51 years ago, the poet Yoram Taharlev produced "Bird's Wings" for Yoel Moshe Salomon.
Taharlev did this in one of his special songs, "The Ballad of Yoel Moshe Salomon", which is based on a historical event: the tours that Salomon and his friends conducted on the lands of the village of Omelves, which led to the purchase of the lands on which the first Hebrew colony was established in Petah Tikva.
Taharlev assumed in those days that the mystical element he incorporated into his famous ballad was the only detail in his poem that was not faithful to the historical original story.
He was wrong.
Descendants of the other founders of Petah Tikva, the superstars in his poem - David Guttman, Joshua Stampfer and Zerach Burnett - angrily attacked the credibility of the historical nucleus in the ballad that Taharlev weaves, and provoked a public controversy that has not yet been decided.
The late Yoram Taharlev,
The ballad was born when Taharlev perused Avraham Yaari's book, "Memoirs of Israel," and read there with admiration and excitement the testimony of Tuvia Salomon, the son of Yoel Moshe.
According to the narrator, in 1876 the heads of the settlement in Jerusalem learned that the lands of Omelves were being offered for sale by a wealthy land merchant from Jaffa named Tian. Salomon, Guttman, Brent and Stampfer rushed to Jaffa, intended with Tian, and the next day set out to tour the estate with his representative Zachary Effendi. At first, they were fascinated by the landscapes and pastoralism, but when they reached the houses of the village of Omelves, they were shocked by the sight of the "dead and yellow-faced" peasants.
That same evening Guttman, Stampfer and Brent returned to Jaffa, while Salomon stayed three days in Umbels, to investigate why the locals' appearance and health were so poor. Very quickly Salomon came to the conclusion that drinking the water of the nearby Yarkon, which was polluted with sheep and cattle scum, was the source of the diseases. He returned to Jaffa and offered his friends to first purchase other nearby lands that belonged to another merchant named Qassar.
To dispel their fears of disease in the lands of Qassar as well, Guttman and Salomon turned to Dr. Mazarki, a well-known Greek physician who ran the Misgav Ladakh Hospital in Jerusalem at the time. The air of this place. "Mazarki advised them to give up the idea. Despite the doctor's remarks, the three decided, with bursts of crying, hugs and excitement, to buy the land on which the Petah Tikva colonies would later be built.
Taharlev relied on this historical description.
In his ballad, he combined the two visits to the lands of Omelves, the first without the doctor, and the second with him, and described how on a humid morning in 1818, the founding year of Petah Tikva, five riders left Jaffa.
The diary testified otherwise.
Portrait of Yoel Moshe Salomon,
In the second stanza of the poem, four of them were mentioned: "Stampfer came and Guttman came, / and shone Brent / and Joel Moshe Salomon, / with a sword in a sash."
The fifth rider, the doctor, who was only involved in the second tour, was mentioned in the following stanzas of the poem and his opinion was rhymed by Taharlev as follows:
The ballad portrayed the three riders who respected Mazarki's opinion as heartbroken to walk away with him, with only Salomon left in place.
At this point Taharlev's ballad took on a mystical character: "And he remained on the hill / And between midnight and light / Suddenly Salomon grew / Wings of a bird // Where he flew, Where a flower / No one knew / Maybe it was just a dream / Maybe just a legend / / But that morning rose again / Beyond the mountains / The murky valley is filled / The chirping of birds. "
An embarrassing mistake
Taharlev was based on Salomon Jr.'s version, and did not even know that anyone was questioning its credibility.
The descendants of Stampfer, Brent, and Guttman sharply attacked the centrality with which Salomon won Taharlev's poetry, and the secrecy of some of the others portrayed as cowards.
Other founders, such as Yehuda Rab and his father Elazar, were not mentioned in the song at all.
As the ballad took off on the wings of Salomon's bird - and Arik Einstein's performance of Shalom Hanoch's melody only got better with it - the commotion increased.
