Chapter Seven: The New country

The first view – Mount Carmel; difficult experience at summer camp; a neighborhood in the sands

In June 1967 the Mucznik family boarded the ship that arrived in Lisbon from the US. Family and friends from the Jewish community saw them off in the port. Grandmother Helena couldn’t stop crying. Milu, the dedicated nanny, promised Silvia that when she returned, her hair would have grown long and her chicks would have grown too. Silvia, as well as Susy and Rafi, didn’t know that they were leaving Portugal for good; “I thought that we were going on a long holiday and would then come  back,” Silvia says.

It took a week for the ship, after stopping at Gibraltar, Naples and Athens to arrive from Lisbon to Eretz Israel.

Sonia worried  what would happen if the children ran around the decks, especially Rafi, the youngest, but the children themselves enjoyed the voyage. They made new friends, watched films shown in the cinemas on board, enjoyed the swimming pools and the feeling of adventure. They did not know that  an even larger adventure awaited them at the end of the trip.

On the 17th of June, 1967, their ship, the “Queen Anna Maria” was the first one to arrive at the port of Haifa, after Israel’s “Sixth Day War”. Till here remember the great excitement when we first saw the city and Mount Carmel. I told the children: “you see? this is Haifa, one of the largest cities of Israel”. When we landed, Dani, who had a romantic soul, knelt and kissed the earth.

We were eagerly received  by Isaac and his son Lior (Gila was waiting for us in our new apartment). Nathan’s car, the Plymouth ‘Valiant’ arrived together with us on the ship, and as we rode in it to our new apartment in Tel Aviv, the children watched with curiosity the [new] unfamiliar landscapes. Dani, who thought that Israel was one large desert, was surprised to see how green everything was. Near the lift in the new building, they received a typical Israeli welcome: a German-looking couple told the children that they were making noise. “I was surprised that people considered us as a family with many children. Only afterwards did I understand that in Israel most families had only 2 children, on average.”

A month later, Ana and Avram also made ‘aliya’ with their children, Ruthie, Gil and Ari. They had bought an apartment in the same building as we had, two floors below us; Ana lives in that same apartment until today. A year later, Helena and Salomon Mucznik also arrived in Israel, and settled in Ramat Gan. They bought a shop in the Haroe street and called it “Helena”. Rafi and his cousin Eytan, Gila’s and Isaac’s son sometimes came to help in the shop,  but mainly liked to play in the nearby streets.

The last ones to come on Aliya were David Halpern and his second wife Esther, who bought an apartment in the building near their daughters Sonia and Ana, some years after having lived in Yehuda Gur St, in Tel Aviv.

The the family wanderings ended in Israel.

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Nathan and Sonia had not told the children about their plan to live in Israel, because Nathan feared that if this became known, it might cause problems to his business. They told the children that they would stay in Israel for a short period only. Dani was the only one who knew the truth. “I remember that when I went with Mother in her white ‘Triumph’ along the seaside in Portugal she told me that they had visited Israel, and we would soon move to live there, because that is our homeland”, he recalls . “It didn’t sound like a very good idea to me. What is there for me to do?”    

“The children didn’t know much about Israel”, says Sonia. “We told them that it was the homeland intended for Jews, and we would be able to celebrate the ‘Hagim’ as we liked, and live different lives. Dani, who thought that Eretz Israel was a desert, all of it  sand, was excited about the trip. Susy, who was sociable, adapted herself easily to each situation.  Rafi was too young. Silvia was very attached to Milu, her nanny who had been with us from the day she was born. It was very hard for her  when she understood that we would stay here and to accept the  fact that she would never see her again. I often think that this was one of the causes of her illness, which broke out soon after our arrival in Israel.”

Sonia regrets that she sent her three older children to summer camp at Hadassim, so that she and Nathan would be free to arrange their new apartment. “Nathan wanted to quickly assemble the furniture that came from Portugal; although he had ‘two left hands’, we thought that it would be better for the children to be in summer camp, swimming in the pool, enjoy being with ‘Sabra’ children and learn Hebrew more quickly. Susy and Dani did enjoy the summer camp. The children were divided in groups, by age, and  they were both in the same group. Silvia was alone in another group, and she was most unhappy, she felt lost. The children of her group didn’t speak English at all, and she didn’t understand a word of Hebrew. For her, this was a traumatic experience: she was separated from her family – she had never slept away from home, or with children who didn’t understand what she spoke. Today, I think that Silvia should have stayed with us at home.”

