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Family Affair / Batya Feder By Avner Avrahami and Reli avrahami Tags: israel news The cast: Batya Feder (94) and Judith Soza (35). Judith: From Bangalore, India. Arrived three months ago and will work in Israel for two years. She has a husband and two daughters (Jeswita, 13, and Jilita, 9), whom she misses. She earns a total of about NIS 5,000 a month and gets NIS 100 pocket money each week. She is extremely shy. The home: Three-story apartment building, center of town, decorative reddish cinderblocks on the facade, built at the end of the 1950s by, according to Batya, the contractor Guttman, who went bankrupt ("He was a Herut man who was exiled to Eritrea" by the British). She has lived here since 1958. Today all the old-timers are gone, apart from her friend Yaffa Marmelstein. Advertisement Second floor: We enter a small hall that opens into a bigger one (with sofa and table). On the right is a huge living room (at least 10 square meters), that opens out to a balcony (of the same length). On the left is a bedroom (containing two separate wood beds). Further along is a guest room (formerly a study), and next to it a Formica-covered kitchen (narrow) and a back balcony with a washing machine, aluminum ladder and a "perpetual sukkah." We go to the living room. The living room: Capacious, light wallpaper, no curtains. On one side, under a chandelier, is a large table next to a bureau that holds religious texts and chinaware. Across the way, on a Carmel carpet, stand a rounded floral sofa, a matching armchair and Judith's bed. The other room (the former study) contains a brown velvet sofa, a large table and an antique bureau with a Gemara and a Pentateuch, and many photographs of grandchildren and rabbis. Rabbis: Batya's late husband, Reb Levy Yitzhak "Leibe" Feder (of blessed memory), who died during Sukkot two years ago, was a Lublin Hasid ("But in the family there are also Ger, Boyan, Chabad, Vizhnitz and Amshinov Hasidim"). Living room (cont.): In the corner is a television ("for video only") on which Batya watches "kosher movies"; on the wall hangs a calendar on which the birthdays of 95 members of her family ("Now there are already more than 100") are marked. Family members: Batya has three children: Yehezkel (73), Tamar (66) and Nehama (61), 15 grandchildren and several dozen great- and great-great-grandchildren. Four years ago, a celebration marking 70 years of her marriage was attended by 50 guests (without children). They came from Jerusalem, Ashdod, Elad, Betar and Bnei Brak. Bio: Born 1914 or 1915 ("I have two birth certificates because I was born during the war and there was no time to register me") in Bilgoraj ("near Zamosc") in southeastern Poland, home at the time to 5,000 Jews, many of them Belz, Sanz and Ger Hasidim, near where Isaac Bashevis Singer was born ("I knew him; he was named Bashevis after his mother, Batsheva"). Bio (cont.): She had a brother and a sister; five other siblings died in childhood ("Everyone knew that anyone with pneumonia would die; there were no antibiotics"). To provide for the family, her father went every week to Lemberg (Lvov, now Lviv) to sell butter and wax. Later he started a printing press, and died from it (Batya: "Because of the lead"). Until the age of 14, she attended a mixed school with goyim - and about that she has a story. The story: When she was nine, after the Pesach seder she walked by herself in the dark to the home of the rabbi and asked to speak to him. The rabbi's wife granted her request and Batya told the rabbi that she was afraid to go to school on the intermediate days of Pesach, because a goya (gentile girl) might put leavened food into her schoolbag. The rabbi heard her out and instructed the children to stay home for the entire Pesach week. And then: She attended Beis Yaakov (a religious school for girls) until the age of 18. She had many potential shidduchim (matchmaking offers), she says, but rebuffed them all because she wanted to go to the Land of Israel. She finally married Levy Yitzhak because he had a British-issued certificate enabling him to enter Palestine. The wedding took place in 1934 and a year later they arrived in the Holy Land; she was 19 and pregnant. They lived in Tel Aviv. Immigration: The couple traveled by ship to Jaffa ("One Arab threw me into the water and another one took me ashore"). Her mother and brother perished in the Holocaust ("probably in Berlin, who knows"). Tel Aviv: She lived in the (now gentrifying) Florentin neighborhood in the south of the city, with three families sharing a common kitchen and washroom. Leibe worked in construction as a day laborer; Batya, pregnancy notwithstanding, worked in a sardine factory on Salameh Street. For 11 years they hid the fact that they were ultra-Orthodox. In 1946 they moved to Ramat Gan, where they built a small