Jewish History

[Sixties Fan]

18th century manuscript, found in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel, includes details from the first 130 years of the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon, including numbers of the victims, charges and sentences
(photo credit: THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL)

The manuscript is meticulously detailed​

The 60-page manuscript includes a great deal of information about autos-da-fé in Lisbon during the Inquisition’s first 130 years, from 1540-1669. Among the details listed are the number of victims at each trial, the dates and locations of the ceremonies and the names of priests who officiated. In addition, the number of people burned at the stake in each auto-da-fé is mentioned, per the release.


Many of the victims included in the manuscript were newly converted Christians accused of continuing to practice Judaism. Nevertheless, Christians who came from Christian backgrounds were also listed for crimes of sodomy, bigamy, possession of forbidden books and sacrilege, the release stated.

(full article online)

Manuscript discovered detailing Inquisition trials against Jews

The 60-page document lists the dates and locations of autos-da-fé along with the number of victims at each trial.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

FBI agents gathered background information from what they called “persons in New York City who are familiar with Israelite matters.” They also eavesdropped on the Bergsonites’ telephone conversations, opened their mail, went through their trash, and planted informants in the group to steal documents from Bergson’s office. The FBI hoped to find proof the Bergson Group was secretly assisting the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground militia in Palestinethat was headed by Menachem Begin. They found no such evidence.

The authorities’ second goal was to find a link between Bergson and the Communist Party. One FBI memo approvingly quoted a rival Jewish organization’s description of the Bergsonites as “a group of thoroughly disreputable Communist Zionists.” In a private letter, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to the playwright Ben Hecht and six other leading Bergson activists as “fellow travelers.” But the FBI’s spying on Bergson did not turn up any evidence of a Communist link, either.

At the same time, the IRS launched a full-scale inquiry into the Bergson Group’s finances, seeking to revoke its tax-exempt status. For nearly a year, IRS agents repeatedly visited the group’s New York City headquarters, once for a stretch where they stayed from morning until night for more than two weeks.

Louis and Jack Yampolsky, a father-and-son accounting team that handled Bergson’s finances pro bono, had to dig out and reconcile every piece of financial information in the group’s records. “There were no photocopy machines in those days, so we had to hand-copy every disbursement and every receipt that was given for every donation,” Jack Yampolsky told me in an interview some years ago. “And because the Bergson Group had enormous grassroots appeal, it received literally thousands of one-dollar or two-dollar donations from people all over the country.”
In the end, the IRS investigators were unable to find evidence of any wrongdoing. In fact, as the IRS team became familiar with the group’s work, they came to sympathize with it, and “when they finished, [they] made a contribution between them–every one of them gave a few dollars,” Bergson later told Prof. David S. Wyman.

The sympathy expressed by the IRS agents contrasted sharply with the sentiments expressed in some of the FBI documents which I obtained. One FBI report about Bergson activist Maurice Rosenblatt derisively referred to the leftwing Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action, in which Rosenblatt was active, as “this Semitic Committee.” The FBI memo complained that Rosenblatt and his colleagues were trying to “smear” Nazi sympathizers in New York City.

“When there is a genuine threat, governments sometimes have to do things like eavesdrop,” Jack Yampolsky conceded. “But in our case, they were doing it for political reasons, and antisemitism also played a role. The fact that we vocally disagreed with U.S. government policy regarding the Holocaust and Jewish statehood was not a valid reason for the Roosevelt administration to enlist the FBI and the IRS in a war against the Bergson group.”


(full article online)

When the IRS Targeted Jewish Activists

The Jewish target of U.S. government wrath in the 1940s was the Bergson Group, a political action committee led by Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), a Zionist emissary from Palestine.

jewishjournal.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Today is Wednesday, Tammuz 14, 5782 · July 13, 2022​

Today in Jewish History​

• Jews of Schaffhausen (Switzerland) Burned at the Stake (1401)

After the postilion (coach driver) of the governor killed the four-year-old son of a councilor, charges were lodged against a Jew named Michael Vinelmann, a former resident of Basel, alleging that he had promised the murderer three gulden for the blood of the child. The murderer was broken on the wheel, and the Jew burned alive without trial.