It reached its peak 30 and 40 years after its creation, when the patrons of Petah Tikva began to rely on it as an exclusive historical source, and even correspond with it in works of commemoration and art.
In 2000, the event and the portraits of its protagonists were commemorated - as the poem describes - in Avi Blitstein's famous mural (the painting was recently damaged) at the entrance to Petah Tikva from Geha Junction, with one embarrassing mistake: instead of Brent, , Who was still a small child during the tours the song describes.
Eight years later, when Petah Tikva celebrated its 130th anniversary, five stone statues of riders were placed in the city's Founders' Square, sculpted by Shmuel Ben-Ami.
The statue of the doctor from Zaraki was replaced by a statue of Yehuda Rab, the first grove grower and the first well digger in the land of Petah Tikva in 1890, which as mentioned was not mentioned in the ballad, and it is very doubtful whether he took part in the tours in question. Of Rami Golshani) was placed on Haim Ozer Street.
David Guttman,
The families' protest over the transformation of the ballad into a historical reference has led to the publication of many studies and articles on the events that preceded the establishment of Petah Tikva. Prominent among them were those of the writer, playwright and poet Ehud Ben-Ezer (Rab), the grandson of Yehuda Rab, and Eli Eshed, the researcher of popular culture and the editor-in-chief of the culture magazine of the Yakum Tarbut network.
Ben-Ezer has been talking for years about "historical distortion" and "mixing of dates and occurrences." According to him, the doctor Mazarki was not brought to Nahalat Tian near the Yarkon or to the Kassar estate around the Founders' Square in the summer of 1878, but a year later, after Nahalat Tian near the Yarkon had already been purchased. Of today), to warn the "Yarkons", who were about to reach the banks of the Yarkon, of diseases and danger of death - warnings that came true. Has become a historical source.
The controversy grew when Rami Jezreel, a veteran researcher of the history of the Land of Israel, quoted excerpts from the diary of Yoel Moshe Salomon, from which it appears that only three participated in the first delegation: Salomon, Guttman and the Arab representative of the landowner.
Stampfer, Brent and the doctor are not mentioned at all, and Jezreel notes that in the diary there is also no knowledge that Salomon was left alone for a few days among the peasants, to investigate the source of the diseases.
The claims of Salomon's preference, it should be noted, were raised as early as 1928, many years before Taharlev composed the ballad.
In the same year, the distribution of the Jubilee Book to Petah Tikva was delayed, amid similar allegations and the Salomon family's suspicion of alleged over-involvement in editing the book.
Shone Brent,
"Man will bring the bird"
And as if these confusing data were not enough, Zehava Ben Dov, the great-granddaughter of Yehoshua Stampfer (one of the heroes of the ballad), published a completely different version of "The Bird Legend" 19 years ago.
Ben Dov said this week that "Joshua's brother, Menachem Yehuda Stampfer, asked him where he got the courage to buy land and settle people there, even though the Greek doctor said the place was full of diseases and even the birds did not come.
"Joshua Stampfer answered him," says Ben Dov, "that when he heard the doctor's words, he remembered a legend about Rabbi Akiva and sages who saw the destruction of the Temple and foxes walking in it. Sages cried and Rabbi Akiva laughed. God: 'Why are you laughing?'
He said to them: 'I laugh, for just as the prophecy of destruction came true, so will the prophecy of redemption come true.' And here Stampfer said: 'In Jeremiah it is written: '".
Already years ago, Eli Eshed in his research interviewed many of the descendants of the founders, the heroes of Taharlev's ballad, and also researched the testimonies left behind by the heroes of the story itself.
Eshed believes that the most credible testimony in the war of versions about what really happened on the lands of Umbelas 145 years ago - a testimony that is also the oldest - was given in 1884 by the journalist, rabbi and writer Yaakov Goldman.
Goldman, Cascade recounts, reported that the Greek physician did not come to the lands of Omelves in 1878 but in 1880, and that the people with whom he had a conversation were not the founders, but a later group of "Yarkons" who sought to settle near the banks of the creek.
