Jewels were always the currency of travelers. Gemstones were more reliable than currency and lighter than gold bullion. Even today, some investors are smitten with a "refugee mentality," financial experts recently told The Wall Street Journal. "If the world gets a computer virus," one explained, "and suddenly you need to move $10 million in 48 hours, gold will set off metal detectors and too much cash gets cumbersome, but you slip on a $5 million ring and a $5 million necklace and you've got no problems."
Assembling rings (circa 1925, Cigarbox collection)
Tragically, that scenario repeated itself throughout Jewish history. According to some accounts, prior to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 a rumor spread that many Jews swallowed diamonds and gold in order to take their wealth with them. Thieves killed many and sliced open their stomachs in their search for treasure. The Holocaust is fraught with tales of Jews attempting to use gems to buy their escape.
Diamond polishing (1930, Library
of Congress)
Diamond cutting on lathes (1939, Library of Congress) 
Inspecting diamonds (1939,
Library of Congress)
Since the 15th century, diamond cutting was a traditional Jewish craft, Wikipediareports. That's when a Jewish diamond cutter in Belgium invented the scaif, an essential tool for polishing. The first diamond polishing plant was opened in a Jewish town in Eretz Yisrael by Dutch refugee experts. By 1944 the industry employed 3,300 workers in 33 factories in Palestine.
Today, Israel is one of the world centers for preparation and sale of diamonds.
Today's posting is dedicated to Stella and Jordan -- Happy Anniversary and many, many more
and to Keren B, the jewelry maker and designer- Robert F. Kennedy
Nov. 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968
We leave our regular historical features to pay tribute to Robert Kennedy who was murdered on this day in 1968.
Several special features about Kennedy make this posting very appropriate for this site today:
1. Kennedy visited the Holy Land prior to Israel's establishment as a young newspaper correspondent and described Israel's armed struggle and economic development.
2. Several historic photographs of Kennedy's 1948 visit to Palestine were provided by the Kennedy family.
Kennedy "firing a slingshot" outside of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem, March 1948 (from the Kennedy family)
3. Kennedy, as a young college graduate, wrote several feature articles for The Boston Post on his visit. The newspaper went out of business in 1956 and for many years the articles were virtually lost.
Several years ago, The Israel Daily Picture's
publisher, Lenny Ben-David, found the articles, published them, and posted them on the "Robert Kennedy and Israel" website.
Kennedy on King David Street, north of the hotel. Note the
armored British vehicle and British checkpoint behind him
Read the full-length articles by RFK here.
4. Kennedy's family points out that he was murdered by a
Palestinian Arab terrorist, Sirhan Sirhan, who was angry about Kennedy's strong support for Israel. The assassination took place on the first anniversary of Israel's victory in the Six Day War, and the timing was no accident, the family insists.
Bobby Kennedy deplaning from a RAF plane at Lod airport
5. Kennedy visited the Middle East in March 1948 and departed Palestine before Israel's declaration of independence on May 14 and Ben-Gurion’s announcement of the name of the new country. RFK, therefore, does not refer to “Israel” or to “Israelis” in his articles.
Read several excerpts of Robert Kennedy's articles:
The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.It is an unfortunate fact that because there are such well founded arguments on either side each grows more and more bitter toward the other. Confidence in their right increases in proportion to the hatred and mistrust for the other side for not acknowledging it.The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.
Read the full-length articles by RFK here.1View comments
A drug store in Jerusalem in the 1930s (Library of Congress)
The American Colony photographers took this picture about 80 years ago. The caption in the Library of Congress archives reads "A street corner in the Rehavia Quarter, Jerusalem."
Identifying the store and the street today is easy for veteran Jerusalemites. The pharmacy is still there; they haven't even changed the Hebrew and English "Pharmacy" signs over the windows. New stories were added to the building but it's not hard to locate the store on the corner of Keren Kayemet and Ibn Ezra Streets.
The same drug store today (Google Streetview)
Are you a subscriber to www.israeldailypicture.com? Enter your email in the box in the right sidebar and "submit."2View comments
- JUN2
Readers Provide Important Corrections to this Mystery Picture: It Actually Shows Arrival of King Feisal of Iraq in Jerusalem
When sleuths make a mistake it's important to retrace their steps to find where they veered off course. This photo of the Jerusalem train station, captioned by the Library of Congress as taken between 1898 and 1946, was correctly dated here last week as 1931.
Picture of King Feisal's arrival in December 1931, not the
arrival of the new British High Commissioner Wauchope
in November 1931 (Library of Congress)
But the photo is not of the arrival of the new British High Commissioner Sir Arther Wauchope in November 1931 to replace Mark Aitchison Young.
Instead it shows the arrival of King Feisal of Iraq, coming to Jerusalem in December 1931 to attend the World Islamic Congress, convened by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini. Husseini had two goals: to be named Caliph of the Muslim world and to showcase his new luxurious Jerusalem hotel, the Palace Hotel.
This is the welcoming ceremony for the new High
Commissioner in 1931. Note the 9-plane flyover by the RAF,
the banners, and the antelope mascot of the Royal
Regiment of Fusiliers in front of the station
We thank Chen Melling, manager of the Israel Railway Museum, for helping to put us back on the "right track."
