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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