jerusalem

Edith Gerson-Kiwi was born in Berlin in 1908 into an assimilated Jewish family and enjoyed a typical bourgeois upbringing. As a young girl, she attended a humanist Gymnasium (selective high school), and her evident musical talent was nurtured by piano and composition studies at the Sternʼsche Konservatorium, a renowned music academy. After gaining her university entrance qualification, she reads musicology, minoring in philosophy and literary history, at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg and Leipzig.

At home in Berlin at the grand piano, 1927. From the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music

One searches in vain for a Zionist socialization in this biography. The ‘push factor’ driving this young woman to the Orient is not the idealistic longing for the ‘new Jew’, but rather the increasing anti-Semitic pressure in Germany. The first thing to fall victim to this is her relationship with her non-Jewish fiancé and fellow student Fritz Dietrich (1905–1945): while her parents, after initial hesitation, agree to the match, his parents do not accept her because of her Jewish identity.

The year 1933 finally brings the decisive turning point: while defending her dissertation in Heidelberg on January 30, the day of the transfer of power to Hitler, she hears soldiers and students clashing in the street.

The young musicologist no longer sees a future in Germany.

She goes to Bologna to study paleography and library science. Meanwhile, Fritz Dietrich gains clarity about his future aspirations, deciding in favor of an academic career in Germany and thus against a relationship with a Jewish woman.

A single encounter is all that is needed to prompt Gerson-Kiwi to take a big step: she meets a group of young Zionists from Palestine in the university cafeteria in Bologna and makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to immigrate there.

Many, if not most, Jewish immigrants from Germany who relocated to the Land of Israel after 1933 did not feel at home or even uplifted upon arrival, given that they came as refugees rather than idealists.

While the Land of Israel represented a place of yearning and a Jewish home for the Eastern European Jews, for assimilated German Jews it was an exile.

Yet, Edith Gerson-Kiwi’s encounter with her old-new homeland is thoroughly positive, all the more so since “everything in my personal life suddenly became good once more”: newly arrived in the country, she meets Kurt Gerson, an engineer and architect from Hamburg.

Four months later, they get married.

Just married: Edith Gerson-Kiwi and Kurt Gerson, 1936. From the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music

“A Prussian island in an Oriental sea”

“We live in a new garden suburb of Jerusalem that is populated by many German immigrants. […] We have a charming attic apartment on top of a brand-new complex of houses – and a large terrace as well, from where there is an extensive view over the hill country of Judea with its fantastic colors [and] scenery.”

The garden city is Rehavia, Jerusalem’s noble villa district, designed on the model of Berlin’s Grunewald, to which chroniclers such as S.Y. Agnon and Amos Oz have created a literary monument. Built in the 1920s according to plans by German-Jewish architect Richard Kauffmann, this oasis, which was then on the outskirts of the city (though long since swallowed up by the city center), soon became the preferred place of residence for educated people and intellectuals of the German cultural world: professors and staff of the still-young Hebrew University, writers and journalists, doctors, pharmacists and lawyers, cultural workers and civil servants.

Quite a few of them had made their way from Berlin to Jerusalem, where this “Prussian island in the Oriental sea” became their home. Here they cultivated the German way of life and culture to which they were so strongly connected, yet which now had come to an end in Germany itself.

Edith on the terrace of her apartment in Rehavia, 1936. From the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music

New paths to a new future

Many Germans succumbed to the feeling of foreignness. Unable to heed the demand for integration, they retreat into their inner circles. Gerson-Kiwi, by contrast, opens herself up to the wealth of new impressions, is inspired by the Zionist spirit of optimism and enchanted by the “completely different atmosphere” of Jerusalem: this “age-old capital of the world” with its “Jews from all over the world, Persian, Bukharic, Yemeni, Moroccan, Samaritans, and others, representatives of all peoples, races, and religions”.

New immigrants from Hadhramaut, Yemen in Ein Shemer Transit Camp, Israel, 1950 (Photo: Edith Gerson-Kiwi). From the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

After years of professional and personal hardship and disappointment, she discovers in the Land of Israel new forms and ways of being Jewish.

Shortly after her arrival in Palestine, she meets Robert Lachmann (1892–1939), who also arrived in 1935, and joins him as his assistant. Lachmann, of the Berlin School of Comparative Musicology, has been tasked with the establishment of a phonogram archive for Oriental music in Jerusalem, and introduces Gerson-Kiwi to Middle Eastern musical cultures.

Robert Lachmann with his secretary in Jerusalem, ca. 1936. From the National Library of Israel collection

At the same time, she rediscovers Judaism: the writings of Gershom Scholem bring her, an assimilated Jewish woman of Berlin’s educated bourgeoisie (Bildungsbürgertum), closer to a Judaism in its deeper, mystical form that transcends enlightened, rational thinking, “in a time when I was rather in controversy with the principles of our Jewish religion” (letter to Chanah Milner, June 20, 1972).

