Charm and Intrigue in Zichron Yaakov

Molly Abramowitz | Na'amat Woman Magazine

A day trip to Zichron Yaakov from Jerusalem on a bright and warm winter's day held the promise of a wonderful treat. The less than two-hour drive northwest toward the coastal road and then north along the Mediterranean proved once again how close the diverse regions of Israel truly are. The car climbed to Zichron, cozily situated on the southern slopes of Mount Carmel but near the coast.

Located between Netanya and Haifa, the town was settled in 1882 by a group of idealistic Romanian farmers. I survived a multitude of initial growing pains, and the rewards to the struggling farmers were mostly non-material: magnificent vistas from the mountains including views of the sea and wonderfully clear mountain air. Originally called Zammarin, the floundering your settlement was rescued both financially and personally by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and renamed Zichron Yaakov in memory of his father Yaakov (James). The spirit of Rothschild, or "the Baron" as he affectionately known, is felt throughout the town. Not only did Rothschild introduce and subsidize the local vineyard-growing industry, but he also built the largest winery in the land, installing a wine press in 1886. His personal attachment to Zichron us evident from the impressive Ohel Yaakov (Jacob's Tent) synagogue he built in 1886, also named for his father and still in use.

The largesse of the Baron can be seen throughout this charming, eminently walkable place, which has retained its historic allure while catering to tourists. The wooden windows, tiled roofs, stone posts and old-fashioned street lamps line the reconstructed main street. Zichron today is the home of Carmel and other wineries, where the grapes that grow produce wine sold throughout the country and the world. Its many Cafés, funky shops and magnificent scenery attract foreign tourists and Israeli visitors. Its altitude, proximity to the coast and natural beauty has made it a popular vacation area. With all this said, Zichron has a nether side, which we were made almost graphically aware of on our visit. The historical underbelly of this quixotic city interlaces charm with deception, revenge, betrayal and murder.

The occasion for the visit was a tiyul (trip) sponsored by the Pardes institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where post-college students and mature adults alike are offered a unique combination of intellectual openness, rigorous analysis of Jewish texts and opportunities for spiritual-growth. Arranged for the continuing education students, the trip was organized with seamless efficiency by Deborah Weiner-Solomnt, director for community programming. The group consisted of Anglos in our mature age group, a number of whom have lived in Israel for many years and who take courses at Pardes. We met at Bitan Haugah (Cake Café), where conversation easily flowed among the participants who originally came from England, Tennessee, New Zealand, New York and elsewhere.

Halkin’s own story is an interesting one. A transplanted New Yorker, he moved to Zichron in 1970 and became by the city’s early history. After a time in Jerusalem, he returned to Zichron and heard conflicting reports of the settlement’s beginnings from a veteran of the place named Yanko Epstein, who had established a small museum of memorabilia. Halkin was determined to find the truth. He interviewed ld-timers, found fragments of documentation in the city’s records, and amassed notebooks filled with information. (The book appeared 30 years later, after many of the sources were no longer alive.) Epstein is the chief character in the book. What made Epstein so fascinating to Halkin was that he was both the greatest single source of information about the town’s past – and the least reliable. He didn’t invent his stories from whole cloth. He stole them from other people who had experienced them, reworking and retelling the tales with himself as the hero – and his version were always better because he was a better storyteller.

Before long, Halkin’s enchantment turned to obsession as he sought to discover whether Zichron-based members of the Nili, an underground pro-British spy ring, were turned in by their neighbors, and whether one Perl Appelbaum was murdered for her betrayal, a story told to him by Epstein. Halkin described sneaking into basements and attics, and prowling around abandoned houses. The people of Zichron today have mixed feelings abut what he dug up. But before we got to the story of Nili, we visited a number of places in the city.

The Ohel Yaakov Synagogue (was: Ohel Moshe in the original text y.e.) with its bimah (podium) in the center was the first stop on our tour. The bimah, said Halkin, wasn’t always in the middle of the shul. His investigations into the early life of the settlement show that different factions among the farmers disagreed on whether the bimah should be placed in the center or in the front of the shul. The controversy raged, and even the chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Kook, was consulted and asked to arbitrate. The disagreements continued, until one night, the pro-front faction broke into the synagogue, dismantled the bimah and moved it from the center to the front. Imagine the surprise of the congregants when they came to pray in the morning! A few weeks later, the pro-center faction broke in and moved it back to the center where it has remained. A picturesque structure, Halkin said it probably looked better before the renovation, when the ceiling displayed the signs of the zodiac. It how has a canopy of stars and stained-glass windows but retains the original beautiful wooden infrastructure.

