Who Was Zohara Levyatov?

The other day, I received an email from the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF).  It was a notice about an upcoming event in the Boston area featuring two exceptional Israeli pilots.  What makes them special?  Here's the blurb: 

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In Defense of the Homeland:

IDF Women Pilots

The evening will feature TWO COURAGEOUS FEMALE PILOTS of the Israel Defense Forces.

The young women will describe their unparalleled experiences in the Israeli Air Force including the grueling training and operations they take on regularly to keep Israel safe.

Each woman will share her personal story, participating in what, for many years, was a male-only field.

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What caught my attention was that last line.

I have no doubt that these two women are brave soldiers who have had to face many obstacles in pursuing their careers as pilots in the Israeli airforce.  And it is true that the Israeli Air Force was a male-only field for many years.

But it wasn't always that way.  In fact, during Israel's first decade, women did serve in the Israeli Air Force.  It wasn't until 1960 that women were not permitted to be IAF pilots.  

Let me tell you about one particular woman pilot who served in the Israeli Air Force a long time ago.  Her name is Zohara Levyatov.

How did I first become interested in Zohara Levyatov?

As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, during my recent sabbatical, I lived in a neighborhood in Jerusalem where virtually all of the streets are named after Jewish military heroes or Jewish fighting forces.  

For example, I lived in an apartment on Rehov HaPalmach, named after the Haganah's pre-state strike force.  Down the block is Rehov Ha-Gdud Ha-Ivri (The Jewish Legion) named after the Jewish Legion which fought with the British against the Germans during World War I.  At the corner there's Kovshei Katamon (the Haganah unit that conquered the neighborhood of Katamon during the War of Independence).  And then there are the streets named after individual military heroes, like Eli Cohen (an Israeli spy hanged in Syria in 1965).

Rehov HaPalmach runs along the top of a ridge.  To descend on foot to the Valley of the Cross (named after the Monastery of the Cross, about which I wrote, a few months ago, here), one can take two pathways. One is named for Haviva Reik, the Jewish partisan who parachuted into enemy territory during World War II and was killed by the Nazis. (I wrote about her here.)  The other option is to go down the pedestrian pathway called the Zohara (Levyatov) Pathway.

Zohara Levyatov?  Who was Zohara Levyatov?

Who was Zohara Levyatov?  

Until a few months ago, when I squinted and read that street sign carefully, I must admit: I had no idea.  The path leads down to Rehov Ha-Tayasim (Pilots Street), and so it wasn't entirely a surprise to learn that she was a Israeli pilot.  But that she was a pilot in 1948, when Israel had only a handful of planes!?  That was a surprise.

I did some reading and learned the amazing story of her life:

Zohara Levyatov was born in Tel Aviv in 1927. 

Like many other young, idealistic and committed Jews growing up in Mandatory Palestine at the time, ... 

Zohara at age 16

... Zohara joined the Palmach right after she graduated from high school.  

Zohara after joining the Palmach in 1945 

Interestingly, while in the Palmach, Zohara shared a tent with Leah Schlossberg, who would one day marry Yitzhak Rabin and become Leah Rabin.  

Zohara distinguished herself in the Palmach early on, and as a medic she participated in a daring Palmach mission on the so-called "Night of the Bridges" (an complex operation intended to destroy eleven bridges in Mandatory Palestine on the night of June 16-17, 1946).  There were several operational failures, and fourteen of Zohara's comrades were killed.  Zohara herself was wounded in the eyes, and she returned to her base on Kibbutz Ein Harod for recuperation.  There she met the man who would soon become her sweetheart, Shmuel (Shmulik) Kaufman.

Although still a teenager, Shmulik had also distinguished himself.  After his discharge from the Palmach, and after making plans to study in England, he nonetheless felt called upon to return for an extra tour of duty.  A short while later, as documented in Zohara's diary and in a series of love letters exchanged between her and Shmulik, they fell in love, and they soon became engaged.  

They both wanted to become doctors, and they decided to go to the United States to continue their education.  But on May 2, 1947, on the day before Shmulik was due to be discharged from the Palmach and shortly before their anticipated wedding day, Shmulik was asked to supervise a training exercise with live hand grenades. One of them exploded unexpectedly, killing him and two other soldiers.  

A few months later, encouraged by her parents, Zohara travelled to Philadelphia, PA, to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.   At first, she lived with Shmulik's sister; then, when she was accepted at Columbia University, she moved to New York.  

