Moshe Levi Nahum came to Israel as a penniless youth and lived to almost reach 100.
By GLORIA DEUTSCHRehov Malan 88 224(photo credit: David Deutsch)
Inside the warren of narrow cobbled streets and old one-story houses that make up Tel Aviv's Kerem Hateimanim, the Yemenite Vineyard, lies Rehov Malan, named for one of the first inhabitants of the area, Moshe Levi Nahum, known by his nickname Mussa el-Ful after one of the activities in his long and active life - selling beans.
Born in Yemen in 1891, Nahum was a towering figure in the Israeli Yemenite community. A handsome and impressive man, he always dressed in Western style and carried a silver-headed walking stick. He became known as the mukhtar (leader) of the Yemenites who lived in Jaffa and later in the Kerem, and labored for many years to improve their situation. One of his many children from several marriages - 80-year-old teacher Hephzibah Cohen - told me the fascinating story of her father's life. A book about him, Kerem Haya Leyedidi, by Shlomo Tivoni, based on conversations with Mussa el-Ful, tells his story in even greater detail and is also a fascinating account of what life was like for the inhabitants of the Kerem from its beginnings until today.
He arrived in the country in 1905, an orphan of 14 who left Yemen in the company of two uncles and an older brother. After an adventure-packed journey in which he stowed away on several ships and worked his passage on some of them, he arrived in Eretz Yisrael without a penny in his pocket and landed in the Kerem Hateimanim, officially established in 1904. He was taken under the wing of a kind Yemenite tradesman who made it his business to help new immigrants - and who, years later, became his father-in-law.
While he was ecstatic to have arrived in the Holy Land, he quickly realized that the inhabitants of the Kerem were all, like himself, desperately poor, and he could only rely on himself for his survival. Those first days and many later ones were spent hunting for a piece of bread. Sometimes he found one thrown out by the "rich people of Tel Aviv" as he called them. Once he even chased after a dog with an old loaf in its mouth and ate that in desperation.
Not wanting to become a jewelry maker, which was what most Yemenite immigrants did in those days, he supported himself by selling the bean snacks which gave him his nickname. He would sell them to children studying at the Alliance school, trading them for a slice of bread and later for Hebrew lessons. He went on to learn French, English and Yiddish. He tried many different occupations, including construction worker, cobbler and bailiff. He also joined the Hashomer organization set up to defend the Jews against the Arabs and the Turks.
During World War I, the Turks decided to expel all the Jews living on the coast for fear their presence would benefit the British during the battles that raged for possession of the land. Hundreds were driven north and Nahum was one of them. By this time married to his first wife Esther, the first of his many children was born there and called Yossi Haglili. Yossi's granddaughter Tsilla, a Tel Aviv University film student, also told me what she knew about her great-grandfather.
After the war, the couple returned to the Kerem Hateimanim and Nahum built two houses which served as print shops for the area. In due course he became the printer for Haaretz newspaper and during the struggle to get the British out of Palestine he was active, printing pamphlets for the IZL and Lehi underground movements and hiding escaped fighters fleeing the British soldiers.
"It was the time of illegal immigration and many immigrants landed on the shores of Palestine without any papers," recalls Cohen. "My father would provide them with all the identity papers they needed. He was a very good, wise and charismatic man and did a great deal to help not only his fellow Yemenites but any Jews who were in trouble."
Years after he died she would meet people who told her of his generosity with money and his ability to help people with advice. "Your father saved my sight," one woman told her. People knew that if they went to Mussa el-Ful they would not leave empty-handed.
In the 1950s the print shop worked overtime producing books and the first comics in Hebrew, which the young state needed for its growing population, and it carried on working well into the 1980s when it finally closed down, unable to keep up with technological developments.
At 52, Nahum, who had always been considered an attractive man, fell in love with a young Yemenite girl in the neighborhood. It was quite customary in those days for a man to take a second wife back in Yemen and several families arrived here with two perfectly legal wives. But since the rules here were more strict thanks to the edict of Rabbenu Gershom in the 11th century, Mussa was lucky that Esther agreed to let him go.
After she had borne him eight children, Cohen's mother divorced Nahum and he married a second time, setting up home in the Kerem, next door to his first wife and children.
"I was always very respectful to my father - he allowed me to live in the house upstairs," recalls Cohen, "but I never spoke to the second wife, none of us did."
By his death in 1988, Nahum had managed to acquire another two wives and was married four times in all.
In the 1940s a street in the Kerem was named after Cohen's father, but after some years the name plate was taken down and a new name put in its place, Rehov Peduim. Nahum, who had been made an honorary citizen of Tel Aviv, was told that as he was alive he could not have a street named after him. He died in 1985 and a few years later Cohen began a battle to get her father's name reinstated.
"It took me 15 years - I went around the area with petitions, I nagged at City Hall and eventually the mayor, Ron Huldai, agreed. There was an impressive ceremony with an orchestra and a singer, and one of our brothers came from the United States."
Today there are parts of the street which still have the two names. But for Cohen and her siblings, it always was and will be Rehov Malan, named for the giant of a man who was her father.
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