Shortly before, a similar accusation had been brought against the Jews of Schaffhausen and been successfully refuted. When news of Michael Vinelmann's fate was brought to Schaffhausen, several of the Jews of the city fled and were soon captured. They were taken back to Schaffhausen, where they were thrown into a dungeon and terribly tortured. Unable to endure the pain, they "confessed" to the crime of which they had been accused, whereupon all the Jews living in Schaffhausen were condemned to death. Thirty Jews were burned alive. Four weeks later, eighteen men and women died at the stake in Winterthur in a similar context.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Monty Norman, the Jewish-British composer and lyricist who wrote the theme song for the James Bond films, died on Monday at the age of 94 after battling a “short illness,” according to a statement posted on his official website.

A lifelong resident of London, Norman was born in 1928, the only child of Ann and Abraham Noserovitch. His mother bought him a guitar when he was 16, and he went on to have guitar lessons with Bert Weedon, who eventually became one of Britain’s top guitarists.

Norman also got a singing teacher and began performing radio broadcasts with small jazz bands before joining big bands and performing a series of variety show double acts with comedian Benny Hill. He later wrote songs for early British rock artists Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, and composed for stage musicals.

Norman was hired by producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to compose a score for the first James Bond film, “Dr. No,” which was released in 1962. The theme song he created has been used in all 25 Bond films.

(full article online)

Monty Norman, Jewish-British Composer of James Bond Theme Song, Dies at 94

The opening sequence of the James Bond film “Dr. No.” Photo: Screenshot. JNS.org – Monty Norman, the Jewish-British composer and …

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Rigby5]

It is illegal, immoral, and in violation of law for any religion to try to create a state religion. And even more so with Israel since that is Palestine, and not the origin of any Jewish culture at all.
The Hebrew tribes have to be considered either Egyptian or from the Sinai.
They are NOT from Jerusalem in any way.
And they only invaded and controlled Jerusalem for about 250 years.
The later Jewish leadership over Jerusalem was really just a fake puppet minority established by the Romans.
Current Zionism is a corrupt lie.
With REAL Zionism, people are supposed to act ethically, with Zion as a reward, likely on the after life, not on earth. And certainly no Jew is supposed to go looking for Zion until the coming of the Messiah.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Jews in India​

Though often overlooked amid the subcontinent's vast and diverse population as well as the reaches of the Jewish community in the Middle East and Europe, India has its own distinctive rich Jewish history.


Traditionally, there thought to be a few distinct groups of Jews in India today, who are located throughout the country.

Jew Town signage remains in the city (credit: CHRISTABEL LOBO/JTA)
Considering how vast India is and the varying backgrounds of these communities, they formed some distinct traditions, learning different languages and so on.


One of these Jewish communities were known as the Jews of Madras, also known as the Chennai Jews. These consisted of Paradesi Jews, meaning Jews who came to India following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, with the world Paradesi being derived from a Malayalam word for "foreign."


As they came to India following the Alhambra Decree expelling all Jews from Spain, these Jews were largely Sephardi, and as such had many links to other Sephardi Jewish communities.

In particular, the Paradesi Jews who came to Madras – now Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu – tended to work as traders and merchants and spoke Ladino, though they soon learned Tamil.


Today, this community largely no longer exists. In fact, it was reported in 2020 that Tamil Nadu's last Jewish family left.

However, while this is the longest and most established Jewish presence in Tamil Nadu, it doesn't seem to be the earliest. After all, the Paradesi Jews only came to Tamil Nadu in the 15th and 16th centuries, whereas this latest finding is several hundred years older.


Three of the other groups of Jews in India claim to have been there longer. The Bnei Menashe and Bene Ephraim Jews are both groups who converted to Judaism but claim ancestry from the 10 lost tribes.


Another relevant group were the Nagercoil Jews: Arabian Jews who supposedly came to India around 52 CE and were known to have been as far south as Cochin, also in southern India.


But overall, Jewish history in India may predate most of these groups.

