by Sharon Katz, editor of Voices
www.voices-magazine.com
This is a double story - that of the first Jewish-owned building in Hebron after the Six Day War, and a much too brief remembrance of the re-Jew-vanation of Hebron, the City of Our Patriarchs. Both these stories are currently being told in a breathtaking inspirational photography exhibition in Hebron itself.
The photographer: Gershon Ellinson, famed for his photographic chronicles of the renewed Hebron Jewish community.
The exhibit: Stakes in Hebron.
The place: Machpela Visitors’ Center at the foot of Me’arat HaMachpela.
In my pre-Aliya life, I wrote about the entertainment industry on America’s east coast. Whenever we had a screening, everyone oohed and ahhed when the stars of the film entered the screening room.
Lehavdil, a similar air pervaded Hebron recently when I visited there with photographer Gershon Ellinson. He had generously agreed to tell my husband/publisher Israel Katz and myself the story behind the photos in his newest photography exhibition.
But Gershon was surrounded by people looking at his momentous photos and shouting, “Hey, that was me,” and he became engrossed in conversations with the person actually in the photograph, the person who made history.
A tall man with a long white beard Yossie Leibowitz, pointed at a photo of himself walking down the steps of the Shavei Chevron Yeshiva in Beit Romano in 1982. HaRav Mordechai Eliyahu, ztz’l, had come to visit Rosh Yeshiva Rav Moshe Bleicher. Leibowitz was the yeshiva’s Menahel (director) then. When the photo was taken, he said, there were seven boys learning in the yeshiva. Today, bli ayin hara, there are 340.
I was incredibly lucky. I walked through the entire exhibit with one of those history-making people, the legendary Yehudit Katsover; one of the women who snuck into Beit Hadassah in 1979; the wife of Kiryat Arba’s former mayor of 20 years, Tzvi Katsover; a dynamo with her own record of activism that today includes the Yibaneh Fund to redeem the land of Israel and Women for Israel’s Tomorrow (Women in Green) with her activist-partner Nadia Matar.
Yehudit Katsover is also an owner of the Machpela Visitors’ Center, the first Jewish-owned building in Hebron since the 1929 massacre of the Hebron Jewish community by their Arab neighbors.
The Settlers’ Restaurant
The story of the Machpela Visitors’ Center is itself significant within Hebron tradition. Gershon's photos record the evolution of the store from its purchase until today.
Yehudit explained that the building had been used by the Jordanians until 1967 when Hebron was miraculously liberated. Then the property was turned over to the civil administration.
A year later, Hebron celebrated its first Jewish wedding, Benny and Bina Katsover. Benny had come to Hebron at first with Rabbi Moshe Levinger and the families who moved into the Park Hotel on Passover 1968 and then later lived in the Hebron military headquarters. Benny (who was to become a leader of Samarian settlement) and Bina married in the military headquarters in August 1968 with approximately 1000 guests. Before the wedding, everyone went to pray in Me’arat HaMachpela.
The residents set up a kiosk for the wedding party, and then left it standing, Yehudit said. Because masses of visitors continued to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs, the kiosk gave them the opportunity to buy kosher food. But the military governor demanded that the kiosk be closed. When it wasn’t, he overturned it himself, and evicted from Hebron the three Jews who ran it.
At this time, Yehudit said with a smile, “Government minister Yigal Alon had a warm feeling for the return to Hebron. Yediot Achronot’s Nachum Barnea said that the construction of Kiryat Arba was fueled by the feud between Moshe Dayan and Yigal Alon.”
The government approved the establishment of a restaurant, art gallery, and souvenir shop near Machpela. The civil administration sold the building to several partners, among them Yehudit and Tzvi Katsover, who ran the Settlers’ Restaurant (now the Machpela Visitors’ Center) from 1971 until today, except for the 20 years when Tzvi Katsover was Mayor of Kiryat Arba.
When the Katsovers moved from Dimona to Kiryat Arba in 1972, Yehudit said that she understood immediately what an important place the center was. “It was the first acquisition in Hebron. For many years, it was also the only Jewish presence in Hebron. The Arabs tried to destroy it and chase us from here. The Settler’s Restaurant was stoned, bombed, its windows smashed and its store trashed.” Tzvi Katsover’s response to the Arab aggression was to build a second floor on to the restaurant.
One of the earliest workers in the Settlers’ Restaurant was Gershon Ellinson. Armed, of course, with his camera, Gershon photographed everything around him.
Gershon said, “I was the Jew in Hebron before there were any Jews there, long before Beit Hadassah. I opened the store even if no one came. Even when there was a closure, I had permission to enter. I was never afraid. There wasn’t a problem then, not like today.”
Gershon became an accepted fixture on the street, friends with the Arab shopkeepers, whom he visits to this day.
The Machpela Visitors’ Center began as the only source of life in Hebron. B”H, today a Jewish community surrounds it. The center is an active place with a restaurant, separate souvenir shop and a simcha hall.
While we were there, a brit was taking place.
The new baby’s name reflected the character of the Hebron community - one of faith and hope in the future - Or Chadash. “Or chadash al Tzion ta-ir, V'nizkeh chulanu m'heira l'oro. A new light shall shine in Zion. May we all soon benefit from that light.”
Yehudit has extended the Center's hours until midnight, and is planning to create an educational project there as well, that will tell the story of Hebron from Abraham until the present. Gershon Ellinson's historic photography will be the basis.