Again, events intervened.  As the British prepared to withdraw from Palestine following the U.N. partition vote on November 29th, 1947, war broke out between Arabs and Jews.  As her late fiancé had been, Zohara felt drawn to serve the Yishuv (the Jewish community in the Land of Israel).  She met with Teddy Kolleck, the Haganah shaliach (emissary) in New York (and future mayor of Jerusalem).  One of two women to be accepted at the Eleanor Rudnick Flight School in Bakersfield, California (which Teddy Kolleck had set up to train pilots for the future Israeli Air Force), Zohara went there for training, and she excelled in her studies.

It's heartbreaking, but in California she developed another romantic attachment: this one to a fellow pilot-in-training, who was killed a few months later when his plane was shot down over Lod on July 7th, 1948.  

Shortly after her return to Israel, Zohara was appointed Deputy Flight Commander at the Tel Aviv airport, and, according to the IDF, she participated as a veteran pilot on several missions.  

On July 18th, 1948, a UN-brokered truce came into effect.  Shortly thereafter, Zohara flew to Jerusalem to visit her family.  On August 3rd, she took off on a routine flight from the Rehavia airfield in Jerusalem (today's "Sacher Park").  She was flying in an Auster, a small British reconnaisance plane.  Several Austers had been acquired by the Haganah from the British during their withdrawal.  See the following depiction of the plane on an Israeli Air Force medal:

During takeoff, the plane stalled, and then failed to clear the walls of the Monastery of the Cross.  It plummeted to the ground, and Zohara and her co-pilot were killed.  It happens that one of the first people to reach the plane was Ruth Dayan (the wife of Moshe Dayan, then commander of the Israel Defense Forces in Jerusalem and later Secretary of Defense) who had been washing dishes in her sister's apartment in Rehavia.  She recovered Zohara's body and brought it with her in her husband's command car to the hospital.

Zohara was given a hero's funeral when her body was transferred to the Har Herzl military cemetery in 1950.  The publication, in 1951, of her diaries helped make Zohara Levyatov an icon for several generations of Israelis and, over the years, her story has continued to engender great interest.  In 1980, Deborah Omer wrote, "Love Until Death," and in 1981, a play called, "Zohara's Shmulik" was performed in Israel. In 2003, Ofer Regev wrote, "In the Splendor of the Heavens," based on Zohara's diaries. (Zohara's name means "splendor", and the phrase "zohar ha-rakia" -- "splendor of the heavens" -- appears in the El Malei Rachamim memorial prayer.)

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To me, the story of Zohara Levyatov is a reminder that there was a time, during the early years of Labor Zionism, when women served freely alongside men... 

A female officer of the Haganah demonstrates handling a Sten gun 

during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War (Source:  Wikipedia)

It is sad for me to realize that even as women have won several hard-fought battles in Israel during the past few decades to enter previously male-only domains in the army and in government, religious fundamentalism has also been on the rise, and women have found themselves facing renewed discrimination and marginalization.  

***

During my stay in Israel, I walked on Netiv Zohara many, many times.  Most of that time, I was completely unaware of the story of Zohara Levyatov, and I would imagine that many of the people who walk along that path today are similarly oblivious.  

But as I think about the life of this talented, idealistic, passionate, dedicated and sadly forever-young woman, I'm glad that I've come to know about her achievements.  She inspires me.  Walking down that path from Rehov HaPalmach and strolling in the area of Sacher Park and the Monastery of the Cross will, for me, never be the same.

Even in Rome ...

Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av), which falls this year next Monday evening and Tuesday, commemorates a series of Jewish catastrophes that took place on or around this date, the most significant of which are the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem -- by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE, respectively.

We who live in free and open societies like the United States  can find it difficult to fully appreciate the significance of these events.  

Sometimes, though, it is easier than at others.  

One summer almost thirty years ago, my wife, Elana, and I decided to go to Israel.  Neither of us had been there for a while, and each of us had a yen to return.  Because of our work schedules, the only time we had available to take our trip was the ten days following Tisha B’Av. 

Elana was able to find a flight to Israel with a stopover in Rome.  “Why not,” she asked, “spend two days in Rome before arriving in Israel?”

I was not enthusiastic.  I had been away from Israel for so long that I couldn’t wait to get back. And to take two precious days from our relatively short trip and spend it in the capital city of the ancient empire that had destroyed the Second Temple and exiled the Jewish people—that just seemed to ignore the meaning of Tisha B’Av, and its commemoration of our loss of national sovereignty.  On the other hand, this was an easy way to spend a little time in Rome, where I had never been.

I reluctantly acquiesced.

And so, we began Tisha B’Av that year by sitting on the floor with our community, chanting from the book of Eicha (Lamentations), and we concluded it by boarding a plane for Rome. We arrived the next day, exhausted.  Dragging our feet from place to place, we walked around the city to acclimate ourselves to the new time zone. My heart wasn’t entirely in it. 

