In the Land of Israel: My Family 1809-1949. Nitza Rosovsky
Sarah turned eighteen, a matchmaker was commissioned by the Elsteins to look for an appropriate bridegroom. I do not know much about her brief first marriage, not even her husband’s last name, only that he was nicknamed Velveleh, or Wolf. Sarah moved to Haifa, to his parents’ home, and in the beginning she was very happy. “He was young and handsome and we loved each other very much,” she told me. “We were always laughing, and all we wanted to do was to be near each other.” But Velveleh was the youngest son, the apple of his mother’s eye, and it seems that it was too much for her to share him with another woman at such close quarters. And so, the family story goes, she began to spread rumors about Sarah’s past, about her unorthodox education and her friendships with some of the young Zionists who frequented the Elsteins’ house. When the gossip reached Beirut, it infuriated her uncle Moshe and he sent her a telegram: “Sarah, come home.” He then dispatched Eliyahu Klinger, another uncle of Sarah’s, to Haifa and together uncle and niece left for Beirut. According to Sarah she and Velveleh cried bitterly at their parting.
“How could you do it?” I asked her. “You loved him so. Why did you leave?”
“Mein kind—my child. You don’t understand. Perhaps, if it had been my real father who had ordered me home, I might have disobeyed him. But I owed so much to der Fetter Elstein, to Uncle Elstein, who was so kind to me. It would have been unthinkable not to do as I was told.”
Many years later I heard from my aunt Zahava who grew up in Haifa that Sarah’s divorce was a cause célèbre in the city, where the former mother-in-law was considered to be a wicked woman. It was said that she was cursed because of her behavior; another one of her sons died young and destitute and left behind five small children whom she had to raise. Sarah never went back to Haifa. She stayed in Beirut, a young divorcée in a precarious social position. Before her marriage she mixed freely with the students who visited her uncle’s house and was an active participant in events organized to raise money for various good causes. But now on such occasions she just sat at the door and sold tickets or else stayed home and perfected her embroidery. At times, she told me, she felt so trapped that she would rise at dawn and escape to a deserted beach nearby, where she would shed her outer garments behind a large rock, as she used to do when she was a child. Her aunt did not think that swimming was a suitable pastime for a young Jewish girl—and certainly not for a divorced woman—so Sarah did not own a bathing costume. She would make sure no one was on the beach and in her bloomers dive into the balmy waters of the Bay of Beirut.
Cabinet portrait of my grandmother, Sarah Brandeis-Elstein, which she sent to Eliyahu Berman, 1905
Photograph by A. Noun, Beirut
Meanwhile, her family was busily looking for another husband for Sarah. Her uncle Eliyahu Klinger—who had married Hinke, Esther’s youngest sister—was a prosperous merchant and banker who often traveled on business from Safed to Jerusalem where he heard of a possible candidate, a most reliable man, a widower. Soon photographs were exchanged between the parties. I still have Sarah’s picture, taken by “N. Aoun, Photographe, Beyrouth, Syrie.” Perhaps a bit plumper than is fashionable today, she looked quite appealing in a white dress with many strings of seed pearls around her neck. Her dark hair was piled high, a few tresses falling across her forehead. The photograph must have pleased Eliyahu Berman who came to Beirut to meet her, then married her and brought her to his house in Jerusalem.
With Sarah’s departure for Jerusalem, my story shifts away from the Galilee, from the Ashkenazis and Epsteins. The history of the Bermans was easier to trace since I grew up among them, listening to stories about their early years in Jerusalem, familiar with most of the characters.
Entrance to Jerusalem through Jaffa Gate
Photograph by Bonfils, 1880s
Courtesy of the Berman Bakery
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