History in a Flash
Gershon Ellinson was learning in Kiryat Shmuel Yeshivah when he first visited the families settled into the Park Hotel on Passover 1968. He became friends with the entire group, and when they moved into the military headquarters, he joined them. There Gershon met his wife Meira, and there they lived until the building of Kiryat Arba in 1971.
Gershon, now a resident of Efrat, told Voices that he began photographing Hebron from the moment he visited the Park Hotel. He had a small old camera, and just started snapping. At the time he was a photographer and a shochet. He did the shechita of the meat in Hebron for a year and a half.
Gershon photographed everything, he said, “because I like taking pictures. I didn't think then, that it would have any deeper meaning or any special importance.” His friends laughed at him, "Oh Gershon. Really, enough." And now, said Gershon, he’s the only ones with pictures of Hebron’s entire epic history.
Not only did he photograph history, he made history too. One dark night on Rosh Chodesh Iyar 1979, Gershon drove his truck to Kiryat Arba and loaded it with 13 women and 45 children. Then he rode through the deserted streets of Hebron to the back of the Beit Hadassah building, a former medical clinic which had been abandoned since the 1929 riots.
He took out a ladder, and the women climbed through a window into the building. Gershon took one photograph only. He wanted to capture the extraordinary moment, but he didn’t want to flash too many times and alert the army or the locals.
Yehudit Katsover added, “There was a special atmosphere that night. We climbed the ladder and not one child cried. Not one sound was heard.” She explained further, “In 1979, the government didn't want us to expand in Kiryat Arba. We said, ‘Okay, we can't expand in Kiryat Arba, we're going to Hebron.’”
“In the morning they woke up to a community in Bet Hadassah. There was great simcha. Miriam Levinger was at the head of the women in Beit Hadassah,” Yehudit said. Miriam’s husband, the dynamic Rabbi Moshe Levinger was the founder and has been the leader of the Hebron/Kiryat Arba community from the days of the Park Hotel until today.
Our entrance into Beit Hadassah made a big noise in the government, but we got so much public support and love. We even had Knesset members visit us. Prime Minister Menachem Begin couldn't take us out,” Yehudit said.
Gershon noted that Israel’s papers were filled every day with scenes from Beit Hadassah. Since it was a closed military zone, he said, everyone wondered how those photos were being distributed. He laughed, “I gave the women plastic cameras to take into Beit Hadassah, and I sent up film on a rope from the window outside. They pulled the film up and snapped as many pictures as they wanted.”
The women lived in that room for a year. On Friday nights, the men and yeshiva students would recite Kiddush and sing in front of Beit Hadassah. In May 1980, Arab terrorists murdered six of the men and wounded 20. With this murder, the Israeli government okayed the return of Jewish life to ancient Hebron. Yehudit sighed, “Always everything is built on blood."
All the building in Kiryat Arba and Hebron was a struggle, Yehudit said. “Nothing was just built with kef (fun)." She threw open her arms, "‘Bo livnot et Eretz Yisrael! Come build the land of Israel.’”
There were periods of progress and there were setbacks. When the government fenced in Kiryat Arba in 1979 so that it couldn’t grow beyond its 250 apartments, Eliyakim HaEtzni and a few others pulled down the fence.
Gershon documented this moment and every other advance or hindrance in the struggle to return to Hebron, including thrilling firsts: The first yeshiva, Yeshivat Nir with Rav Eliezer Waldman as Rosh Yeshiva. The first school in the military complex. The first carpentry shop. The first tractor to dig the foundations of Kiryat Arba in 1970. The first roads. The first house. The first caravan on Tel Romeida in 1984. All the way up to the first Jews in Beit HaShalom in 2007.
Several of Gershon's photos are dedicated to a brave and proud Jew, Russian immigrant Professor Benzion Tavger. He came to Kiryat Arba to set up a laboratory, but when he couldn’t break through the red tape, he took up a job as shomer (guard) of the Old Jewish Cemetery. He found the cemetery in ruins. The tombstones were used by the Arabs to build a fence around the area. With the help of HaRav Shlomo Goren, ztz’l, and families who had actually been there, over the course of years, the cemetery was reconstructed. One of the graves he renovated was that of the Menucha Rachel (a relative of the Lubavitche Rebbe).
Gershon also documented every stage of Professor Tavger’s uncovering of the Avraham Avinu synagogue. Yehudit commented, “He was such a proud Jew. He went right to work with such an air of confidence, everyone was sure he was digging for the government.”
In addition to his collection of 40,000 photos from Hebron, Gershon also kept all the deeds, government forms, etc., plus an archive of all the newspaper articles on the renewal of Jewish life in Hebron and Kiryat Arba.
Over the past year, Gershon has been going through his treasure trove of photos and negatives in preparation for a book that he will be publishing next year, IY"H, with his priceless photographs about the return to the holy city of Hebron.
The photo exhibition, organized by the Machpela Visitors Center together with Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), is a breathtaking record of one of the most thrilling periods of Jewish history in one of the most ancient Jewish cities in Israel.
On permanent display at the Machpela Vistors Center, the exhibit is a lesson in Jewish roots and Jewish pride and will help every visitor reconnect with his past and his future.
For more information: Yehudit Katsover 050-716-1818
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Originally published in Voices of December 2010-January 2011, volume 14 Issue 11
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