THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

MEMORIES
By Eliezer Shisha
Tel Aviv in the afternoon of August 3, 1910. The shutters of the small single-storey
buildings were closed; there was not a living soul in the street. It would have been so nice to be
greeted warmly, to have a friendly handshake on the day of my homecoming.
In Achad Ha'am Street somebody was calling to me "choletz, choletz". There was a man
leaning against the fence of the gymnasia, he must have been the caller. Turning to him happily, I
wanted to say shalom to him, but the irony in his voice held me back from doing so.
"Why did you come, choletz?" he asked me in Yiddish. "Palestine is full of chalutzim.
Where can you find work, what will you live on?" I have not seen this man since; however, his
voice can be heard all the time: the voice of stubborn half-heartedness and defeatism. It is the
dark shadow of the great faith.
*
The employment agency of the Hapoel Hatzair was in Shachar Street. Shengalovsky, the
Botany teacher of the gymnasia was in charge of allocating jobs. Newcomers turned to him to
find out on which road they should work. (There were hardly any other opportunities for work at
that time.) Shengalovsky (later Zohar Even) asked everyone a few questions about his
occupation, age, and level of Hebrew. Well, in my case he added a question which seemed to be
superfluous: he asked me where I had come from. The question seemed superfluous since all the
chalutzim came from Russia at that time. " I am from Hungary", I answered. "From Hungary?"
repeated Shengalovsky in surprise. "Are there Zionists there also?" "Yes, there are", I nodded.
"Wait a minute", he said staring at me for a long time, surprised. When he finished allotting jobs,
he said: "If you are really a Hungarian Jew, I will introduce you to Yitzhak Epstein, because he
has not seen such an oddity." And he took me to Epstein, the great linguist, who was the
principal of the teacher training college at the time. There was a large company of people
assembled in his office when Shangalovsky introduced me: "Here is a Hungarian chalutz!" They
stared at me as if I were a queer fish. I felt a bit embarrassed, but I got over it with the help of
Epstein's encouraging words. So I was able to answer the multitude of questions about Hungarian
Jewry and Hungarian Zionism. Then it was my turn to be surprised. Those present knew as much
about Hungarian Jewry as about the Jews of China.
I was trying enthusiastically to save the honour of Hungarian Jewry. Whether my attempt
was successful I do not know, but at least I managed to make my first acquaintance in Tel Aviv.
It was highly important since I was the first Hungarian Jew in Tel Aviv…
"I will not send you to work on the road", Shengalovsky said. "I will assign you to a more
important job. In a month or two we are going to open our schools, but we don't have teachers.
You should be one!“ That is how I became a teacher at the Tachkemoni School in 1920, before
the High Holidays.
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