Aliyah to Jerusalem

Aliyah to Jerusalem – a new beginning

Wednesday the 25^th of July 1973 was D-day. The South African chapter of our life had been completed and a new era was about to unfold. I had served South Africa well, created a new, dynamic, heart department in Durban. The cardiac service was active and alive and providing excellent care for patients of all ages and races and had well trained staff.

Aliyah was the start of a new life: The fulfillment of a dream; the opening of a new chapter in our life. It was the end of the golah (the exile), the liberation from Egypt, the crossing of the Jordan and we were now about to settle in our own homeland.

We were following in the steps of the founding fathers: an initial idealism, transformation into a new kind of Jew and implementation of our new ideals. Jabotinsky said "Eliminate the Diaspora or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you"

Ou departure from Durban was on a muggy wintry day. We left Durban in the late afternoon on the South African Airways Boeing 727 and had a comfortable flight to Johannesburg. The children were exited but well behaved until the air became a little unstable before the landing. We had a three hour layover and although we explored the airport, we were impatient until we took off on the second leg of the journey. The El Al Boeing 707 was crowded, and we slept well until we arrived in Nairobi with a short stop for refueling. We walked around the airport waiting room to stretch our legs. The plane touched down at Ben Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv at 6 o’clock in the morning and we were impatient to deplane. The children were up and ready: their little bags packed and they were prepared for action.  We were bussed from to the Airport terminal and suddenly we felt the intense summer heat. We had left mid- winter in South Africa and were facing a new summer day with new exhilarating experiences.  The Airport was a whir of activity. Everyone was pushing and jostling, talking in a new foreign language and unfamiliar smells filled our nostrils. We had arrived in the Middle East.

We passed through immigration.  The first stop was the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency and there we met the officials who were very friendly and helpful .They dealt with all the unfamiliar immigration formalities and provided us with our new documents. We were another new family of seven souls, registered as new Israeli citizens and we received our first immigration book, a little blue book with all 7 inscribed in English and Hebrew - full names and date of birth. 

Joe Borman the Head of Cardiac Surgery at Hadassah, was waiting with the big black Ford from the hospital.  He had broken his leg, it was set in a plaster cast and he occupied the whole of the back seat of the car. There was sufficient space and we found our seats in the old Ford, with our suitcases tied to the roof of the car. Soon we were on our way on the highway to Jerusalem. The heat was sweltering and oppressive and the sun burned down mercilessly from a cloudless sky: and we removed our coats and pullovers. Driving on the right side of the road was a new experience and we chugged along the level plain leading to the Judean hills. At first the road was a broad double carriage highway, but after the town of Ramla it became two single lanes without space for overtaking. The road again became a double carriage highway as it entered the Sha'ar Hagai valley and wound and climbed 800 meters through the hills to Jerusalem.  The steep slopes had been the site of many ambushes in the past, particularly during the war of Independence in 1948. The Arab legions held the hills while Jerusalem was isolated from the coast. At that time the armor plated transport trucks brought food to Jerusalem which had been cut off from the coastal plain. It was an inspiring climb as I explained the background history to the children.

Jerusalem appeared suddenly as we rounded a sharp bend in the road, another steep climb, and suddenly we entered the city. This was another brand new experience to see the tall multistoried apartment blocks covered by Jerusalem stone. We arrived in French Hill, a new suburb that had been built in the north eastern corner of the city adjacent to Mount Scopus Hospital. It had been liberated in 1967 and was in the process of development. Until 1948 it had been a Jewish enclave but after the War of Independence it become a no man’s land with road blocks and barbed wire fences that separated it from West Jerusalem. Jews were forbidden to travel beyond the borders of Jewish Jerusalem. In 1968 the six day war changed the boundaries. The barriers on the blocked roads had been bulldozed and the barbed wire fences removed. The barren land had been flattened and prepared for building and new neighborhoods had been built.

We were among the first families to occupy the newly built buildings with their tall closely knit apartment blocks. It was like a fortress rather than a citadel on the hill. It had an interesting layout and a strange architecture. French Hill was at the summit of a hill and the main roads surrounded it in a circle with central radiating axial roads.