Mazarki was commissioned in 1880 by the heads of the colony, including Salomon and Guttman, to warn the Yarkons that birds did not nest in the water, which indicates that the water was dangerous, but that just then there was a migration of birds. The Yarkons saw birds in the place, and to their dismay, did not heed the doctor's warning. Many of them died of fever, and settlement in Petah Tikva was temporarily halted. "Mazaraki's righteousness has received conclusive proof," Eshed concludes, noting that the story Goldman tells does not contradict the possibility that Mazaraki also visited the lands in 1878.
Goldman himself, as mentioned, described from a distance of only four years what allegedly happened then: "The doctor ordered them to build their houses on the hill, far from the waters of the Yarkon. On the banks of the Yarkon, so that it would be easier for him to hunt fish ... and there would be a quarrel between the inhabitants of the mountain and the inhabitants of the stream ... "Let them dig a grave there. And let there be a fear of God on those who remain, and they will leave their land and return to Jerusalem, hungry and defiled ... beaten with fever and howling with a broken heart."
Eshed notes that the pioneers of Petah Tikva have been warned about what is expected of them by an elderly Arab, a native of the area, as well as by the director of Mikve Israel, Zeev Herzberg, who warned that this is a "land that eats its inhabitants."
"The Russian baron Austinov, who lived in Jaffa, also warned: 'Stop that estate because the rumor that the people are passing on it is not good.'"
Joshua Stampfer,
"A Strange and Strange Song"
Taharlev himself, who passed away a week ago, did not take to heart the multiplicity of versions that emerged around his well-known poem, and addressed the controversy with a mixture of seriousness and humor.
In an interview with him by Yoav Kutner, as part of Mifal Hapayis' creative documentation project, Taharlev said that Shiro was born "in the atmosphere of an American country. I said to myself: Horses, people, go out ... We also have such events. I took this story and built it .. "It is indeed a foreign and strange song, unique," Taharlev testified about his work, "another song, in which I consider one of my most important songs; a song that combines mysticism with a true story, and in that he is different."
Taharlev also devoted words to his ballad in one of his books and admitted there that "it later became clear that the people whose names appear in Yaari's book were not the only ones who were on the same journey. This infuriated some historians: Members of the Stampfer, Guttman and Brent families, whose ancestors were portrayed in the song as heartbroken. In reality, "Dyke Taharlev," they did not flee the battle! ". But "all these attacks only testify to the place the song has occupied in hearts."
Historically, Taharlev also hoped to strengthen the ballad version through a letter published by Stampfer in the Jewish Chronicle on August 23, 1878. The person who passed the letter to Taharlev was the researcher Dr. Mordechai Naor. Himself alongside Salomon, Brent and Guttman as "the four wheels of the chariot that God has placed on them for the pull," does not refer there to the tour, but to the purchase, and does not even mention the doctor from Zarqi.
One of the more interesting interviews with Taharlev on the ballad was also conducted by Eli Eshed.
"The historical act as I read in Yaari," Taharlev recounts the birth of the ballad, "fascinated and moved me. Salomon is a man whose name many did not hear until I wrote the song. In my kibbutz I heard about the members of the Second Aliyah ... and suddenly while reading I discovered The old, ultra-Orthodox locality, which also built localities in the country before everyone else, localities like Petah Tikva. "
Taharlev said he sat and thought about how a chorus could be made from the story.
"For almost three years I walked with the story in my stomach and looked for a form, and finally I built the hymn which is a kind of ballad in the form of a fairy tale, in which I combined two different stories. To these stories I added out of poetic freedom the description of Salomon becoming a bird."
Taharlev insisted that Salomon was "the main hero, without wisdom, who led many settlement initiatives at the time. In the ballad," he clarified, "there can be only one hero - and that is Joel Moshe Salomon, whose ballad bears his name. To emphasize the one, I had to reduce the "The value of others.
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