On Friday afternoon, January 19, 1940, Henya Pekelman climbed the stairs of the Dizengoff Circle movie theater to the balcony on the third floor. It was a lovely white building, which now houses the Cinema Hotel and for years was known as the Esther Cinema. It was famous for the balconies where the audience went during intermission in order to look out at Dizengoff Circle and at the clientele of the prestigious Art Cafe. Pekelman worked as an usher from the day the theater opened, about a year earlier, when "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was screened there.

On that same Friday she did not go out to the balcony to take a break from work, but threw herself off of it and died immediately. Pekelman was 37 years old at the time, married and the mother of a 12-year-old daughter. Haaretz reported that the reason for the suicide was "her bad financial and family situation."

Five years before her death, Pekelman published, with her own money, a diary entitled "Hayei poelet ba'aretz" ("The Life of a Worker in Her Homeland"), in which she not only described her difficulties as a pioneer-laborer, but also her personal story, which is horrifying and touching, and included rape, an unwanted pregnancy, and the death of her one-month-old baby under suspicious circumstances that led to her arrest. On the cardboard binding of the book it says that it costs 125 mils and was printed at Lakol Printers in Tel Aviv. There was no demand for the book, according to Pekelman's granddaughter, Ein-Ya Tamir, and her grandmother was left with debts.

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Not only did the male establishment of the time ignore the critical message of this book: The women's organizations in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community), including those of female workers to which Pekelman belonged, ignored it. This disregard is particularly blatant in light of the fact that Ada Maimon (Fischman) - who was known for her activity on behalf of women's rights, and served in the First and Second Knesset as a member of Mapai (the forerunner of Labor) - came from the same hometown as Pekelman and the two were acquaintances from there. Pekelman even writes that when she arrived in Palestine she was helped by Fischman, who advised her to learn to be a floor tiler.

Pekelman's book, which was silenced and forgotten, was published 72 years ago. Beneath the title in the original volume, it said that this was a "first book," but Tamir - who is named after her grandmother - says that nothing remains of Pekelman's subsequent literary legacy.

Her photographs were lost as well; only the three published in her book in 1935 still exist. Now the book is being reprinted as part of the Masa Kritit (Critical Essays) series edited by Yigal Schwartz (published by the Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir company, the Kesharim Institute and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev). "The Life of a Female Worker in Palestine: An Autobiography" appears exactly as in the original, with no changes in spelling or punctuation, and accompanied by illuminating essays.

"The fact that Pekelman's book and its angry contents were ignored by the Women Workers Council, by its newspaper Dvar Hapoelet and by the women's leadership of Mapai reflected the dilemma of the elite of working women in the Labor movement during that period, which the book often hints at," write Dr. David de Vries and Talia Pfefferman, both from the department of labor relations at Tel Aviv University. "On the one hand, a desire to represent gender interests, to protect working women, to help them in their struggle against the job market, the party and the Histadrut labor federation bureaucracy. On the other hand, a clear order of priorities, led by nationalism and Zionism, to which any social action was subordinate. In such a system, where Zionism and politics preceded representation, equal opportunity and social justice, the woman worker was neglected and disappeared."

'Aggressive opinions'

Henya Malka Pekelman had a happy childhood in the Bessarabian town of Marculesti. She studied in a heder (religious preschool) and afterward at a four-year school, but she was a weak pupil and therefore it took her six years to finish. Her father, a tobacco farmer, spoiled her and gave her freedom; she describes herself as a kind of tomboy who used to fall and hurt herself. The relations between her parents were poor, she writes frankly, and there were always quarrels, slanderous exchanges and ugly gossip. Her father was always angry, and her mother was a victim of her husband and his brothers.

From an early age Pekelman worked alongside her father in the fields, but after his death her brother Zvi took control of the family property and dispossessed her and her mother. After the two traveled to Palestine he severed contact with them (he arrived in Palestine many years later, says Ein-Ya Tamir, and established a warm connection with her mother Tzippora, Pekelman's daughter, and with the grandchildren).

In 1922, on her 19th birthday, Pekelman arrived here with her mother. In her book she writes about her efforts to find her place in the country as a simple laborer. She describes herself as a determined and tenacious young woman, not stubborn as people said of her. "I was only aggressive in my opinions." She dug foundations for a building in Tel Aviv's Chelnov neighborhood, and after studying the flooring trade, she discovered - as did another three women who worked with her - that they were usually paid a lower salary than the male floorers.

