October 4, 1972

With the Succoth vacation still on, we traveled up to Zichron Ya’akov.  It’s a beautiful town and has the Carmel wine cellars.  Enough said about that.

But something very interesting happened to us.  We visited the Aaronsohn house, which was the center of the Nili spy ring.  Meyer Levin based “The Settlers” on their story, a brother and sister, among others, spying for the British against the Ottoman Empire.  Sarah, the sister, committed suicide after being tortured by the Turks.  Several were hanged and her brother died two years later in 1919.

I admit to my ignorance about the whole Nili operation.  But there I was at their house, holding Judy in my arms, when an old woman came up to us, kissed Judy and said, “Welcome to Beit Aaronsohn.”

Afterwards, an Israeli came up to us to ask if we knew who the woman was.  Of course I didn’t.  But it was Rivka Aaronsohn, the younger sister, who managed to survive.

On we went to Gan Rothschild, beautiful gardens and the resting place of Edmond and Adelaide de Rothschild.

Back in Tel Aviv, Abe and I attended a free concert, featuring HaPaverim and Shoshana Damari.  Will this be the last “free” concert I attend?  It was a madhouse.  Small kids were running all over, no one called a halt as they rampaged through the hillside and the audience.  Then one kid smacked another, the mothers got involved and not to calm things down.

During the HaPaverim set, a man and a woman were fighting behind us, so it was quite hard to catch what was being sung.  But Shoshana Damari is famous, so I did want to hear her.  That’s when a drunk sat down next to us.  The first drunk I’ve seen in Israel, so I’m assuming a Russian immigrant.  I made Abe move.  None of this ever seems to get to him.  I think there might have been less trouble if people had spread out on the hillside.  But they didn’t. While there was a lot of empty space, people clung together.  Hmm.

I’m making a lot of new friends among visiting professors and new immigrants.  One South African and I have become quite close.  She has a boy the same age as Judy and in the same gan. Also there’s a couple from the University of Rochester that are fun to be with.

Fortunately, both kids are doing well at the gan, both are starting to speak Hebrew, even at home.  This will definitely help me when I go to the ulpan.

Another holiday, Simhat Torah.  We went down to the main square in Tel Aviv to watch the singing and dancing, quite joyful.

An interesting tidbit.  The Finance Ministry exchanges its dollars on the black market because they get a better exchange rate than from a bank.  Well, don’t we all!