After the summer holiday, life began in the new track. The children went to school at “Nitzanim”, where their parents had registered them during an earlier visit to Israel. Nathan divided his time between his family in Israel and his business trips abroad. Two months with them in Tel Aviv, and two months travelling in turn to the firm’s three offices – in Lisbon, Porto and Madrid; and then on to Belgium, to Hong Kong and to Japan, where he bought and sold precious stones. “Nathan worked very hard, so that we  should miss nothing. He carried heavy luggage, and sometimes, while he was at a meeting, paid someone to take care of it. He never took time off to visit the places he worked in, always hurrying to return home, as soon as he could.

Slowly, and with difficulty, we got used to life in our new homeland. Four children – three teenagers and a young child – had to learn a language they had never heard before, make new friends and cope with the absence of their father, who every two months burst back into their lives, and who tried, not always successfully, to re-connect with his family.

“The main difficulty for the children was to establish social relationships. Susy suffered less than the others, because of her sociable nature. Hebrew also created problems. I tried to speak Hebrew at home with them as much as possible, but Rafi at first asked that I speak Portuguese with him. A neighbor, Shoshana Fink taught our three older children, together with two of Ana’s, to speak Hebrew, and this helped them learn the language more quickly. When they sometimes asked why we had come to Israel, I told them that the main reason was that this was our true homeland, not Portugal. And I told Dani that I didn’t want them to be enlisted into the Portuguese army, which is not ours. If it were necessary to serve in the army, then it should be the army of our country, not of another people.

“This was a very difficult period for all, each of them with their own problems. Dani who liked football very much, played with the neighborhood children on the sands in front of the new buildings. When he grew up, he and his friends bought a jeep, in which they went to places and travelled around. He was a serious student, and I never had to remind him to study.

“For Susy, the move to Israel was an adventure. She loved the freedom here, adapted to the new life here with relative ease and she did not have any crises. Susy studied at Telma Yalin High School for Arts in Givataim. It was difficult for her to get there by bus, but she enjoyed the studies there very much, especially painting and sculpture. But, we strongly refused her request to buy her a motorcycle. Once she returned from a visit to her boyfriend’s family in Migdal Haemek and told me that his mother raised chicken, and that she prepared their own pasta. She asked why I didn’t do the same. Susy became a very adventurous and nonconformist young girl. Once one of my friends came and told me that she had seen Susy in the cinema with a young man of dark skin older than she. I didn’t faint, as she had expected. I knew my daughter well, so I ignored it. I knew that if I would make an issue of it, it would be an issue. I even told Susy to invite him to come for Shabbat dinner at our home. When Susy realized that her rebellion didn’t bother us, she calmed down. Later she told me that I had done the right thing.”

“Rafi who studied at the new ‘Arazim’ school in our neighborhood, was always very sociable and surrounded by friends. Often, he would prefer to be with them instead of studying, and I would have to remind him that he also had to do his homework. Rafi would tell me not to worry, everything would be alright, and he was right. Rafi asked many questions in class. One of his teachers told us that he was always interrupting the lesson with  questions, and that he should ask them only at the end of the lesson. This teacher wasn’t wise enough. I loved Rafi’s curiosity and the fact that he asked so many questions.

“Of all the children, Silvia had the hardest time. She always said that her illness started at this time. Everything was strange for her – the language, the behavior of the children. In Portugal education was very strict. While Susy enjoyed the freedom very much, Silvia on the contrary didn’t know what to do with it. Because she was born in December, she was always the youngest in her class. When she was 14 years old, she began to suffer from eating problems. She became so thin that my Father noticed it and said that she needed to be examined by a doctor, but at that time doctors didn’t know which illness she was suffering from, and thought that it was something that would pass, maybe the reaction to our ‘aliya’, maybe a behavior typical of a teenager. We saw that it went on and on, and we felt helpless. We didn’t know what to do. Only when the illness  was diagnosed as ‘anorexia’, did we understand that it was an illness, and not something that depended on Silvia’s will. This illness brought big changes to her life. From a happy child, she became sad, introspective and lonely. Although she was frequently absent from school, she always had good grades.”

Yehuda Hanassi 36, the building where we lived, was one of only 7 buildings in the new neighborhood of Naveh Avivim.

The children began a second childhood. Ramat Aviv seemed to be an abandoned village. Beyond this new  neighborhood, there were large fields, one of which was ‘Epstein’ used cars dealer lot. Bedouins, we thought, walked around it; in fact, they were Sudanese-Egyptians, who were brought to Israel in the 1830s. On Haifa road, now Derech Namir, prostitutes walked about.

Each of the 4 children has his/her own memories of that time, when they struggled to find their place among the local children. 