After a day of hard work, she found the strength to take evening classes at Gymnasia Herzliya. There she met a doctor, who in the book is called H.V. He fell in love with her, but she rejected him because he did not succeed in working as a laborer and went back to his profession; in her eyes this was not a worthy life in the Zionist collective that was emerging. She participated in women workers' meetings, and on Shabbat used to sit on Rothschild Boulevard and read.

Pekelman was aware of the need to preserve her dignity. At parties, she wrote, she avoided drinking wine so she would not be stigmatized as a frivolous woman who drank. In Petah Tikva she had a disappointing meeting with Zvi Nissanov, one of the "heroes" of the Galilee, whose brother Yehezkel was one of the founders of the Hashomer Jewish self-defense organization and was murdered by Arabs in 1911. Nissanov, who became famous after avenging his brother's death, invited her for a hike, but instead of telling her about his heroism, he confessed that like any other man, he needed a woman - and she was shocked.

'Fresher than anyone'

And then she fell in love at first sight with a simple laborer, who in the book is called N. The love was platonic and therein lay its strength, and Pekelman wandered all over the country following her beloved. She worked in construction in the Tel Nordau neighborhood in Tel Aviv, and even got into an argument with an official from the Solel Boneh construction company, sued him in the Histadrut and lost. She worked in Rishon Letzion and afterward moved with N. to Jerusalem, where she did the tiling on the roof of a large building on Mt. Scopus ("At the time they said that they were thinking of building a university on the site," she wrote), as well as in the homes of the "new" neighborhoods of Romema and Talpiot.

Her war over equal opportunity in employment reached a peak with her return to Tel Aviv. While looking for work at construction sites, she recognized workers at one of them, whom she knew. When they asked why she wasn't working, Pekelman said defiantly that they had taken all the jobs, "and for the girls only housekeeping jobs are left, and I haven't become accustomed to that work as yet." The next day, when she reported for work, they mocked her and said she would probably last only until noon, but she chose to work in the most difficult place, in the middle of the ladder.

"I had to receive a bucket full of cement and hand it up. Before I had managed to hand over the first, they were already handing you the second, and from above they would immediately hand you the empty bucket. It's impossible to rest for a moment in this work. The one who filled the buckets tried to fill them to the brim for me. I worked so quickly that from below they didn't have time to give me the buckets, and from above they didn't have time to take them from me."

Her strength lay in her ambition and desire for complete equality with the men. At the end of a workday she would rush home to eat and sleep, whereas her colleagues were forced to stand on line for hours to eat in the workers' kitchen. Thus, she said, "I was always fresher than anyone."

When the work in Tel Aviv was finished Pekelman moved to Petah Tikva, which was full of laborers; the residents of the moshava (farming community) were friendly and there was a joyful atmosphere. A brother and sister from her hometown lived in the moshava, and Pekelman and her mother went to live in their apartment. Another tenant in the apartment was Yeruham Mirkin, who came from a wealthy family in Russia. Mirkin, wrote Pekelman, gave up studies at the university in favor of the Zionist ideal. For a while he lived on Kibbutz Ein Harod until he fell ill and then moved to Tel Aviv; afterward he worked in the first grape harvest in Rishon Letzion. In Petah Tikva he had relatives who invested a sum of money so he could plant 10 dunams (2.5 acres) of tobacco and supervise the work.

Mirkin fell in love with Pekelman, but she preferred N. When it was discovered that she had experience from home in growing tobacco, Mirkin convinced her to become his partner. She soon understood that her partner was harassing her because she had not been captivated by his charms. Mirkin, who also managed the business accounts, stopped devoting himself to his work, went to see every opera and didn't miss a single ball in Tel Aviv, paying for his entertainment with money from the business, as she wrote: "He took all the money from the storekeeper at the expense of the tobacco."

The partnership ended in court. Mirkin's relatives sued him, and Pekelman was the main witness. He was embarrassed to enter the courtroom because everyone was against him, both the workers and the farmers, and he was found guilty. "At the time I still was not familiar with the feeling of revenge," wrote Pekelman. "I couldn't see a person suffering from hunger."

'Tired of life'

In 1924 Pekelman went to Hadera where she participated in a meeting of women workers who demanded equal opportunity with the men, including work in draining swamps, "not in order to show that they were strong, but in order to have bread to eat ... We proved with signs and wonders what kind of work we had done in Tel Aviv: We built houses by ourselves, we poured cement roofs by ourselves, and not a single man helped us."