She finds and appreciates this mystical form of faith and thought adopted by her new neighbors, the Oriental Jews.

Tirelessly, she devotes herself to documenting, researching and popularizing their “melodic treasure trove” that is in danger of being lost in the modern melting pot that is the Land of Israel. In addition, other musical cultures of the Middle East attract her interest – those of Arabs, Druze, and Oriental Christians. She will make around 10,000 sound recordings during her lifetime, documenting the Land’s polyphonic soundscape.

Edith Gerson-Kiwi, Renaissance woman, becomes a connoisseur of Oriental music.

Invitation for Edith Gerson-Kiwi to come to the residence of Shams Pahlavi, the Shah’s sister, during the International Folk Musik Council conference, held in Tehran on April 6-12, 1961. From the Edith Gerson-Kiwi Estate at the European Center for Jewish Music

Conflicting reality

Rehavia is also characterized by a climate of tolerance towards the Arab population of Palestine, resulting from the German-Jewish immigrants’ own minority experience and the values of liberalism and universalism that Central European Jewry acquired with the emancipation. It is no coincidence that “Brit Shalom” was founded in Rehavia: a short-lived peace alliance (1925–1933), which adopted a moderate position in the Jewish-Arab conflict, respected the Arabs and their territorial claims, and advocated a binational state solution.

Photo of Gershom Scholem, one of many Rehavia-dwelling German-Jewish intellectuals active in the Brit Shalom organization. From the National Library of Israel collection

Edith Gerson-Kiwi shows solidarity with the Arabs throughout her life. As an “old pioneering champion of Jewish-Arab friendship, of peace, and, above all, of intellectual awakening” (letter to Hellmut Federhofer, June 29, 1973), she not only maintains memberships in institutions striving for dialogue and understanding, but also supports Arab musicians and music researchers, committing herself to the dissemination of Arab music through research and teaching.

Already proficient in several European languages, Gerson-Kiwi also learned the Arabic language and script.

And yet, from the very beginning, there was also a downside and a complexity to this new life in the Land of Israel and among its different communities. This complexity is revealed quite starkly as Gerson-Kiwi’s description of the advantages of her living situation in Rehavia transition into acknowledgement of a bitter reality:

“We live here in a quiet and secluded environment; that’s ideal for us, and it’s also a consequence of the unrest. It’s precisely here in and around Jerusalem that the contrasts are particularly stark, because everyone lives cheek by jowl. Almost every night there are gunshots in our area; during the day there are only a few streets in the Jewish ‘center’ where you can move freely, and for more than five months now a curfew has kept everyone at home from 6.30 in the evening. Overall, this is a severe shock and the first big challenge to be faced. But we all believe that we will meet this challenge, because we know what we are fighting for and how much blood has already been shed in this cause.”

The mass influx of Jews, especially after 1933, had triggered the Arab Revolt (April 1936–1939), with insurgents demanding that the British Mandate government stop Jewish immigration, prohibit the transfer of Arab land to the Jews, and establish a national government.

The Palestinian Arabs initially react with a general strike affecting trade and commerce. A series of acts of violence against the British and Jews followed, until the mandate government finally put down the revolt with military force.

Over the decades, numerous letters written by Gerson-Kiwi tell of how attacks and wars overshadow and restrict her life and work. “It is indeed a bad fate of ours, always to be after or before a war”, she lamented in a 1970 letter to Grace Spofford, a colleague in New York.

Not all the hopes of the early years were fulfilled.

The visions of a better social order and peaceful coexistence with the Arab neighbors turned out to be illusions. Political tensions, economic shortages and inner-Jewish conflicts, Arab uprisings and wars dominated everyday life.

While the 1956/57 Suez Crisis and the 1967 Six-Day War may have brought new, fascinating and promising worlds to light for musical orientalists like Gerson-Kiwi, later catastrophes such as the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Lebanon War (1982) and finally the Intifada (from 1987 onwards) created only horror, helplessness and resignation.

In a 1989 letter to an unknown correspondent, she wrote:

“We still live here in western Rehavia in our peaceful surroundings, but the gates of hell have suddenly been opened, and the killing is taking on new and ever worse forms every day. […] No peace treaty will restore things to how they were…”

In addition, she increasingly realized that her life’s work – the collecting, preserving and spreading of the endangered Jewish Oriental traditions – had become a thing of the past, that it could not withstand the dawning future. “A radical fault line has formed between the generations,” she lamented in a 1976 letter.

Edith Gerson-Kiwi died in Jerusalem in 1992. Fifty years after her immigration, her episteme – born of the never-ending tension between exile and Europe –  already belonged to a bygone age, yet many of the themes and sentiments described in her earliest letter endure until this day.

 

 

This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.