A 1948 Jerusalem Seder

David and Frieda Macarov recall spending Passover amid the birth of the Jewish state.

By DAVID GEFFEN
David and Frieda Macarov with their first child, born in 1949. (photo credit: Courtesy)
David and Frieda Macarov with their first child, born in 1949.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
‘By the end of March 1948, here in Jerusalem, the situation was very bad,” Prof. David Macarov told a rapt audience last week at a session of the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center’s Monday night forum.
His presentation focused on the Seder in Jerusalem in April 1948, which he and his wife, Frieda, attended at the home of their friends Bea and Jerry Renov in the city’s Hamekasher neighborhood – today an Egged bus parking lot next to the Jerusalem International Convention Center.
“Convoys from the coast were not getting through, despite determined fighting and heavy losses. Frieda and I had no meat since December,” he recalled. “The rations called for one egg per week and a quarter of a loaf of bread. Sugar, rice, potatoes, onions and margarine were among the items severely rationed. The water pipes to Jerusalem were cut. We lived on a jerrycan of cistern water a week.”
The Macarovs were married in New York in December 1946 and lived in a small apartment in Manhattan. A registered nurse, Frieda began a job at a local municipal health clinic. David continued his work for Mossad Aliya Bet, a clandestine Zionist operation committed to purchasing ships, boats, tugs and launches to transport DPs as ma’apilim, or illegal immigrants, to Palestine. The best-known ship – for which he signed the check – was the President Warfield, which became the famous Exodus 1947.
Frieda, also present at the Monday night forum, recalled a conversation from back in 1947.
“As David arrived home one day in February, I told him a letter had arrived from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He quickly opened it and reported with delight [that] he had been accepted as a student and could use his GI-bill entitlement as a World War II veteran to pay his tuition,” she recounted. “Looking at him, I said, ‘American money to pay for a Jew’s schooling in Jerusalem – a good use of our tax funds.’” Arriving by ship in May 1947, the Macarovs decided to spend a little time on Kibbutz Ginegar. By September, they were living in Jerusalem on what was then Hama’alot Street – now Narkis Street. David enrolled at the university’s Mount Scopus campus, and Frieda started work at a health clinic in downtown Jerusalem.
“In early November, all 18 American Jewish war vets at the university were invited to a private meeting,” he remembered. “A Hagana operative, born in the US – but in Jerusalem since he was two – told us in broken English that we did not have to volunteer, but the Hagana needed our military talents, so it was hoped we would sign on even though it was illegal.”
He had a lot of Hagana adventures, some more dangerous than others.
Frieda was not officially a member, but she performed secret missions for the group as well. They lived through the vote on November 29, 1947, when the UN Partition Plan passed, as well as through the bombings of The Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Agency building before Israel became a state in 1948.
“As April dawned, my friend Bea Renov, by then a mother, spoke to me about the forthcoming holiday,” Frieda said.
Bea, who lives near Tel Aviv, grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and was a Zionism enthusiast through the ’30s and ’40s – in the Young Judaea youth group and at the religious school in the city’s Shearith Israel Synagogue. She spoke Yiddish with her parents, and during World War II, as president of Young Judaea’s southern chapter, she organized Hebrew-speaking groups for members.
“Bea informed me that it was best to have the Seder at the Renovs’ place,” Frieda continued. “She explained that a neighbor had introduced her to the mallow plant, which grew wild, and taught her what to prepare from it. As a result, her breast milk had risen in quality and Bea herself had gotten stronger. The decision was made – Seder at the Renovs.”
The only problem: little or no food.
“Chief Rabbi [Isaac Halevi] Herzog understood how to help people who wanted to observe Passover in the midst of all this turmoil,” David explained. “Herzog made a psak [halachic decision] – all food, even if it had hametz content, was kosher to eat on Passover.”
A scientist as well as a noted Torah scholar, the chief rabbi calmed the religious fears of the 100,000 Jews living in Jerusalem.
David said that around April 10, 1948, there were rumors that a convoy would get through with food supplies before Passover.
American Hagana member Zipporah Porath wrote to her family in Brooklyn, “We felt that the siege would be broken for the hag.”
In a vivid description of the convoy’s arrival, David took his 2015 audience back to Jerusalem as it was two days before Passover 1948.
“Go down to the String Bridge today in Jerusalem and imagine hundreds of Jerusalemites – maybe thousands – lining Herzl Boulevard, and other crowds sprawled along Jaffa Road down to the Shaare Zedek hospital, all awaiting the convoy,” he said. “The trucks became real as they emerged from the road below into the city. We were all in tears as we viewed what was plastered on every windshield – the biblical words ‘Im eshkahech Yerushalayim’ – ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.’ We ran to the trucks driving in, grabbed the drivers, handed them flowers, embraced them as best we could.
The local girls kissed all the drivers. The Yam Suf [Red Sea] into Jerusalem had been split, and the bearers of subsistence came through safely.”
The Macarovs received eggs, a chicken, matza and dried foods. The Renovs received more of everything because they had a baby. On the night of their arrival, the drivers were feted throughout the city and invited to a multitude of Seders.
“I remember Jerusalem governor Dov Yosef, nattily dressed, shaking hands with the drivers and embracing them warmly,” David said. “From afar, it seemed to me Rabbi Herzog was blessing those who had gotten through.”
On the Seder night and Shabbat, the two families – four American-born Jerusalemites and the new Renov Sabra under the stairway for protection – took a deep breath, slowly realizing that they had left a symbolic Egypt and were living in Jerusalem.
“Seder is the order we give to life,” David said at the time (as the Hebrew word “seder” translates to “order”). But, he continued, “this Jerusalem Seder is much, much more.
It is freedom, it is on our own soil, it is the laughing and crying of a baby born here.
Our ancestors were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, our sisters and brothers were slaves and slaughtered in Europe, but remnants have survived, with God’s help... and are in this special city tonight.”
The late Jerry Renov added, “We are eating the bread of affliction, the staple of the desert wanderers, but just as they were privileged to enter this land, we are, too.”
He then made the Shehehiyanu blessing: “Shehehiyanu vekiyemanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh – we are alive and blessed to reach this moment.”