Living in History

When we think of Israel, we often think of layers and layers of ancient history. One of my husband Bob’s favorite objects was a Stone Age tool that I picked up in the desert near where his son lives in Mitzpeh Ramon. There, ancient stone tools, 6,000 or more years old, are to be found simply lying on the ground…

But there is also a lot of recent history here — history that happened within the last century, or the last fifty years, history that is unfolding around me even as I write this. For instance: I live on Kheil Nashim Street, off of Bilu Street, off of Hizkiyahu HaMelekh Street. Hezekiah the King goes back to Bible times, but these other names have much more recent histories.

Bilu is an acronym: in Hebrew it looks like this: ביל׳׳ו It stands for Beit Ya’akov Lekhu Venelkha — House of Jacob, let’s go! (It’s a quote from Isaiah 2:5). Bilu rang a bell with me — I knew I’d studied it in Jewish history class. The bilu’im were early pioneers from Russia, escaping the pogroms. The first group came here in July of 1882, when Palestine (as this land was called then) was in still in the control of the Ottoman Empire (Turks). According to our friends at Wiki, “The group consisted of fourteen university students from Kharkiv led by Israel Belkind, later a prominent writer and historian.” Not too surprisingly, “After a short stay on a Jewish farming school”, they were unsuccessful at establishing an agricultural coop. They were then lucky enough to get financial help from the good Baron de Rothschild, who got them going in the wine industry. In 1886 they built a winery (which I rather think is still there).

What of Kheil Nashim? Nashim means women, and kheil is the compound form of khayyal meaning soldier, so I was not surprised to learn that Kheil Nashim is the old name for the women’s branch of the Israel Defense Forces. Its acronym (there is a strong Jewish tradition of acronyms, going back to the Talmud) is khein, meaning grace. In the US I think we have a notion that there is greater equality in the IDF than in the US armed forces, but this proves to be less than the truth. I mean, a women’s branch of the army referred to as “grace”? If you were an officer in this branch, you were known as k’zinat khein — which, as one author writes, sounds in Hebrew like “charm officer”. Women were not given combat jobs, any more than in the US army. Rather, they were detailed to clerical and support duties, and to asigned to look decorative hanging on the arms of male soldiers or dignitaries.

It was not until 2009 (I believe — I seem to have lost the citation) that the name kheil nashim was dropped. It’s also fairly recently that women were allowed to enter combat units. Even now, I have read they represent something like 3 percent of combat soldiers. However, after the Alice Miller case in 1994, when a young woman sued for her right to become an Israeli fighter pilot, the right of women to do equal duty has improved significantly in the Israeli forces — as in the US, of course. (And yes, I do know that there’s an argument to be made that the right to go into combat has to be offset by the right to be a conscientious objector….)

Tomorrow I hope to tell you about the history of the neighborhood I am living in. For such a placid, gentrified, area, it has a very contested recent history. My interest started when I noticed a marker at the San Simon Monastery and park yesterday, which explained that this Greek Orthodox monastery had been the site of a bloody battle in the War of Independence…

More tomorrow…