After the fall of the Old City and East Jerusalem by the Arab Legion in the War of Independence, the Jordanian occupier did not spare any means to erase the expressions of the presence of the Jews in the city.
Among the known victims of the Hashemite Kingdom effort was the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
The Jordanians desecrated graves, vandalized gravestones, used them to pave sidewalks and even decided to move a road inside the cemetery.
One of the tombs, completely covered with asphalt, was a modest tomb.
A simple tombstone without titles and praise - the grave of Henrietta Szold.
"She was the most revered leader among American Jews, founded the Hadassah organization, led the youth aliyah and laid the foundation for public medicine in Israel.
She was among the 100 most influential women in the world, and yet - remained a modest woman who did not enjoy her status, "says Deborah Hacohen, author of Sald's biography" Leader without Borders "(Am Oved, 2019), which was published in English in the USA this year. And won two major awards: Best Book of the Year, and Best Biography of the Year from the National Jewish Book Award.
Deborah Hacohen, a professor of history at Bar-Ilan University, who is considered a pioneer in the study of the development of Israeli society and immigration to Eretz Israel, became interested in Szold by chance, and was amazed by the figure of the woman revealed to her.
"To be honest, I did not know much about her. I was exposed to her when I was working on a study of youth aliyah, a miraculous rescue operation that rescued Jewish children from Germany to Eretz Israel," recalls Prof. Hacohen.
Henrietta Szold was asked to take on the task on behalf of the Jewish community, and initially refused - she was already 73, planned to return to America for her sisters and spend the remaining years there. But with the rise of the Nazis to power she came to visit Germany. In the country, she heard the pleas of the worried Jewish parents, and realized that she could not resist.
The priest was intrigued, and asked her friends, the professors of history in the United States, for a recommendation for a book about Szold. Of Szold, she found thousands of documents and hundreds of letters ("the most interesting thing was to discover and read her personal diaries," Hacohen admits), and began to put the puzzle together.
"Writing the biography is really like assembling a puzzle," notes Prof. Hacohen, "with only one difference - when you approach the puzzle you know what image will be obtained at the end of the process, and when working on a biography the image does not exist in advance. It is revealed to the historian ".
The men who despised her later developed an admiration for her.
Szold at her home in Jerusalem, 1922 // Photo: Cjh.org,
In the case of Szold, the important element in the picture is the great mission that has always pulsated in it, the priest is convinced.
The sense of mission required her to accept the reins of the youth aliyah movement, which had saved some 30,000 boys from the clutches of the Nazis, and to take care of their well-being and education in the new-old homeland.
For these children Szold was not only a principal who cared for their well-being from above, but a mother.
She came to the port to welcome any immigrant ship.
She talked to each of the children, asked for his name, calmed down and clarified that she could be contacted with any request or advice.
The children sent her thousands of letters, and she made sure to answer them all.
Thus Szold became the "mother of youth aliyah", and therefore - the Israeli mother's day was set on the day of her death.
Paralyzing love
Not only the children themselves, but also the adults did not understand that the "mother" is a superintendent who built a huge system, which included hundreds of employees, boarding schools, homes, schools, counselors and more, and obtained the necessary funding to operate it.
"Henrietta Szold was endowed with exceptional organizational ability, and additional talent, which was invaluable in an era in which the Jewish community, in all its branches and institutions, was destitute," explains Prof. Hacohen.
"She had tremendous power in fundraising, and without it - her beautiful ideas and goodwill would not have come true. How did she do that? From the early 20th century Szold was involved in New York's high Jewish society, and knew great philanthropists. For all, they knew something very important about her - this woman does not take even a single dollar from the public coffers. "
This trait is rare among fundraisers ...
"True, Szold had other unique characteristics. She was fluent in four languages, had vast knowledge, and by the age of 18 she already had a regular column in a popular New York weekly, and she achieved all this on her own, without being allowed to She desperately wanted to go on to academic studies, but John Hopkins University, which was then established in her hometown of Baltimore, did not accept her because of the exclusion of women. Private colleges accepted women, but Henrietta's family had no means to pay for it. Formal degree she has been referred to by many as 'the most educated woman in the United States'.
She later worked at JPS, an important Jewish publishing house that still exists today.
"Though formally bearing the title of 'secretary,' she did the job of editor-in-chief, alongside her many other editing, translation, post-print assignments. She had a talent for writing and editing, and she worked day and night.
