Friday, October 05, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
The saying goes: “The dead tell no tales” but that’s not
exactly true. The dead speak to us from beyond the grave but they do so in
silent symbols that we, those who are full of life and sometimes full of
arrogance, can choose to ignore.
Haifa’s cemetery is full. It’s in a beautiful location,
overlooking the sea. One could say it’s wasted on its residents but maybe the
scenery provides comfort to those who come to pay their respects to deceased
relatives and friends. In general, I find it an unpleasant place. It’s packed
with graves, so much so that it is difficult to walk between them. Moreover,
most of the headstones provide very little information about the people they
are supposed to be memorializing.
I think graves should give you a hint, a glimpse into the
life of the person buried there. Something about knowing nothing about their
stories bothers me.
There is however another cemetery in Haifa, one that is
older and very different.
This was the first Jewish cemetery of Haifa, presumably
founded in the late 1850 and used until 1940. There are several mausoleums in
the cemetery (which is unusual for Jewish cemeteries), including one for Shmuel
Pevsner, one of the founders of Haifa’s Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood.
We know the names of some of the people buried because they
have streets and institutions in Haifa named after them – but once they weren’t
streets, they were real people who now lie here, mostly forgotten.
Why isn’t this a national heritage site? How come the
schools of Haifa don’t bring children here, to learn about the history of their
city?
Possibly it is because of the stories the dead tell that
their voices are avoided…
We’re told that Haifa is a mixed Arab and Jewish city, a
symbol of coexistence, that it always was. That makes this a little hard to
explain:
A mass grave for Jews murdered in the riots of 1929. Jewish
burial is very specific, careful and done with great reverence. Tradition
forbids letting the dead lie unburied overnight, it is imperative to bury them
on the day of death. It would seem that the existence of a mass grave is
indicative of the number of people murdered on the same day and the difficulty
in providing them a proper burial.
The quote on the standing stone is from Ezekiel (16:6) and
tells volumes about the spirit of the people who had to bury their friends and
relatives in this way:
“וָאֶעֱבֹר
עָלַיִךְ וָאֶרְאֵךְ מִתְבּוֹסֶסֶת בְּדָמָיִךְ וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי
וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי”.
“As
I passed over you and saw you weltering in your own blood, I said to you, as
you lay thus in your blood, in your blood LIVE”
The graves nearby are
also of victims of the riots. This one tells the story of Esther Rivka Katz: “Wicked
people made her death come faster than it should have. She was a saint and
victim of the riots. May God grant rest to her soul”
I have to use
Google to verify the Gregorian equivalent of Hebrew dates. Modern headstones
usually use both the Hebrew and Gregorian dates but the Jews of Israel, living
Jewish lives in their ancestral homeland, before the reestablishment of
the Jewish State, were different.
Haifa is promoted as a place to become familiar with the
charm of Arab culture. Jewish influence on the city is treated as something
non-existent, insignificant or as foreign.
I didn’t specifically look for the grave of Leon Stein,
found it by chance. It was covered in leaves but the words I could see piqued
my curiosity.
His grave is not silent, it simply needs someone willing to
listen.
It says:
Engineer
Leon Stein
Pioneer of the metal industry in Israel
Made aliyah in 1886,
Died in 1926, in the 63rd year of his life.
Leon Stein
Pioneer of the metal industry in Israel
Made aliyah in 1886,
Died in 1926, in the 63rd year of his life.
I’ve never seen a grave that gives the title Engineer like
other graves might place the title Cohen-Tzedek, indicating someone who comes
from the lineage of priests who would have served at the ancient Jewish Temple.
Who was this man? Born in 1864 in Poland, he followed in the
footsteps of his older brother and made aliyah as a grown man of 23. Many of
the other residents of the cemetery didn’t live longer than that (albeit many
of the young deaths were those murdered in the riots).
Leon went to France and bought metal working equipment and in
1888 he opened a small metal works shop to address the needs of the growing
community. Slowly his business grew and he upgraded the technology of the
equipment used from hand run, to running on a steam engine and then on a
kerosene engine – the first in Israel. From fixing metal equipment, he advanced
to producing agricultural equipment.
At the time agricultural development was difficult because
there was no pump strong enough to produce large amounts of clean water. Leon
Stein, in collaboration with Abba Neeman, invented a pump that increased water
production from 5-6 m2 an hour (powered by beast of burden) to 100 m2
an hour (running on kerosene).
As a result, within 14 years, the agricultural cultivation
in Israel increased threefold!
Stein's factory continued to grow, manufacturing equipment for
flour mills, ice-making machines, iron gates and more. The number of employees
rose from 40 in 1905 to 125 in 1907 and 150 in 1909. The plant was spread over
several plots and a branch was also established in Petah Tikva. The factory's
technicians went to all parts of the country to assist in assembling engines.
They exported products to Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and
Egypt.
How times have changed.
The stories of the dead tell of proud Jews, living Jewish
lives in their ancestral homeland, long before the Declaration of Independence.
Their stubbornness is written in stone, their murderous Arab neighbors would
not move them from the land. Lying in their own blood, burying family and
friends, they took upon themselves the commandment to LIVE. And all the while
they were developing the land (and any of the neighboring countries who also
wanted to progress), bringing modern technology and equipment that would help
build the country we have today.
There is a deliberate movement to undermine Jewish connection
to the land, delegitimize, minimize and dismiss Jewish history. It’s not just
in the ravings of BDSers it’s an insidious poison that has penetrated, quietly in many
different variations into Israel – often in what is not said, what is not
taught, not emphasized.
The dead lie quietly. Those who want to, who find it
politically expedient to do so, can ignore their voices or attempt to drown
them out with other stories. The dead do not impose themselves on the living,
it is up to us to remember, inquire and pay attention.
The truth of their lives, their history, our history, is
etched in stone for anyone willing to see.