(full article online)

Stone in Tamil Nadu may shed light on India's oldest synagogue, Jews

The finding is significant as it sheds light on south Indian Jewry, as well as information relating to what may be the oldest synagogue in the area.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Kingdom in Arabia

In these turbulent times in the Middle East, I have found myself working on the rise and fall of a late antique Jewish kingdom along the Red Sea in the Arabian peninsula. Friends and colleagues alike have reacted with amazement and disbelief when I have told them about the history I have been...

www.ias.edu

 

[Sixties Fan]

Treasure Trove: A weekly piece of our history from the collection of David Matlow—second year archive (2022-23) - The Canadian Jewish News

The latest items via @TheCJN on Instagram.

thecjn.ca

 

[Ria_Longhorn]

It is illegal, immoral, and in violation of law for any religion to try to create a state religion. And even more so with Israel since that is Palestine, and not the origin of any Jewish culture at all.
The Hebrew tribes have to be considered either Egyptian or from the Sinai.
They are NOT from Jerusalem in any way.
And they only invaded and controlled Jerusalem for about 250 years.
The later Jewish leadership over Jerusalem was really just a fake puppet minority established by the Romans.
Current Zionism is a corrupt lie.
With REAL Zionism, people are supposed to act ethically, with Zion as a reward, likely on the after life, not on earth. And certainly no Jew is supposed to go looking for Zion until the coming of the Messiah.

The Land Belongs to the Jewish People.

 

[Sixties Fan]

On July 18, 1290, King Edward I of England signed the Edict of Expulsionwhich ordered all the Jews in England to leave by November of 1290.


A part of the reason for the expulsion of the Jews was intense antisemitism that stemmed from their role in European society as moneylenders.


Christianity at the time considered lending money with interest, usury, to be a wholly non-Christian thing, so the church in England outlawed it. The Jews, however, arrived in England with William the Conquerer in 1066, and they didn't have to abide by the church, so they filled the financial system gaps that the Christians could not.

-----
The antisemitic images of the Wandering Jew and myths such as Jews murdering Christian children to make matzah with their blood on Passover spread through England. As a result anti-Jewish riots often broke out. One of the most notable of these riots was in 1190 in York where hundreds of Jews were murdered by mobs.


Antisemitism also began to grow in the state's treatment of Jews. In 1218, England became the first country in Europe to require Jews and Muslims to identify themselves through their dress, and Jews were forced to wear identifying badges.


The process to expel the Jews was started in 1275 with the Statute of Jewry which outlawed moneylending to all Jews. The Jews were told they had to acclimate to the new law within 15 years, but antisemitism made getting other jobs extremely difficult for them.

(full article online)

On This Day: King Edward I signs edict expelling Jews from England

In 1290, King Edward I expelled the Jews from England after antisemitism grew steadily over almost two centuries.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Lived 1882 – 1935.

Emmy Noether is probably the greatest female mathematician who has ever lived. She transformed our understanding of the universe with Noether’s theorem and then transformed mathematics with her founding work in abstract algebra.

Expulsion from Germany: moving to America​

In the early 1930s Noether’s career was finally taking off. Her name was becoming known, and she was receiving invitations to speak at important mathematics conferences.

Then, in January 1933, everything changed. Adolf Hitler came to power. By April of that year Noether, who was Jewish, had been dismissed from the University of Göttingen by order of the Prussian Ministry for Sciences, Art, and Public Education. Sadly, in Nazi ideology Emmy Noether’s religion was of more significance than her extraordinary genius.

Fortunately, her genius was valued elsewhere. Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, USA – a women’s college – obtained a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and, in October 1933, Emmy Noether sailed on the Bremen to begin work as a lecturer in America.

The following year she also began lecturing at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

A year later she was dead.

