44 | AUGUST 22 • 2024
different directions. The guard could not follow them
all. So, Gitah-Malkah escaped. When the authorities
came to look for her at home, she was not there.
RIOTS AND MORE
After the war, Palestine became a British
Protectorate. British policy toward Jews and Arabs
fluctuated. When Arab leaders fomented a riot, on
Friday, Aug. 23, 1929, the British did
not intervene. In Jerusalem, young
men from the Haganah (a Jewish
defense force) went to Zion Gate in
Jerusalem, firing weapons in the air,
and thus prevented the Arab gangs
from entering the Jewish Quarter of
the Old City. When British officers
appeared on the scene to confiscate
those weapons, the Haganah men fled
to a Jewish neighborhood outside the
walls where Rabbi Frank lived. At the
rabbi’s house, Rabbanit Gittah-Malkah
told them to hide their weapons there,
and then she calmly set the table for Shabbat dinner
with guests. So, the Jewish population of Jerusalem
largely escaped those riots.
Not so the Jewish population of Hebron. When
the riots began in Hebron, 70 Jews gathered in the
house of the Slonim family, leaders of the Jewish
community who had previously enjoyed good
relations with their Arab neighbors. The Arab
neighbors, though, attacked, led by a trusted friend
of the family. Rabbi Frank’s sister, Avraham’s Aunt
Yenta, was murdered, along with 28 members of the
Slonim family. A 1-year-old baby, Shlomo, survived,
though he, too, was wounded. Avraham reports
simply: “Shlomo Slonim grew up, had a family and
today lives in Ra’anana. He still bears a scar on his
forehead that the knife blade left behind.”
The Haganah group consisted of men from
different traditions and different points of view.
“There was fellowship between the religious and
secular — and mutual respect. We loved one another
and were devoted to one another. When a secular
Haganah member needed to bring a message to a
religious member, he would put on kippah before he
would enter the house … The religious participated
in the secular experience and, when necessary, went
out on actions on Shabbat and yom tov, still wrapped
in a tallit.”
Right before Simchat Torah in 1938, Avraham got
a summons from the Haganah to get in a truck and
go out to guard the road to Jerusalem. His father, the
chief rabbi of Jerusalem, blessed him: “An order’s an
order; let the Holy One protect all of you.”
If that mutual respect between religious and
secular has decreased in Israel over the years,
Avraham Frank blames extremists on both sides.
During the War of Independence, the Jewish
communities of Gush Etzion were besieged. Convoys
from Jerusalem had not been able to get through.
Another patrol tried a new route, by way of Beit
Shemesh. Avraham’s nephew Joshua, who had come
from America to take part in the war, was assigned
to the patrol. As the patrol prepared to
leave, the commanding officer ordered
Joshua to stay behind, perhaps because
Joshua was already married, perhaps
because he was not a seasoned warrior.
Five kilometers before Gush Etzion, the
patrol was discovered and ambushed.
All 35 members of the group were killed
in that battle. The brush with death had
a profound impact on Joshua, inspiring
him to work hard to contribute to
the Jewish people. Nahama Stampfer
Glogower is Joshua’s daughter.
Although he always devoted time to
religious studies, Avraham Frank did not become a
great rabbinic scholar like his revered father. From
a young age, he concentrated on practical skills,
including how to make springs. Eventually, he
owned a factory making springs, which he called
“lively inanimate objects.” When the Israeli military
could not get replacement parts because of foreign
embargoes, as happened several times, he fashioned
springs to do the job, sometimes better than the
original parts.
Rabbi Aryeh Levin, known as the “Tzadik of
Jerusalem” and “The Prisoner’s Rabbi,” was Avraham
Frank’s uncle. Avraham Frank’s memoir includes
stories of how the prisoner’s rabbi helped imprisoned
men and women, raising their spirits, delivering
memorized messages to and from the outside world.
History does not consist only of events and dates.
You could know the facts and not understand the
story. You could recite the dates of events and miss
what those events meant for the people who expe-
rienced them. To get a vivid sense of how it felt, it
helps to hear it firsthand from someone who was
there, who remembers who did what and what hap-
pened to them. If you want to get the feel of more
than a century of the history of Jews in Israel, you
want to meet Avraham Frank, as lovingly presented
in Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me, as translated
by his great-niece, Nehama Stampfer Glogower, and
in essays appended by his relatives.
Nehama Glogower is a retired Torah teacher and hospice chaplain.
For decades, she and her husband, Rabbi Rod Glogower, served the
Orthodox Jewish community in Ann Arbor.
Nehama Stampfer Glogower
continued from page 43
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