Tweet
New York Times
July 9 2005
'A Strange Death': Four Angry Women
By JONATHAN WILSON
Published: July 10, 2005
The dream of lost innocence recovered in a golden future always
haunts the imagination of colonial pioneers. Its premise is myopia:
F. Scott Fitzgerald conjured ''a fresh, green breast of the new
world'' for his Dutch sailors, a story that began without Indians.
Golda Meir infamously insisted that there was no such thing as
Palestinians. Breaking new ground on a distant shore is easier if no
one is there when you arrive. Plan B allows that the natives are
happy to see the newcomers. But soon enough it all turns nasty (whose
fault?) and ends in tears.
A STRANGE DEATH
By Hillel Halkin.
388 pp. PublicAffairs. $26.
First Chapter: 'A Strange Death' (July 10, 2005)
Forum: Book News and Reviews
''A Strange Death,'' Hillel Halkin's beautifully written and wisely
confused account of the local history of the town he lives in,
Zichron Yaakov, takes us back to the earliest days of Jewish
settlement in Ottoman Palestine. His ostensible subjects are members
of the Nili spy ring operated out of Zichron during World War I by
local pioneers on behalf of the British, its ramifications among the
local populace and the betrayals and revenge that floated in its
wake. He is deeply seduced, however, by the lovely ambiguities of the
past as they arise in relationships between Arabs and Jews at a time
when both groups were under Turkish rule. Yes, there is murder just
around the corner (Jews were hacked to pieces in Hebron and Arabs
massacred in Deir Yessin) but in 1916 a man could still be known by
the horse he rode from village to village rather than the tank he
rolled through in.
The spy ring (''Nili'' is a Hebrew acronym that translates as ''the
strength of Israel will not lie''), which functioned less than a year
from the winter of 1916 through the fall of 1917, was the brainchild
of Aaron Aaronsohn and Avshalom Feinberg, two Palestine-born Zionists
convinced that a British victory over the Turks would help pave the
way to a Jewish state. Aaronsohn was a charismatic figure with an
international reputation as a botanist (he discovered triticum
dioccoides, the wild ancestor of cultivated wheat). Feinberg, a local
farmer, was a swashbuckler, a superior shot and impressive horseman.
Aaronsohn brought two of his sisters into the ring: Rivka, who was
engaged to Feinberg, and the beautiful and spirited Sarah. At 24,
Sarah had abandoned her Turkish Jewish husband in Constantinople and
had witnessed, on her journey to Palestine, the Turks' genocidal
assault on the Armenians. The network was augmented by Yosef
Lishansky, a maverick adventurer and a tough guy, and a few more
trusted relatives of the two leaders.
The likelihood of the spies living to comb gray hair wasn't enhanced
by the anxieties of some Jews. After a successful run passing
information on Turkish troop positions to a British freighter waiting
offshore came the inevitable capture, torture and interrogation of an
operative, Naaman Belkind, and soon enough the jig was up. In October
1917, the Turks cordoned off Zichron. Aaronsohn was luckily in Cairo
at the time. Lishansky escaped only to be caught after three weeks,
and hanged by the Turks. Sarah was captured and marched through town.
Four Jewish women abused, excoriated and perhaps assaulted her, but
whether they acted out of animosity or an instinct for
self-preservation has never been clear. After being tortured by
Turkish soldiers Sarah escaped to her own home long enough to
retrieve a hidden gun and shoot herself.
What happened to the four angry women is Halkin's quest.
Particularly, was one of them, Perl Appelbaum, murdered in revenge by
Sarah's friends in Zichron Yaakov? As Halkin searches for an answer
nobody provides one, but his compensation is a stream of great
stories about old times. Zichron began as the fief of Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, who would blow in at odd intervals from France to bowing
and scraping. By 1970, when the Halkins move in, the village has a
cranky charm and wild flowers growing in crevices of half-abandoned
structures that seem like a playground for Joseph Beuys. Halkin, a
product of the new Israel, clearly finds it hard to let go of old
Palestine, in halcyon days when crafty Jews and wily Arabs,
farmer-scholar-horsemen all, took their disputes to the Turkish
governor for arbitration. A revealing moment comes when Halkin takes
his kids to play with Bedouin children who steal his daughters' toys.
Halkin wants to take a liberal-romantic line on this violation, but
his wife sets him straight. The Bedouin mother ''sleeps with the
farmers' sons. . . . Everyone knows except you. You'd know too, if it
had happened 50 years ago.''
Nothing is at it was, and perhaps it never was as Halkin supposed. In
an empty house he finds a discarded, anonymous book, ''Sarah, Flame
of the Nili.'' A little research reveals that the hagiography was
written by Alexander Aaronsohn, Sarah's younger brother, who, Halkin
also finds out, had a penchant for pubescent girls well beyond his
own adolescence. The countryside was thinly populated and the grass
grew high; there are secrets in Zichron. At the end of the book, the
town has health food stores, gift and antique shops and ice cream
parlors. But it has lost its soul.
A riot of names in ''A Strange Death'' sometimes threatens to
overwhelm the reader -- as if Halkin wants to honor every inhabitant.
The poet Stanley Kunitz once heard a voice telling him to ''live in
the layers.'' Halkin's book lives wonderfully in the layers but the
layers, of course -- a millennium or two of who did what to whom and
when -- disturb everybody in his part of the world.
Jonathan Wilson's most recent book is ''An Ambulance Is on the Way:
Stories of Men in Trouble.''