In Hadera she would meet her beloved N., "who sat me on his lap and embraced me tightly. The very pleasant feeling I had then has remained sacred to me to this day. I will never feel this sweetness again in my life," wrote Pekelman in 1935, when she was already married to another man and the mother of a daughter.

The chapter ended in heartbreak. Pekelman returned to Petah Tikva, where she worked in the orchards, but N. did not answer her letters. "I was tired of life. I didn't find satisfaction in anything," she wrote. As far as love is concerned, she concluded regretfully, "We women do not have the same strength as men. For the most part it is more pleasant for us when we are loved, and we cannot overcome the suffering of love as men do, for the most part."

The worst year of her life, 1925, began with her decision to sever the connection with N. She wrote him a heartfelt letter and went to send it, but she fainted next to the mailbox. Two men helped her get up and she fled in embarrassment. Her friend the doctor informed her that he was leaving the country, but promised to stay if she would marry him. She turned him down, but went to the farewell party he gave in Tel Aviv: "I wore a dress made from Arab fabric, which my mother had embroidered, and sandals without stockings." The women at the party wore elegant silk dresses and makeup, but she was the one who started dancing a fiery hora and became the center of attention at the party.

After the ball she remained in Tel Aviv and bumped into Mirkin. "He was happy to see me, although I regarded him with utter coldness." Mirkin told her he had received pictures of his family and suggested that she come to him to see them. She refused, he continued to plead, and in the end she agreed and they went to his cousin's room on Nahalat Binyamin Street.

"We came to the room when it was totally dark outside. Yeruham Mirkin immediately locked the door. Why are you locking the door? I asked. The landlady doesn't allow strangers to enter the room, he replied. I immediately sensed the lie in his words and wanted to leave the room, but Yeruham held me tight. We started to fight until I received a blow to my head and fell on the floor."

Pekelman left two rows of dashes in the book, instead of describing the rape that followed, which she claimed she does not remember at all. "I only remember myself walking along the beach like a madwoman." She remained in the city even afterward, because "I wanted to forget everything while in Tel Aviv." On the eve of Yom Kippur she was sitting with a male acquaintance eating the final meal before the fast, when Mirkin entered. "He stood quietly and with a smile on his lips, as though nothing had happened between us." She didn't have the strength to listen to him talk, nor did she want to confront him, so her hosts would discover her secret. She asked Mirkin to go outside with her. "Outside I left him and fled."

She returned to Petah Tikva depressed, and no longer went anywhere except to work and to meetings. She didn't tell anyone about the rape, certainly not N., since if she had done so, "it was clear as day that he would suspect me." After a while she went back to work at flooring in Tel Aviv. Subsequently she began to feel ill and went to the Kupat Holim clinic, where the doctor informed her that she was pregnant.

The first thought that entered her mind was to commit suicide, she wrote: "But a kind of hidden force impelled me suddenly, as though grabbing me by the hair and calling to me: In your sufferings shall you live! My will to live became strong." Two opposing voices spoke in her head. One said that she had to die because "you desecrated your honor, the honor of women," and the second consoled her that she had done nothing wrong, "and who knows whether your child will not be of more use than a child born according to Jewish law?"

To Pekelman's surprise, she discovered that she was not alone: Her mother remained at her side and encouraged her to deal with the pregnancy. "The strong desire for revenge began to fill the chambers of my heart," she wrote. "Revenge against all those who abuse the honor of women ... and not only against Yeruham Mirkin, not a private revenge common among girls in my situation: The revenge had to be directed at all those who convict them without penetrating deeply into the matter."

Her revenge, she decided, would be expressed by the fact that she would not be embarrassed by the baby growing in her belly. She traveled to Zichron Yaakov to meet friends, and from there continued to Haifa. In a workers' kitchen there she met Mirkin. "He was as happy to see me as though nothing had happened between us." He told her that he was working at Rutenberg's electricity plant. She informed him that she was pregnant and he paled, and said that it was not from him, that it must be from her lover N.

'Virgin birth'

The months of her pregnancy passed in a constant search for work. Pekelman began in Tiberias, went on to Sejera and them to Mes'ha, where she worked at tying bundles of tobacco and afterward in a workers' kitchen, and was then fired. One day she sat down to rest and noticed a young man walking around near the well. She was later shocked to hear that the man was watching over her so that she wouldn't try to commit suicide.