house (2 1/2 rooms), which was all theirs. Twelve years later they moved to Bnei Brak, by then a largely ultra-Orthodox city. Bnei Brak: The present home was bought for 10,000 Israel pounds. Batya sold towels and bedding from home and afterward did weaving on a loom. Her husband used their Sussita station wagon to sell Batya's work to factories and also drove workers to a weaving workshop in Ra'anana, where he was foreman. At this stage he decided to become self-employed and together with Batya, opened a plant for weaving and thread in Petah Tikva. The Holocaust: "In 1947 we did not yet know about it," Batya says. "I named my little daughter Nehama and not Hanna, for my mother. I thought that any minute the door would open and she would enter. We couldn't believe what happened." Faith: "The Holocaust had no effect on it. Possibly a reflection about justice crossed my mind - why people who were just died. How could anyone kill Mother?" The rebbe: Rabbi Mordechai Rokach, the brother of the Belz Rebbe, fled to Palestine. His flock remained and perished (including his wife and two daughters). Batya is unshaken in her belief: "A soldier, too, will not ask: Why am I alive and my friend was killed?" There was a Hasid who took his own life to spare that of the rabbi, she says. Israel: She is very pleased with life here, but not with the prime minister. "It is a pity we do not have [David] Ben-Gurion, or Shertok [Moshe Sharett], or [Levi] Eshkol, even [Yitzhak] Rabin. Why did they kill Rabin? He was a good man, and now they are thieves, every one of them." Elections: Always Aguda (the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party) - "We voted what the rebbe told us." Hebrew: "It's a big mistake that [ultra-Orthodox] people speak Yiddish." She spoke only Hebrew with her children. Daily routine: She gets up at 6 A.M. ("It takes a long time for me to fall asleep"), washes her hands, makes a cup of coffee (Elite, one sweetener), recites the morning prayers (an hour and a half), and at 9, twice a week, goes to a club at 16 Levine Street, to listen to a talk (on the weekly Torah portion) and to exercise ("with hands and ropes and balls and boards"). On non-club days, she reads. Reads: Bakehila (a local Bnei Brak paper) that has reports about politics; pamphlets from the synagogue (with commentary on the weekly Torah portion), brought by her daughter Tamar; and books. Recently she read a book about a young Jew in the Russian army, 448 pages ("I can finish that in a week"). Lunch: Between 12 and 12:30 P.M. ("I prepare it"). Until two months ago she had a caregiver (a Filipina), who was a good cook and straightened up the house. Judith is new. She doesn't know how to cook Batya's food ("She is afraid to fry"). Batya's food: "I like to fry eggplant." Batya knows how to make soup, kugel, tsimmes, gefilte fish, kreplach, cholent and a compote of apples and plums. Shopping: One of her sons-in-law buys what she needs at the Ger shopping mart. Batya: "Judith can already buy in the grocery store." Clothes: "I'll tell you the truth, I haven't bought any for 15 years." Wigs: "Only at the Hape'ah store on Rabbi Akiva Street. That's the place." Afternoon: Batya rests, gets up at 2:30 P.M., has a cup of tea (Wissotzky brand) and watches a video ("I saw 'Doctor Zhivago,' a long movie, very good"). She can work the machine herself ("Yesterday a granddaughter came to watch and I put it on for her"). For supper she has a salad and an egg ("which Judith prepares"). At 7 P.M. she goes to the balcony ("to sit and look down at the street") and at 10 goes to bed, after prayers. It takes her until midnight to fall asleep. Dream: "Leibe Yitzhak, my husband. I see him every night. I talk to him. I quarrel with him. He doesn't agree with everything I say." Death: She is not afraid. She doesn't know whether her lot will be heaven or hell, but doubts that she will one day meet her Leibe ("He was a just man and I did not always do what was right, and maybe because of that we will not meet"). Regrets: She is sorry she did not go to see Auschwitz and Majdanek, "and maybe I should have pampered the children more." Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): 1 ("I am not content; when Leibe was alive I was a 10"). Bnei Brak - A city of 150,000, located between Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva. It was founded 1924, acquired city status 1949 and became Haredi beginning in 1950, when the Hasidic rebbes and their followers moved there from Tel Aviv. Bookmark to del.icio.us   A ringing endorsement Jimmy Carter says Obama will waste no time in pursuing Middle East peace. Peres' olive branch Israel's president says the Arab peace plan is an opening for progress.   1.   family affair 09:04  |  nir osherov 09/11/08   2.   Family affair 12:46  |  patricia 11/11/08

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