July 9 2005
'A Strange Death': Four Angry Women
By JONATHAN WILSON
Published: July 10, 2005
The dream of lost innocence recovered in a golden future always
haunts the imagination of colonial pioneers. Its premise is myopia:
F. Scott Fitzgerald conjured ''a fresh, green breast of the new
world'' for his Dutch sailors, a story that began without Indians.
Golda Meir infamously insisted that there was no such thing as
Palestinians. Breaking new ground on a distant shore is easier if no
one is there when you arrive. Plan B allows that the natives are
happy to see the newcomers. But soon enough it all turns nasty (whose
fault?) and ends in tears.
A STRANGE DEATH
By Hillel Halkin.
388 pp. PublicAffairs. $26.
First Chapter: 'A Strange Death' (July 10, 2005)
Forum: Book News and Reviews
''A Strange Death,'' Hillel Halkin's beautifully written and wisely
confused account of the local history of the town he lives in,
Zichron Yaakov, takes us back to the earliest days of Jewish
settlement in Ottoman Palestine. His ostensible subjects are members
of the Nili spy ring operated out of Zichron during World War I by
local pioneers on behalf of the British, its ramifications among the
local populace and the betrayals and revenge that floated in its
wake. He is deeply seduced, however, by the lovely ambiguities of the
past as they arise in relationships between Arabs and Jews at a time
when both groups were under Turkish rule. Yes, there is murder just
around the corner (Jews were hacked to pieces in Hebron and Arabs
massacred in Deir Yessin) but in 1916 a man could still be known by
the horse he rode from village to village rather than the tank he
rolled through in.
The spy ring (''Nili'' is a Hebrew acronym that translates as ''the
strength of Israel will not lie''), which functioned less than a year
from the winter of 1916 through the fall of 1917, was the brainchild
of Aaron Aaronsohn and Avshalom Feinberg, two Palestine-born Zionists
convinced that a British victory over the Turks would help pave the
way to a Jewish state. Aaronsohn was a charismatic figure with an
international reputation as a botanist (he discovered triticum
dioccoides, the wild ancestor of cultivated wheat). Feinberg, a local
farmer, was a swashbuckler, a superior shot and impressive horseman.
Aaronsohn brought two of his sisters into the ring: Rivka, who was
engaged to Feinberg, and the beautiful and spirited Sarah. At 24,
Sarah had abandoned her Turkish Jewish husband in Constantinople and
had witnessed, on her journey to Palestine, the Turks' genocidal
assault on the Armenians. The network was augmented by Yosef
Lishansky, a maverick adventurer and a tough guy, and a few more
trusted relatives of the two leaders.
The likelihood of the spies living to comb gray hair wasn't enhanced
by the anxieties of some Jews. After a successful run passing
information on Turkish troop positions to a British freighter waiting
offshore came the inevitable capture, torture and interrogation of an
operative, Naaman Belkind, and soon enough the jig was up. In October
1917, the Turks cordoned off Zichron. Aaronsohn was luckily in Cairo
at the time. Lishansky escaped only to be caught after three weeks,
and hanged by the Turks. Sarah was captured and marched through town.
Four Jewish women abused, excoriated and perhaps assaulted her, but
whether they acted out of animosity or an instinct for
self-preservation has never been clear. After being tortured by
Turkish soldiers Sarah escaped to her own home long enough to
retrieve a hidden gun and shoot herself.
What happened to the four angry women is Halkin's quest.
Particularly, was one of them, Perl Appelbaum, murdered in revenge by
Sarah's friends in Zichron Yaakov? As Halkin searches for an answer
nobody provides one, but his compensation is a stream of great
stories about old times. Zichron began as the fief of Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, who would blow in at odd intervals from France to bowing
and scraping. By 1970, when the Halkins move in, the village has a
cranky charm and wild flowers growing in crevices of half-abandoned
structures that seem like a playground for Joseph Beuys. Halkin, a
product of the new Israel, clearly finds it hard to let go of old
Palestine, in halcyon days when crafty Jews and wily Arabs,
farmer-scholar-horsemen all, took their disputes to the Turkish
governor for arbitration. A revealing moment comes when Halkin takes
his kids to play with Bedouin children who steal his daughters' toys.
Halkin wants to take a liberal-romantic line on this violation, but
his wife sets him straight. The Bedouin mother ''sleeps with the
farmers' sons. . . . Everyone knows except you. You'd know too, if it
had happened 50 years ago.''
Nothing is at it was, and perhaps it never was as Halkin supposed. In
an empty house he finds a discarded, anonymous book, ''Sarah, Flame
of the Nili.'' A little research reveals that the hagiography was
written by Alexander Aaronsohn, Sarah's younger brother, who, Halkin
also finds out, had a penchant for pubescent girls well beyond his
own adolescence. The countryside was thinly populated and the grass
grew high; there are secrets in Zichron. At the end of the book, the
town has health food stores, gift and antique shops and ice cream
parlors. But it has lost its soul.
A riot of names in ''A Strange Death'' sometimes threatens to
overwhelm the reader -- as if Halkin wants to honor every inhabitant.
The poet Stanley Kunitz once heard a voice telling him to ''live in
the layers.'' Halkin's book lives wonderfully in the layers but the
layers, of course -- a millennium or two of who did what to whom and
when -- disturb everybody in his part of the world.
Jonathan Wilson's most recent book is ''An Ambulance Is on the Way:
Stories of Men in Trouble.''