***
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.
***
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.
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.)
***
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...
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.