(full article online)

Emmy Noether - Biography, Facts and Pictures

Lived 1882 - 1935. Emmy Noether is probably the greatest female mathematician who has ever lived. She transformed our understanding of the universe with Noether's theorem and then transformed mathematics with her founding work in abstract algebra. Advertisements Beginnings Amalie Emmy Noether...

www.famousscientists.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Hannah Szenes was a poet and a Special Operations Executive member. She was one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to ... Wikipedia

Born: July 17, 1921, Budapest, Hungary
Died: November 7, 1944, Budapest, Hungary
Buried: Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, Israel
Unit: Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Books: Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary
Siblings: György Szenes
Parents: Béla Szenes, Catherine Szenes

Hannah Senesh (originally Szenes) was a paratrooper trained to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Captured and killed by the Nazi's, she is still a national heroine in Israel.

Senesh dressing up in costume as a Hungarian soldier​

Through her brief but noteworthy life, Senesh became a symbol of idealism and self-sacrifice. Her poems, made famous in part because of her unfortunate death, reveal a woman imbued with hope, even in the face of adverse circumstances.

Senesh (born July 17, 1921; died November 7, 1944) was born in Budapest, Hungary as the daughter of an author and journalist. She demonstrated her own literary talent from an early age, and she kept a diary from age 13 until shortly before her death. Although her family was assimilated, anti-Semitic sentiment in Budapest led her to involvement in Zionist activities, and she left Hungary for Eretz Yisrael in 1939. She studied first at an agricultural school, and then settled at Kibbutz Sdot Yam. While there she wrote poetry, as well as a play about kibbutz life.​

In 1943, Senesh joined the British Army and volunteered to be parachuted into Europe. The purpose of this operation was to help the Allied efforts in Europe and establish contact with partisan resistance fighters in an attempt to aid beleaguered Jewish communities. Senesh trained in Egypt and was one of the thirty-three people chosen to parachute behind enemy lines. With the goal of reaching her native Budapest, Senesh parachuted into Yugoslavia in March 1944, and spent three months with Tito’s partisans. Her idealism and commitment to her cause are memorialized in her poem “Blessed is the Match,” which she wrote at this time.​

On June 7, 1944, at the height of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, Senesh crossed the border into Hungary.​

She was caught almost immediately by the Hungarian police, and tortured cruelly and repeatedly over the next several months. Despite these conditions, Senesh refused to divulge any information about her mission. Even the knowledge that her mother was at risk and that she too might be harmed did not compel Senesh to cooperate with the police. At her trial in October 1944, Senesh staunchly defended her activities and she refused to request clemency. Throughout her ordeal she remained steadfast in her courage, and when she was executed by a firing squad on November 7, she refused the blindfold, staring squarely at her executors and her fate. Senesh was only 23 years old.​

Senesh's grave stone in Israel​

The following poem was found in Hannah's death cell after her execution:

One - two - three... eight feet long
Two strides across, the rest is dark...
Life is a fleeting question mark
One - two - three... maybe another week.
Or the next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel is very near.
I could have been 23 next July
I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.

In 1950, Senesh’s remains were brought to Israel and re-interred at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Her diary and literary works were later published, and many of her more popular poems have been set to music. The best known of these is “Towards Caesarea," more popularly known today as "My God, My God" with a melody created by David Zahavi and sung by artists including Ofra Haza, Regina Spektor, and Sophie Milman.

Senesh has also been the subject of several artistic works, including a play by Aharon Megged.

Hannah Senesh

Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Before Old Bay was invented in the 1940s, steamed crab, the dish most associated with the blend, was absent from regional cookbooks, including Mrs. B.C. Howard’s Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen and Mrs. Charles Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cookbook.

How did Brunn, a man who miraculously escaped Nazi-occupied Germany, revolutionize the way Americans eat crab?

The story begins in 1906 in the town of Bastheim, Germany, when Gustav Brunn was 13 years old. He quit school because it was too expensive and began working as a tannery apprentice. In 1923, the value of the German mark plummeted and in turn, the fur business collapsed and the tannery closed. Brunn bought the store and began selling cases and spices to sausage makers, the beginning of his career in the spice industry.

Brunn’s spice business was a success. That was, until 1933 when Hitler came to power. According to the Baltimore Jewish Times, as anti-Semitism grew, Brunn lost customers and his bookkeeper resigned out of fear that the Nazis would punish him for working for a Jew. To protect his family and his livelihood, Brunn moved his shop to Frankfurt where there was a larger Jewish population.