Szold with the Tehran children, 1943,
"When she finished working there, she was forced to employ 7-6 workers in her place. In fact, this was also reflected in all the things Szold would do afterwards: she went to large factories from two realities, and led them alone."
Factories from both realities require a total dedication.
"She worked 20 hours a day - got up at 5 in the morning and went to bed after midnight. She would joke that her place of residence is in the middle of the ocean, because she would travel back and forth from Palestine to America to bring more and more money. In those days it was a grueling journey - at least three weeks Of juggling on the roads between 6-5 stops: from Jaffa to Egypt, from there to Italy, and from Europe a trans-Atlantic journey to the USA.
In contrast to these impressive achievements, Szold herself knew great sadness in personal life.
"In her personal life, Szold knew a lot of suffering. She had several failed loves, and the most painful of all was her affair with Louis Ginzberg, the Talmudist and genius. He did not intend to marry her, but enjoyed her working for him faithfully, writing and translating for him and serving him day and night.
"When the work was completed, he informed her of his engagement to another woman.
The gospel broke her heart and spirit, leading her to nervous breakdown and blindness.
I discovered in her diary how for eight months she could not function without the doctors realizing that the cause of my illness was psychological, not physiological.
Szold managed to get out of the trauma, and to leave the pain behind - she traveled to Europe, and later to Eretz Israel.
"Years later, after gaining recognition, she had a lot of fans and a lot of friends, but she always mourned the fact that she did not start a family of her own."
Szold was ahead of her time in shattering the traditional role of woman?
"Absolutely. In the days when women's exclusion was at its peak, and when girls were raised to marry in a comfortable marriage and become housewives, she broke barriers and boundaries: worked without borders, set up factories without borders and changed realities without boundaries. Most of them men - underestimated her value and ability. Szold traveled to the United States and raised the money for the Hebrew education system to survive.
As a result, those who despised her developed a great admiration for her. "
Did Szold seek to devote herself to public needs as compensation for the misery in her personal life?
"Her motives stemmed from a different source. At the age of 20, when the whole world was open to her, instead of savoring life - she established a school in Baltimore for Jewish immigrants in the United States.
Why would a young girl take on such a task?
She was simply imbued with a mission to help, and no wonder she said of her great enterprises: 'I did not choose them, they chose me.'
“So it was with one of her lesser-known projects, stemming from the wave of anti-Semitism that swept the world, and the U.S. in particular, at the time.
The emergence of Jewish immigrants has sparked anti-Semitism in America, and who is trying to stem the murky wave?
An unfamiliar woman then, Henrietta Szold.
She understood the power of communication.
She decided that dealing with anti-Semitism required engaging in shaping public opinion, began writing articles, and turned to writers to recruit them for writing as well.
Was she successful?
To a small extent, because we know how difficult it is to uproot anti-Semitism.
But she tried her best, and no one but her spoke at the time about shaping public opinion. "
Instead of turning your back
Another feature that emerges from Szold's biography is her courage, which was manifested during the riots of the Arab Revolt of 1936. Despite the obvious danger, Szold did not stop her travels in the country: she continued to come to the port and greet the youth aliyah groups, and did not stop touring the country. For meetings with the instructors and trainees.
Prof. Hacohen adds that her life was saved several times from the riots' bad damage, and after one of the attacks Szold described how she felt: "... I lost count of the victims; old men, women and children, without a word of condemnation from the Arab press. Last week I felt very close to rioting. Than ever. I drove to Haifa in a taxi. Less than 20 minutes from the destination there was a flat tire ... Two cars driving in front of us were attacked by armed gangs. In one of them an Arab driver. All the passengers were injured and the driver was killed. Get a weapon ... ".
In another description, Szold tells of a Jew who fled Ramla and arrived in Jerusalem covered in the blood of the passenger sitting next to him.
The woman was one of 70 Jews from Austria who had been without food on a ferry in the Danube for months, being barred from going ashore in Austria or continuing to Czechoslovakia or Hungary, and being guarded by Nazi guards in this floating prison.
"She came out of Europe's hell just to taste the comfort of other rioters."
Do you think that Szold has a proper place in the Israeli collective memory?
"Yes and no. It has been so long since her death in 1945, and the things that deserve to be remembered are forgotten. Before coming to Israel for the first time, in 1909, her friends predicted that after meeting the miserable reality of the country, her expectations would shatter and she would cease to be Zionist. "It was not appealing to her - neglect, poverty, immense morbidity. Instead of turning her back on Zionism, Szold decided to act. Streets and institutions are named after her, but it is no less important to learn from her and adopt her attitude."
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