Alone, hungry and penniless she tried to find work in Tzemah and afterward on Kibbutz Deganya Bet, but the jobs offered her were too difficult for a pregnant woman. She returned to Tiberias, where she arranged her membership in Kupat Holim and decided to stay in proximity to the hospital in Safed.

In Rosh Pina at the time, they paid a woman worker a pittance of eight grush a day for tying tobacco; a man was paid 15. At the Tiberias Hotel they demanded 10 grush for sleeping. She ended up in the home of a worker and was well received by his wife, but in the evening he threw her out and promised to collect donations for her. She didn't want donations, only a place to sleep and a job. She finally found that in Rosh Pina, with Shimon Blum, whose father was one of the founders of the moshava.

She called herself Malka Perlman and for two months she worked in Rosh Pina. The day Lord Balfour visited the moshava was the only day when she forgot her troubles. On May 3 her waters broke. "I was seized by such severe pains that I fell to the ground that was wet with dew. The Jews that passed me on their way to pray in the synagogue, looked at me with pity."

A few hours later she gave birth to her daughter in the hospital. The next day, she wrote, the doctor and the head nurse visited her and told her that it had been a "virgin birth." "At first I didn't understand what they were saying, but several days later I learned the truth from the head nurse, who asked me how I had lived with my husband if I remained a virgin. Then I understood why during the birth they kept saying that it was 'a wonder.'"

Pekelman tells the story of a 46-year-old woman from Safed, the mother of 16 daughters, who was hospitalized after a miscarriage. The doctor warned the woman and threatened her that he would not accept her for treatment if she became pregnant again. The woman defended herself and said that her husband was to blame for everything. Pekelman was shocked. "Then I understood for the first time that it is not the man who is to blame for the woman's suffering, but the woman herself. Because she is not independent, and does not live for herself, but for the man, and she always tries only to find favor in his eyes. Every woman has to aspire to be pure and honest and healthy for herself - and not in order to serve as a source of pleasure for others."

Avoiding humiliation

Pekelman called her daughter Tikva (Hope), and began to feel that she was already enjoying her revenge: The child "looked exactly like Yeruham Mirkin. From now on he would not be able to disappear and to say that the child wasn't his." She found Mirkin at his uncle's shop in Haifa, and informed him of the birth, but he fled. This time she mustered up her courage and went to complain to the police about the rape, but the officer wondered why she had come only now, and explained that since she had no witnesses, it would be hard to prove it had in fact been rape. He advised her to go to the rabbinate to demand alimony, but she chose to avoid the humiliation and decided that she was strong enough to support both of them.

The baby died at the age of a month under strange circumstances. Pekelman writes that she had too much milk and at the doctor's advice she nursed the infant of a woman who had none. She left Tikva in a special room at the women's Histadrut and went to nurse, and when she returned about half an hour later "I found the child naked, without diapers, crying terribly." Pekelman was very frightened, especially since before leaving she had left the baby satisfied, after a bath, "and she would always sleep soundly, and now within half an hour, she had changed so much."

The doctor wrote a prescription for the child, but the drugstore was closed and the child's condition worsened. Pekelman wrote that she did not find a doctor that evening and only in the morning was the child hospitalized, and in the afternoon she died. Dr. Farber told her that the child had been poisoned. She was sent to arrange the papers at the health department, from where she was sent back to the hospital and was then arrested. During her investigation she told the police about the rape, but could not present any proof, "only a suspicion I have about Yeruham Mirkin, because the child is his and she looked exactly like him."

The investigation continued the next day, and the police conducted a search of the room where the baby had been. They told Pekelman that she was suspected of murdering the child, and that she had to find someone from the Histadrut to vouch for her. She waited and waited and nobody came. "While I was sitting there various people came to the police for all kinds of reasons, and they were all only men." When they asked why she was at the station, the clerk explained to them, and "the men began to smile at me."

But during those moments Pekelman decided to fight back, thinking to herself: "The blood of your child will not rest until you take revenge, the revenge of your young life that you lost." She wrote the word "revenge" 12 times. She was transferred to prison and placed in a room that only had a mat, where three women were already being held: two Arabs and a Jewish woman who had participated in a fistfig ht.

Pekelman did not remain in prison for long. A representative of the Histadrut finally came and released her on bail. But freedom, she wrote, was worse than hell. Everyone stared at her. She did not have a single loyal friend and everyone suspected that she had willingly submitted to Mirkin and poisoned her daughter. Nobody gave her the benefit of the doubt. "And from that day when I was released my emotional tragedy began," she wrote, in ending the book.