Susy: “I felt at home from the first minute. I helped my friends with English, and they helped me to learn Hebrew. Dani’s friends courted me. I admired my Mother, who was alone most of the time, and had to get used to a different life, without maids to help, as in Portugal. We had to help. I felt that in Israel, Mother had less control over me, and I liked this feeling. In contrast to my girlfriends who were ‘key-children’, I don’t remember ever having a key to our home. My Mother was always waiting for us at lunch-time, with a hot meal .”

Dani: “I felt a stranger during the first year. I missed my friends in Portugal: Jika, who was the first to give me a cigarette, and told me how children are born. And José Pacheco, whose father was a captain, and once I sailed with his family to the Açores islands. The children here admired my Seiko watch very much, and all of them wanted to have it. I only began to feel I was one of the ‘hevra’ towards the middle of the 9th grade. The fact that I was a good sportsman helped me fit in. The idea that everyone around us was a Jew ,the prostitutes on the Haifa – Tel Aviv road, as well as the street-sweeper, that moved me very much.”

Rafi, the youngest of the quartet, was hypnotized by the liberty and the adventures. One day he stole 50 lirot and together with some friends, bought a small donkey from Kadosh of ‘Kadosh watermelons’, the booth near Rokach Street, where they serve red watermelons with Bulgarian cheese. Kadosh promised them that they would be able to ride the donkey in two weeks. But the donkey was very young, and  he had been separated from his mother too early, so on the way home he collapsed and the children had to carry him on their shoulders. They took him up in the lift and put him in the security room on our floor. The donkey died before they could ride it. Even the veterinaryת who treated him for free after the children summoned him, wasn’t able to save the poor donkey.

When they were not treating donkeys or goats, they would watch how cows – which belonged to the Beduins – gave birth, sleep in tents they put up in the fields where today ‘Ramat Aviv Gimel’ neighborhood stands. They also played football on the lawn between the buildings. One of the neighbors, Diskin, didn’t like the noise they made; one day he menaced them with his dogs. Abdallah, the guard of one of the buildings under construction came to help the children and defended them from Diskin. In turn, the children punctured the four tires of Diskin’s car. Ironically, Abdallah trained the children well before they joined the army.

Of all the children, it was most difficult for Silvia,. “To live in an apartment in a building with many people, and to go up and down in a lift – that was strange for me, and I also missed our large garden very much. I had a very strange feeling when I looked out of a window and saw how high up we were. What helped me was that we could see the sea. In Portugal I had much more space and we could walk to the sea. Here all seemed more closed in and restricted; I didn’t like the children and the noise or the upheaval they made. When Mother told us that we were going to stay and live here for good, I was in shock. The truth is that I never got adjusted.”

Nathan was the one who paid the highest price of all of us, mainly because of his anxiety that his family should not lack anything. Like his daughter Silvia, he never did adjust to life in Israel. How could he adjust, if every two months, he had to pack and travel again and then stay away far from home for another two months? He complained about the noise in Israel, about the lack of politeness, and that here people didn’t allow a woman to enter a lift first. “In Portugal it was not like this” ,he would state.

“The transitions were very sharp – either he wasn’t at home or he was home and tried hard to be involved in family life once again, “said Sonia. Each time he had to adapt himself again and fill in the gap”. The children, who by now were teenagers, also had a difficult time. The separations were difficult for everyone. Nathan succeeded partially  in building relations with all of them. However, more than once he proposed that I join him in his travels to Shanghai or to Hong Kong, and I always refused .I felt that my children, who were growing up needed me to be near them so it wouldn’t be right to leave them. I did agree to join Nathan in short holidays to Europe, and then I left the children with the maid. So what if there are places I could have visited but didn’t I am not sorry about that .The children’s education was very important to me, and I always chose not to harm it.

“I never regretted my choice to move to Israel. Despite all the problems, I felt that we had finally reached the place that is ours, our country where we aren’t strangers. I felt this most clearly on Shabbat and Holidays. We always held family dinners on Shabbat evenings; afterwards the children would go out and meet their friends. After Nathan’s parents and my Father and his wife came to live in Israel, they joined us on Friday evenings. Gila and Isaac came to visit us on Saturday afternoons.”  

In Israel as before, dogs were part of our family life. The first one was Frisky the poodle. After her, came Jo, the large black dog who  died after swallowing rat poison near the playing garden, near our building. When we moved to the house in Tel Baruch, we had the golden retriever, Gypsy, as well as the blue-eyed, white ‘rag doll’ cat Blue.

And when life became better organized, Sonia felt that now at last she could have some time for herself.