AUGUST 22 • 2024 | 43
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BOOK REVIEW

T

hough Nehama Stampfer grew up in 
Portland, Oregon, her family spent a 
year in Israel three times, whenever her 
father had a sabbatical from his service as a 
synagogue rabbi. Especially during those years, 
she got to know her parents’ wide circle of 
relatives, including her great-uncle Avraham 
Frank (Dod Avram). 
At family celebrations, Dod Avram was a 
center of attention — he led songs, told jokes 
and recounted family history intertwined 
with national history. He rejoiced with people 
ebulliently on happy occasions and comforted 
people wisely on sad ones. He had practical 
advice when asked, and quietly helped when 
the situation called for assistance. During a 
visit, he would repair whatever needed fixing. 
Unlike many raconteurs, he had a reputation 
for strict veracity, departing from strict 
accuracy only to credit others generously and 
minimize his own role. 
When he reached an advanced age, Avraham 
Frank’s children convinced him to write his 
memoir. The Hebrew original of Goodness 
and Mercy Shall Follow Me appeared in 2007. 
He explains in the preface that he wrote this 
work “to give my children and grandchildren 
a glimpse into the Jerusalem of my youth, and 
the Tel Aviv of my adolescence and adulthood. 
My generation was destined to have the honor 
and merit to be part of establishing a renewed 
Jewish state in the land of Israel; my personal 
experience coincided with the historical and 
national events of that era.” 
Avraham Frank was born more than a 
century ago, the 12th of the 14 children 
of Rabbanit Gitah-Malkah Frank and her 
husband, Rabbi Zvi Pesach Frank. Rabbi 
Frank, at that time a beloved and respected 
judge on the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, 
later became the chief rabbi of Jerusalem. 

Avraham recorded the history of earlier 
generations of their illustrious families. He 
said his family would joke that Avraham 
“remembered events that happened even 
before I was born.” 
Later generations of the family, in Avraham 
Frank’s estimation, “ … spread out through 
the entire spectrum of society — Charedim, 
religious Zionists (including outstanding 
scholars), as well as members of the general 
society who are not identifiable by a kippah. 
His grandchildren and great-grandchildren 
included fearless fighters who died in defense 
of the homeland, as well as public figures of 
various types — if you like, in the synagogue 
and in the Parliament (beit ha-knesset and the 
Knesset).” 
The incidents recorded in Goodness and 

Mercy Shall Follow Me give us powerful 
insights into the Jewish community of pre-
state Israel, the birth pangs of the new State of 
Israel and the challenges of the next decades. 
Former Ann Arbor resident Nehama 
Stampfer Glogower, when she received her 
copy of the Hebrew edition, immediately 
“wanted to translate it into English so my 
children and American nieces and nephews 
could understand it.” 
Her translation (with added historical 
and personal notes) should have value for 
others besides her children and their cousins. 
It can enlighten other English readers to 
the “resilience, ingenuity, courage and 
determination” of the Jewish community of 
Israel. The book seems especially needed now, 
when one can easily access ugly, distorted 
narratives about the Jewish presence in Israel. 
Among the dramatic events recorded by 
Avraham Frank: His father held American 
citizenship, although he had never lived in 
the United States. The Ottoman Turks fought 
against the Americans in World War I and 
decided to deport any American citizens from 
Jerusalem to Damascus. Rabbi Frank went into 
hiding, so the Turkish authorities arrested his 
wife, Gitah-Malkah, to pressure him to turn 
himself in. Her daughters brought Avraham, 
then 7 months old, to the prison each day, 
for the baby to nurse. One day, Gitah-Malkah 
told her 17-year-old daughter Nehama, “Don’t 
bring the baby to the prison tomorrow. I’m 
planning to escape, and you must run away 
from the house because they will look for me 
there.” 
The next morning, a group of women 
prisoners walked up to the prison guard and 
confidently explained they had a car waiting 
for them. He must have believed they had 
been released because he did not object. When 
the women got past the guard, they ran in 

Review of 

Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me: 
A Memoir of Old Jerusalem

continued on page 44

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