Another large contribution to the town by the Baron was the water tower. Before it was built, the settlers carried water barrels up the hills. Built at the high point in the town ,the tower had water pumped up to it probably by a steam engine from a spring at the bottom of the hill below. The tower provided water to given streets and the adjoining farms until much later when pipes connected the water to individual houses. The tower is built on the town’s main streets, Rehov Hameyasdim, where the synagogue is situated. Called Brichat Binyamin, or Benjamin’s Well, the façade is designed in the style of a synagogue. Although the giant copper water vessels on top are no longer in place, it is worth climbing the stone stairs to enjoy a magnificent panoramic view of the area.

We then walked to the remains of the Lange estate, the closest thing to a Jewish castle ever built in Israel. What we could see through the gate or walking around the grounds bespoke a former opulence such as what is seen in mansions in the British countryside. Halkin told an interesting story: Michael and Nita Lange came to Palestine in 1912 and for two years lived in the castle they had built. “In terms of a private Jewish residence, there is probably nothing like it in the whole country,” Halkin said. Michael Lange was a very influential wealthy British Jew who had dabbled in politics and ran for parliament on the Liberal ticker and lost; his wife came from the wealthy Anglo-Jewish Bentwitch family. They fell in love with Zichron and bought 80 or 90 dunam of land overlooking the ocean and built the house. Living like English lords, they rode horses, created formal gardens, held functions and dances and entertained celebrities visiting Palestine.

In 1914, when war broke out between England and the Turks, the Langes had to move out – they were basically enemy nationals, and they went back to England. The compound was confiscated by the Turks and used as their military headquarters in Zichron during World War I. German pilots were billeted there as well. After the war, the British returned, and so did the Langes. The estate became a hub for dignitaries visiting from England who were hosted grandly. In 1921, Nita Lange died a mysterious death (one of the many such deaths recounted in Halkin’s book). His research showed that a bumbling doctor gave her too large a dose of morphine for stomach pains and she died. Devastated, Michael closed the house, returned to Europe for several years and underwent psychoanalysis in Amsterdam (the first Palestinian Jew on the couch). In 1924, he returned to the estate after alerting the staff who needed to be reassembled. After his arrival, he opened his suitcase, took out a gun and fatally shot himself. The estate is currently under renovation and is to be used by the Open University.

The main streets of the city have been renovated, but some remnants of the farmhouses of the 1890s can still be found. Halkin showed us the streets that is filled with farmhouses now converted into chic shopping arcades. A cross street called Rehov Hamorim housed teachers and the functionaries of the Rothschild estate.

There is still one functioning farm, which was our next stop. Goats and chickens greeted us, and the old farmer, Bentzion Berkovitz, told us stories of his grandparents coming to this farm from Jassi, Romania (where my husband’s father’s family comes from). He spoke of the Baron and how he bought more land in the area to augment the settlers’ land.

We also visited the ruins of an old Hershkowitz Hotel, one of the original buildings in Zichron, built around 1905 to 1910. When Halkin moved here, many of the buildings were in this condition but have now been renovated or torn down. The town was on the verge of destruction at that time, he said, and many of the early settlers were indifferent to saving the historical buildings. “They could have cared less, they had no sentiments toward their own past,” Halkin noted. “As the agricultural character of the place faded, newcomers, including artists of all types, gravitated to this beautiful area. The town was rejuvenated, which included much historic renovation, and became the bustling city it is today. Many of the current inhabitants are commuters, working as professionals and academics in Haifa or Tel Aviv, giving the town a more varied and interesting population.”

The story of the Nili is an important part of Zichron’s history and is part of the experience (and the intrigue mentioned earlier) of visiting this historic place. The Hebrew acronym stands for Netzah Yisrael Lo Y’shaker (The eternal one of Israel will not be false). A small Jewish underground organization in Palestine during World War I led by Aaron Aaronsohn and Avshalom Feinberg, Nili helped the British Army liberate Palestine from the Turks. Aaronsohn would contact the British, and his sister Sarah Aaronsohn and other relayed information to British ships stationed offshore. In 1917, on their way to establish contact with British headquarters in Cairo, Feinberg was killed and Joseph Lishansky was wounded by Bedouins near El Arish. In September 1917, the Turks intercepted a Nili carrier pigeon, which led to an arrest. In early October, the Turks arrested the 27-year-old Sarah Aaronsohn. They tortured her in her home, but she refused to give up secrets. At one point, she was able to get to the toilet, where a revolver was hidden, and she killed herself. Lishansky and Na’aman Belkind, a key Nili member, where executed by the Turks on December 16, 1917. Aaron Aaronsohn had left Palestine and was able to give the British important information about the location of water sources in the Negev. This allowed General Allenby to break out of the impasse in Gaza and march through the desert to surprise the Ottoman garrison in Beersheva. The head of the Yishuv (Jewish community) opposed the Nili operations because the endangered the entire Yishuv. Out with the success of the British, the members of the spy ring were mostly for given Aaronsohn died in an airplane crash that many suspect was arranged by the British. Fienberg's fate remained a mystery until 1967, when Israel captured Gaza and his burial place was found. It was only then that the story of the Nili as protectors of the Yishuv was rediscovered and circulated. 