We found ourselves in the Vatican, gazing uncomprehendingly at one impressive work of art after another.  As I was looking at one particular inscrutable statue, lamenting that we hadn’t signed up for a tour, I began to notice a Hebrew inscription on it.  That piqued my curiosity.  What did it mean? Why was it there? 

Then I had an odd sensation:  I felt as though I were hearing an explanation of the inscription, in Hebrew!  I must be having an auditory hallucination, I thought.  It must be because I haven’t slept.  But then I realized that a group of tourists had walked alongside me, and that their leader was pointing at the statue and describing its Hebrew inscription in Hebrew!  It turned out that these tourists were Israelis.  We tagged along a bit.  Suddenly, it occurred to me:  even though we weren't yet in Israel, our trip to Israel had already begun.  

There was more to come.

The next day, Elana and I toured the Roman Forum.  We walked around the Arch of Titus, built to commemorate the Roman victory over Judea. 

According to tradition, for almost nineteen hundred years Jews had refrained from walking under the Arch and the first group of Jews to walk publically and purposefully under the Arch was a group of Israeli soldiers, following the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.  With this in mind, we approached the arch and looked up at the famous bas-relief of the Roman army (more precisely, their slaves) carting off the treasures of the Temple to Rome.

I noticed some Hebrew graffiti nearby:  “Am Yisrael Chai” -- “The People of Israel is (Still) Alive”.

What a privilege—a privilege denied to Jews for almost two thousand years -- to be able, after seeing that arch and contemplating the Roman victory it celebrated, to travel to a free, sovereign, Jewish state.

That evening, we went to the Caracalla Baths to see an opera. 

Coincidentally, the opera company was performing Verdi’s Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), based in part on the Biblical story of the conquest of Judea and the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians.  At one point in the third act, actors playing Hebrew slaves who had been exiled from Judea to Babylon filled the stage.  The men were wearing large cloaks resembling tallitot.  Slowly and deliberately, the slaves began to sing the famous “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves,” or “Va Pensiero:”

Fly, thought, on wings of gold;

go settle upon the slopes and the hills,

where the sweet air
 of our native land
smells so fragrant and mild!



Greet the banks of the River Jordan,
and Zion's toppled towers...


Oh, my country, so beautiful and lost!

Oh, remembrance, so dear -- and yet so painful!



Golden harp of the prophetic seers,

why do you hang mute upon the willow?
Rekindle the memories in our hearts,

and speak to us of times gone by!

Mindful of the fate of Jerusalem,

play us a sad lamentation.
Or, with the Lord's inspiration, 
help us to endure our suffering.

I felt goosebumps.  What an amazing evocation of the destruction! What a powerful coda to Tisha B’Av! 

I had known that in Italy Va Pensiero is an unofficial national anthem. But that hadn’t prepared me for what happened then. When Va Pensiero concluded, the entire audience stood up and insisted on an encore, right then and there. 

And so the cast and the orchestra – joined by many, many members of the audience – went ahead and performed Va Pensiero yet again with tremendous energy.

(To get a sense of what that felt like, take a look at the following video.  It is an excerpt from a Rome Opera Company performance of Nabucco under the direction of Riccardo Muti.  The video begins with the ninety seconds of applause that followed the singing of Va Pensiero at that performance.  At that point, as you’ll see, Mr. Muti speaks about the significance of the piece, and then, at 2:30, he begins to lead the chorus, orchestra and audience in a slow, stately, encore performance:

(If the video link above is missing, click here.)

What an affirmation of the enduring power and universal significance of the Biblical story—our story!

Elana and I left for Israel the next day.  And the trip was wonderful.  But I have to admit, it was made even more wonderful by what had preceded it.

Besides convincing me that my wife is always right, I learned an important lesson.  We never know when, where or how our appreciation of the meaning of the destruction of the Temple and our exile from the Land of Israel is going to be triggered.  Fasting on Tisha B’Av is certainly one important way to achieve this.   Travelling to Israel is certainly another.  But there are others as well.

Maariv on Tisha B'Av, including the chanting of Eichah (the Book of Lamentations), will take place at Temple Aliyah on Monday evening at 8:30 pm.  On Tuesday evening, Minchah will be recited at 7:30 pm.  

P.S.  I can't resist.  Watch the following video to see an unusually choreographed but stirring rendition of Va Pensiero performed in Hebrew by the Israel Opera Company on Yom Haatzmaut in 2010.  Read along with the Hebrew subtitles!

(If the link above is defective, click here.)