Hadassah had bought 3 eight story, box like apartment blocks that were planned to provide housing for staff at the nearby Mt. Scopus Hospital which was undergoing renovation after it had been shut down during the Arab occupation. We were located at 17 Etzel Street. We received the keys to a brand new apartment in a nearly empty building which housed only two families.  We took the new lift to the third floor and were greeted by a musty smell of fresh paint.  The apartment faced east and south and we had an unobstructed panoramic view over the old city of Jerusalem and eastward as far as the Dead Sea. What a magnificent way to start the morning.  The apartment had been furnished with simple furniture and appropriate linen and kitchen utensils. The Hadassah experts had supervised the new furniture from the Jewish Agency, the lay out was well designed and nothing was missing. The children jumped up and down with glee and although they were exhausted and I remained glued to the window to absorb and contemplate this unusual and spectacular view. My thought whirled in my head – Jerusalem - its geography, its Biblical history and the emergence of the new state. I had spent months anticipating this move and suddenly it had emerged and crystalized.

We unpacked our bags and sorted out the clothing and other simple items. The hospital had provided a stock of simple food so that we could start living. Joe was very helpful and gave us an extensive preview of what we should expect. There was another tenant family in the building, Professor Maimon Cohen who was the head of genetics, and married with two children. They returned from school, knocked on the door and came in to welcome our children. He was an American professor who had come from Baltimore and had established a new department.

The children were hyperactive and we went to explore the surrounding new buildings, the roads and the small line of strip shops. We had exchanged some money at the Airport and we made our first purchases in the grocery store. The shop was a sharp contrast to the shops in South Africa; it was different from anything we’ve ever experienced. It was small and overcrowded and had too many customers.

Professor Cohen returned in the evening and took us for our first real exploration of the new suburb. Blocks of 8 storied buildings had been built like a giant castle on the crest of the hill. The evening fell suddenly. The summer heat faded and a cool breeze wafted in from the West.

The acclimatization process was painless. Hebrew was a problem but the children went to Ulpanim (Hebrew language schools for new immigrants) during the long summer vacation, and continued when they started school in September but it took at least two years until they were fluent. Aileen never mastered the language and despite several periods at ulpan was too shy to use the language.

Our "lift": furniture, clothes books, and household utensils, from South Africa took several months to arrive. The boat was slow and delayed by the Yom Kippur War. When it arrived the children had outgrown their clothes.

We imported a Volvo Station wagon from Sweden and had ordered all our electrical appliances from Philips in Holland. We bought them while we were still in South Africa and they arrived two weeks later so we were now fully equipped. Hadassah lent me a Sussita motor car, a locally made fibre glass car, to give us mobility. One night it was stolen and I was terrified of how Hadassah would respond. Prof Mann, the hospital director, laughed when I told him the story and explained that probably, it had been borrowed by a soldier on leave who had no transport to go home. Two days later it was found with an empty petrol tank near Ashkelon. Someone had taken it for a joy-ride.

Maimon Cohen had a blue Peugeot 404 station wagon and the morning after we arrived ferried me to the main Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem. We were living on the north eastern side of Jerusalem and the hospital was located in the southwestern corner. The roads were busy, jammed bumper to bumper, with early morning rush hour traffic and the trip took nearly an hour.

I was ushered into the room of the deputy director of the hospital, Dr Jack Karpas who had been a general practitioner in Parow in South Africa and had made Aliyah many years before. He became my father figure guiding me through the bureaucracy of the hospital. I met all the administrative staff of the hospital: registration, salaries, rent contracts, insurance and all the other initial paper work. Jack showed me around the hospital and my new department which was divided between the second floor basement, and the eighth floor. He also introduced me to the departmental staff many of whom I had already met. We remained very good friends and he helped me with all my minor problems.

We had changed countries, languages and societies. The metamorphosis was complete. The egg, larva and pupa was now fully developed and mature.