The strange death of four women who opposed the Nili interested Halkin and became the basis for the plot of his book, A Strange Death. When the Turks arrested the Nili members who were hiding in the town, he said, one of the spies, Nisson Rutman, was jeered and cursed by the four women as he was marched through the town by the Turks. They laughed and hit the other tortured prisoners as well. Halkin became intrigued by the story, wondered who the women were and what their cause was. He had found out about them from a book written by Aaron Aaronsohn's younger brother, Alexander, who noted: "Each one of these women had a strange fate. One went mad, one became a woman of ill repute, one was bedridden for the rest of her life, and the fourth died a strange death a few years after the death of Sarah Aaronsohn." Halkin found out that the woman who died the strange death was Perl Applebaum. Intrigued, he spent much time interviewing, researching records and reconciling different versions of the story.

Many of the incidents in the book revolve around the circumstances surrounding the death of this woman. "The plot hinges around her death, sort of like a coat rack," explained Halkin. The death register in Zichron says that Perl Applebaum died of encephalitis in 1921. Halkin discovered that there was a strong possibility that she was poisoned as an act of vengeance by the Nili for being an informer. She and her husband were accused of informing to the Turks. Halkin's conclusions were that if they were, in truth, informers, they probably didn't do so for political motives. As he points out: "The farmers in the town were scared stiff of the possible wrath of the Turks, who had mercilessly murdered the Armenians. The desperately feared that the Turks would do the same to the Jews if the Nili ring was discovered." The dramatic tension in the book centers on whether Applebaum was murdered. Halkin agrees that finding conflicting testimony, hearing old memories, plus using historic documentation don't always add up tp an airtight conclusion approaching the truth.  It adds up to more of a literary construct or a good mystery story. The version of the story Halkin heard long ago from Yanko Epstein, who he thought was a liar at the time, now seemed more plausible since he now thought himself a liar or storyteller as well. Halkin continued: "It was only in finishing the last draft of A Strange Death that it struck me that I had been doing the same thing. I, too, was reworking stories told to me – to make them better. I was even reworking Epstein's reworkings. He and I were both rivals and accomplices.

The discussion of the Nili took place beside Applebaum's grave. She and the rest of the early people of Zichron including Sarah Aaronsohn are buried in the cemetery. An iron railing surrounds Aaronsohn's grave, separating it from the rest (in keeping with Jewish practice of not burying people who commit suicide together with others in the cemetery).

At this point, our group entered into a lively discussion. Some felt that the Nili saved the Yishuv, they protected it, and that is why it prospered -- and informers like Perl Applebaum were traitors. They felt the four women deserved the punishment they received. Halkin saw more of a gray area. He interviewed a number of old-time residents who remember, or recall their parents telling the stories of the time, if the four women did inform the Turks about Nili activities, Halkin feels this does not make them bad people; they were fearful. Another example of how history speaks to people differently.

After the cemetery, we visited two restored buildings that now house museums. The first was originally called Beit Hapkidut, or the Administration House. It was built in 1882 by Baron de Rothschild’s personal staff, and after multipurpose use through the years, the original façade was restored as well as the impressive main entrance. It now houses The First Aliya Museum, dedicated to the activities of the immigrants who came to Palestine with the First Alia, straining in 1882.

We also visited the Bet Aaronsohn compound, which includes a museum with memorabilia of the Aaronsohn family and Aaron's library. The living quarters are decorated with the original furniture, including the bedroom where Sarah died, and a trapdoor concealing the Nili spies’ hideaway. Both the First Aliya Mueurn and Bet Aaronsohn have convenient hours and guided tours.

After lunch at the Café, we wandered through the shops. Abundant toy shops displayed roves of creative puzzles, games and wooden toys -- presents galore for grandchildren and others. Down an alley (most of the interesting shops are off the main street on winding alleys), we came the papermaker, Tut Neyar, that we had been told not to miss (www.tutneyar.co.il). In the courtyard, sheets of mulberry paper made that day by children, their parents and willing customers were drying on clotheslines. We purchased some translucent lampshades -- the light makes its delicate designs almost shimmer. The paper- maker and his wife were so patient explaining the papermaking and design process. A haven for artists (an artist colony is nearby), Zichron shops feature pottery, art, jewelry, boot making, clothing as well as countless cafés.

The participants headed home bus, but before we continued on our tiyul in the north, we savored a glass of wine the Carmel Winery. As the sun set over the mountains, my husband and I mused about the intrigue in Zichron. Was Halkin almost "possessed" by the subject of ‘strange deaths”? How did a group of (admittedly cultured) Romanian farmers get so incensed at the ruling powers that they formed such an insidious a spy ring that affected the Yishuv so strongly and resulted in many deaths? Did their actions truly save the Yishuv or did it cause much harm?

The view was bucolic, the wine heady, both of which helped frame the stories we heard that day with much excitement and wonder.