'A finger in the socket'

A few years after the affair of the rape and the death of the infant, Henya Pekelman married Moshe Baal Taxa, a native of Poland who had come to Palestine from Argentina with a little money, but had lost it in an unsuccessful business. In 1928 their daughter Tzippora was born. After Pekelman's suicide Gertrude Kraus, one of the pioneers of Israeli dance, wanted to adopt the orphan, but Tzippora, who was 12 at the time, wanted to go to a kibbutz. "She was embarrassed that she didn't have any change of clothes and underwear, and preferred to go to Kibbutz Yagur," says her daughter, Ein-Ya.

In 1945 Shalom B., who was born on Yagur, married Tzippora and their daughter Ein-Ya was born. About two years later Tzippora decided to get a divorce, because her husband was often away from home due to his involvement in the ha'apala (illegal immigration). When Ein-Ya was about three, her mother married David Tamir of Kibbutz Manara, and the family went to live in Ramat Gan, in a small house with a garden. In 1950 their son Ilan was born; today he works in computers.

"She was clever and fascinating, but poor, bitter and closed," says Ein-Ya Tamir of her mother. "She was strict with me, but not with my brother. At the age of eight I met Shalom B. At the age of 10 it was hard for me at home, and I wanted to go to a kibbutz. My mother said I had to wait until I was 14, and that I still didn't know what a hard life was - and she was right."

Tamir, who is today 61 and a mother of three, is sorry that she doesn't know much about her grandmother, because her life was a secret in a family with many secrets. At the age of 12 she found the book "The Life of a Worker in Her Homeland" in her mother's closet. She wanted to read it, but her mother forbade it, and only said that the book had been written by her mother, who committed suicide. The child could not resist temptation and read the book secretly. "I felt that I was putting my finger into the electric socket," says Tamir. "The book shocked me so much that I couldn't read it for 50 years."

Tzippora, says Tamir, rarely spoke about her mother, whose relations with her father, Moshe Baal Taxa, were complicated: "My mother fought with him, because she didn't allow him to kiss me and my brother because of his tuberculosis. The relations between them were severed and he died alone in 1964 in his hut in the Mahlul neighborhood, where he rented a room and worked a little as a real estate agent." A lyrical text written by Baal Taxa, which was published in the book's first editition, will also be included in the book that is being published this week. The rest of his writings were destroyed by his brother.

When Ein-Ya was 16 and due to receive an ID card, she was told that Shalom B. was her biological father and not David Tamir. "That was the crisis of my life," she recalls. "On one day they took away my entire family." Shalom B., now 84, lives in Kiryat Yam and refuses to see his daughter Ein-Ya. He also remarried and has three children and grandchildren, and as far as he is concerned, what is past is past.

"My mother was a truthful person and she learned that from her mother - not to give a damn," says Tamir. "When someone hurt me or my brother Eitan she would grit her teeth and defend us. Over the years she became bitter and aggressive, and considered divorcing her husband David. Later she changed her mind, but he had already become distant. One day she took sedatives and went to sleep. David Tamir found her dead. Since she didn't leave a letter, we know that it was not suicide. Like her mother Henya, my mother was a woman with pride, who didn't ask anyone for help. She always said that she had to handle things by herself."

Yeruham Mirkin left Palestine after the affair of the rape and the death of his daughter Tikva. He went to France, studied mathematics, and worked there for a firm that published art books owned by a Catholic woman, said his wife Hadassah last week. She married him in 1953 and knew nothing about the Pekelman affair or about the book. Hadassah Mirkin, 82, grew up in Tel Aviv and worked for the Kibbutz Hameuchad publishers deciphering illegible manuscripts. Among other things she deciphered the notebooks of poet Natan Alterman after his death, and the manuscript of "Days of Ziglag," which even the author S. Yizhar himself had trouble deciphering.

She says that Mirkin returned to Palestine from France already in the 1930s and worked as a bank clerk and also taught mathematics. He married and had a daughter, Talila, who got married and lived in France, and died about 16 years ago. After the death of his first wife, he married Hadassah, but they had no children.

The story described in Henya Pekelman's book shocked Hadassah Mirkin. That is not the Yeruham she knew, she says. "Nobody can uproot a person's character; Yeruham could not have been so different from the man I knew, who was very well loved, who was gentle and not a gossip or a plotter or a chatterbox. He loved to read and was a chess player. I connected with him because of his noble character and his honesty. I am hearing a story that does not suit the man with whom I lived for so many years." W