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block and was a local hero. It was a shared tragedy and Moshe’s death—combined with my mother’s reaction to it—had a profound and lasting effect on my 9 year old psyche.
My friends and I formed a “club’”—teally just a group of kids who played ball together. We named it “The Palmach”—after the Israeli strike force that was helping to win the war. We memorized the Palmach Anthem “Rishonin, Tamid Anachnu Tamid, Anu, Anu Hapalmach.” ( “We are always the first, we are the Palmach”). Recently, I spoke to a Jewish group in Los Angeles and among the guests were Vidal Sassoon (the style master) and David Steinberg (the comedian). Steinberg mentioned to me that when Sassoon was a young man, he had volunteered to fight for the Palmach (If you think that seems unlikely, consider that “Dr. Ruth” Westheimer served as a sniper in the same war). I challenged Sassoon to sing the Palmach Anthem and before you knew it, Sassoon and I were loudly belting out the Hebrew words to the amusement of the other surprised guests.
Israel declared statehood in May of 1948, when I was nine and a half years old. Following its bold declaration that after 2,000 years of exile, there arose a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, (supported by the United Nations, the United States, the Soviet Union and most western nations), the nascent state was attacked by the armies of the surrounding Arab countries. That summer I went to a Hebrew speaking Zionist summer camp called “Massad.” During my summer at Camp Massad (where the counselor of an adjoining bunk was a young Noam Chomsky, then a fervent left-wing Zionist) we heard daily announcements over the loudspeaker regarding the War of Independence. We sang Israeli songs, danced the hora and played sports using Hebrew words (a “strike” was a “Shkeya,” a “ball” a “kadur”.) The announcement I remember most vividly was “Hatinok Rut met hayom’”—the “babe” Ruth died today. But I also remember several announcements regarding the death or wounding of Israelis who were related to the people in the camp. One out of every hundred Israeli men, women and children were killed—some in cold blood, after surrendering—while defending their new state. Many of those killed had managed to survive the Holocaust.
We also learned of Stalin’s campaign against Jewish writers, politicians and Zionists. After the end of the war, Stalin became the new Hitler as we read about show trials, pogroms and executions of Jews. We hated communism almost as much as we hated fascism.
These early memories—relating to the America’s war against Nazism, Israel’s War of Independence, and Stalin’s war against the Jews—contributed significantly to my emerging ideology and world views.
I grew up in a home with few books, little music, no art, no secular culture and no
intellectualism. My parents were smart but had no time or patience for these "luxuries." Our home was modest--the ground floor of a two and half family house. (The finished basement was rented to my cousin and her new husband). Our apartment had two small bedrooms, the smaller of which I shared with my brother. We ate in the kitchen. The living room, which had the mandatory couch covered with a plastic protector, was reserved for special guests (who were rare). The tiny bathroom was shared by the four of us. The foyer doubled as a dining area for Friday night and Shabbat meals. The total area was certainly under __ square feet. But we had an outside—and what an outside it was! In the front there was a small garden and a stoop. In the
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