In 1937, Brunn and his family applied for visas to the United States. The plan was to leave by the end of 1938, but that changed on the night of November 10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the mass pogrom that destroyed synagogues, Jewish business, and schools, and the first time the Nazi regime arrested Jews on a massive scale.

The next day, radio announcements called for all Jews to surrender their firearms to the nearest police station. Brunn, an avid hunter with eight rifles, complied. Upon arriving at the police station, he was told that he couldn’t leave. Within hours, Brunn was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp.

Remarkably, after two weeks, Brunn was released, bearing a shaved head and suffering from pneumonia. Brunn’s early release was arranged by a Frankfurt lawyer for 10,000 marks, a hefty price at the time, who bribed the Gestapo. Within a week, Brunn, his wife, and their two children sailed for America, bound for Baltimore, with his hand-crank spice grinder in tow.

Brunn struggled to find work in Baltimore and finally landed a job at McCormick & Company, the world’s biggest spice maker. According to The Baltimore Sun, Brunn’s son Ralph recalls that after only a few days, McCormick learned that Brunn was Jewish, and fired him, directing him “to go and see the Jewish charities.”

Brunn did not give up on his career in the spice industry. He opened his own store, the Baltimore Spice Company, on the second floor of 26 Market Place, across from the bustling fish market. Soon, seafood vendors were stopping in his store, searching for spices for steaming crabs. Brunn took note of what they ordered — a mix of pepper, salt, and mustard — and began experimenting with his own blends.

Enter Old Bay, a kitchen sink of 18 spices, including mustard, paprika, celery salt, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, bay leaf, red pepper, cardamom, celery seed, cloves, laurel leaves, mustard, salt, pepper, and ginger. Ralph told the Baltimore Jewish Times that, to his father’s amazement, “Those minor things he put in there — the most unlikely things, including cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves…had nothing to do with crabs at all — gave a background bouquet that he couldn’t have anticipated…Old Bay, per se, was almost an accident.”

(full article online)

The Jewish Roots of Old Bay Seasoning | The Nosher

Old Bay — the zesty, saliferous, burnt orange spice synonymous with seasoning shellfish — was invented by Gustav Brunn, a ...

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Van Leeuwen brothers certainly aren’t the first of their people to make a successful foray into ice cream production, as Jews have a long history as being game-changers in the business, but they definitely have the most interesting story.

A Jewish husband and wife well into their forties, Jeanette and Philip Van Leeuwen, were struggling to conceive a child while living in Nazi-occupied Holland. Following a series of horrific bombings, they took cover in the Dutch forest, whose harsh natural features required a different, but equally challenging, struggle to survive. They made their way to Spain, where they miraculously found themselves pregnant. Then, they caught a boat from Bilbao to a refugee camp in Jamaica, where their first son was born. The young couple moved again (to Aruba), before finally settling in Forest Hills, New York. They eventually found peace and achieved prosperity, though they never forgot with sadness and gratitude the perilous journey required to forge this new existence for themselves, their children, and grand-children.

That little boy Jeannette and Philip miraculously conceived in the midst of World War II, had two little boys of his own, Ben and Peter, who (fast forward to 2008) opened acclaimed Van Leeuwen Ice Creamalong with their friend, Laura O’Neill.

So, besides its origins, what makes Van Leeuwen Ice Cream so unique?

While many high-end ice cream makers wax poetic about using “quality-sourced” ingredients, Van Leeuwen’s dedication is next level. Their ‘Earl Grey’ ice cream, for example, involves leaves harvested from China’s Hunnan province, and their ‘Sicilian Pistachio’ is studded with bright emerald nut bits straight from Mount Etna.

Having educated themselves on ice cream design by studying yolk-heavy classic recipes from the likes of Thomas Keller, the creators were inspired to up the ova ante when mixing their own products in order to ensure a silky mouthfeel. Because of the high yolk content, this Jewish-American ice cream is technically considered to be “French” (custard) and must be labeled as such.



(full article online)

The Family Behind This Trendy Ice Cream Company Escaped the Nazis | The Nosher

The Van Leeuwen brothers certainly aren’t the first of their people to make a successful foray into ice cream production, ...

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Today in Jewish History​

• Jews of Jerusalem are set aflame (1099)

When the crusaders captured Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the Jews of Jerusalem fled into a synagogue. The crusaders then set flame to the synagogue, burning alive all the Jewish men, women, and children who had taken refuge there. All Jews were barred from living in the city of Jerusalem for the following 88 years.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Monteith Inn was a 150-room hotel on Muskoka’s Lake Rosseau, a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of Toronto. Harry and Jennie Shopsowitz—the founders of Shopsy’s Delicatessen, which started as an ice cream parlour in Toronto’s garment district—purchased the property for $25,000 in 1935. It was one of the local “Jewish resorts” (along with Muskoka Lodge in Huntsville, Gateway Hotel in Gravenhurst, and Smith’s Bay House, Arcadia Lodge and Taub’s Lodge in Port Carling) that thrived because Jews weren’t welcome elsewhere. When the Monteith opened, a one-week all-inclusive stay cost $14. This 1937 advertisement promotes kosher meals by a famous chef from Miami. The Shopsowitz family operated the hotel until 1949. (The next year, it was destroyed by a fire.)

(full article online)

Treasure Trove: A weekly piece of our history from the collection of David Matlow—second year archive (2022-23) - The Canadian Jewish News

The latest items via @TheCJN on Instagram.

thecjn.ca

 

[surada]

Meet Jacob Herzog, Saudi Arabia's self-proclaimed chief rabbi

Rabbi Herzog, a 46-year-old American-Israeli rabbi who made aliyah from the US as a child, thought of traveling to Saudi Arabia only four years ago.

m.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

If ever a comment with the potential to psychologically cripple a child was made, this is it.


The date was March 19, 1963. The setting was a military court in Beirut where the verdict was being read in the trial of Shulamit Cohen-Kishik for spying, treason and smuggling Jews to Israel. The verdict for her husband, Jozef, accused of assisting in the smuggling and not informing the authorities of his wife’s activities, was also being read in the courtroom.


The trial, which generated huge headlines both in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world, began in November 1962, more than a year after Shulamit’s arrest and torture. The verdict was delivered in a packed courtroom. Among those in attendance was one of her seven children, Isaac, who had not yet turned 18. For weeks he had done everything he could, left no stone unturned, to get the sentence of his parents commuted.

“Because of the severity of the crime, the court ruled that the accused, Shulamit Cohen, should get the maximum sentence: Death,” the son, Itzhak Levanon, wrote of the verdict in a recently published book.


The judge then turned to Jozef, and sentenced him to 10 years, reduced to two years in prison because of his age and his need to support his family. Then the judge turned back to Shulamit and said that while she deserved to die, she would instead be sentenced to 20 years of hard labor for betraying the country she lived in for so many years.

IN BEIRUT with one of his younger brothers. (credit: Courtesy Itzhak Levanon)
“Two soldiers approach my father, Jozef, handcuff him and take him out of the hall,” Levanon wrote. “Two others approach mother, lift her from the bench and drag her from there. She is barely walking. I stand. Mother passes by me. One or two meters apart. So close, but yet so far. Mother does not bow her head. Her legs barely move, but her head is erect. She throws a piercing glance at me that transmits anger and dissatisfaction. ‘That’s all you can do, Isaac?’ she whispers to me.


“Her look rips my heart to pieces: That is what you are able to do, Isaac? What happened to all the promises, all the hopes? Why did we waste all the money? So that I sit in prison for 20 years?”


Those words, wrote the 77-year-old Levanon, who in 2011 retired from the Foreign Ministry after a career of some 40 years, echo in his mind to this day, some 60 years later.

(full article online)

From a spy’s son to ambassador to Egypt: Itzhak Levanon’s story

Kicked along with his family from Cairo as a boy, Levanon was dispatched 42 years later to serve as Israel’s ambassador. His story is revealed in a new book.

www.jpost.com