The theory that the picture was taken late on a Friday afternoon was suggested to explain why no Jews were present for the arrival of the high commissioner. But now it is easy to understand why Jews did not attend a ceremony for Arab dignitaries to a Congress that would assail the Jewish presence in the Holy Land, saying, "Zionism is ipso facto an aggression detrimental to Muslim well-being, and that it is directly or indirectly ousting Muslims from the control of Muslim land and Muslim holy places."
Train schedule -- Jerusalem arrival at 0910 
We surmised that the dignitaries were looking west into the setting sun. Actually, they were looking east at the rising sun, and the clock showing 9:30 confirms it. The British honor guard was standing on the square in front of the station, and a train can be seen behind it on the left, as pointed out by "Hillel," a faithful reader.
A 1926 train schedule provided by the Israel Railroad Museum confirms that the arrival ceremony would have taken place at 9:30 am, 20 minutes after the arrival of the train.
Jerusalem's dignitaries, led by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, and the Mayor of Jerusalem, Raghib al-Nashashibi, were on hand to receive the King of Iraq.
Enlargement of photo above shows Haj Amin el Husseini in the
white turban, Mayor Nashashibi in the center, and King Feisal
Nashashibi and Husseini. The two men
loathed each other (1936)
King Feisal (left) and his brother Emir Abdullah
of Jordan visiting Jerusalem in 1933, months
before Feisal's death in Europe
Special thanks to Zvi Bessin, tour guide, for his cooperation in finding the solution to this mystery photograph.
The "square" in front of the train station (circa 2010,
by Ronen Saraf, Google Streetview)
Click on pictures to enlarge.
Click on captions to view the originals photos.0Add a comment
- MAY29
Major Update/Correction Coming -- Mystery Picture of Jerusalem's Old Train Station Gets Nailed
Earlier this week we presented a feature on the "New Old Train Stationin Jerusalem," and we published this photo of an arrival ceremony at the station.
Arrival ceremony at the train station. But when was the
picture taken? Between "1898 and 1946."
Several clues led us to conclude the soldiers were British Royal Fusiliers and that the picture was taken between 1920 and 1936.
Acting commissioner Mark Aitchison Young 
Young (Wikipedia)
Now, veteran Israeli tour guide Zvi Bessin has nailed the picture: It was taken onNovember 20, 1931, when acting British High Commissioner Sir Mark Aitchison Young received the new commissioner, Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope.
The day was Friday, and the shadows suggest evening was approaching. The clock which appears to show 9:30 may, in fact, not be working. By our reckoning, the soldiers were facing east, the dignitaries facing west. The setting sun was shining on the dignitaries' faces. The lateness of the day and the approach of the Sabbath may explain why Jewish leadership was absent from the station ceremony.
Young served only 20 days until his successor arrived. Wauchope served as high commissioner until 1937.1View comments
- MAY28
Journal Article Abstract: The Zionist Message Hidden within Antique Pictures of the Holy Land By Lenny Ben-David
Abstract reprinted from the Jewish Political Studies Review, May 1, 2013
A 110-year-old trove of pictures taken by the Christian photographers of the American Colony in Jerusalem provides dramatic proof of thriving Jewish communities in Palestine.
Hundreds of pictures show the ancient Jewish community of Jerusalem’s Old City and the Jewish pioneers and builders of new towns and settlements in the Galilee and along the Mediterranean coastline. The American Colony photographers recorded Jewish holy sites, holiday scenes and customs, and they had a special reason for focusing their lenses on Yemenite Jews.
The collection, housed in the U.S. Library of Congress, also contains photographs from the 1860s, the first years of photography. These photographs provide a window rarely opened by historians—for several unfortunate reasons—to view the life of the Jews in the Holy Land. The photographs’ display and online publication effectively counters the biased narrative claiming that the Jewish state violently emerged ex novo in the mid-twentieth century.
Read the full article and view the photographs here.1View comments
A new cultural and entertainment center just opened in Jerusalem and it's called the "First Station." With a farmers' market, restaurants, crafts stores and a children's play center, the First Station promises to be a busy hub for Jerusalem activity.
Welcoming party at the Jerusalem train station (Library of Congress, date given as 1898-1946)
Just like it was when it first opened in 1892, more than 120 years ago, when the first train from Jaffa pulled into Jerusalem's new train station.
Open seven days a week, the new attraction presents a different fair every day. View the First Station's website here.
The Jerusalem train station has been a frequent feature of the Israel Daily Picture, with pictures of the arrival of the German emperor in 1898 and the transfer of a high-ranking British prisoner of war, Col. Coventry in 1916, captured in Sinai during World War I.
British POW Col. Coventry driven from railroad station
by Turkish army (1916)
The German emperor arrives (1898) 
Railroad station (circa 1910) 
Another view of station (1900)
The mystery picture above of a dignitary's arrival is dated by the Library of Congress as between 1898 and 1946, the years the American Colony photographers were active in Palestine. But numerous clues helps to pin down the dates.
Enlarged poster
The railroad to Jerusalem was halted during World War I and not reopened until October 1920, so the arrival ceremony with a British honor guard could not have taken place before that date.
Why is an antelope among the soldiers?
Posters on the station wall advertise the White Star Cruise Line that ceased operation in 1936 when it was taken over by the Cunard Line. We can date the picture between 1920 and 1936.
There's also one more curious feature seen when the photo is enlarged. Among the rifles and bayonets on the right of the photo appear two animal horns sticking up. The decorated horns belong to "Bobby," an antelope, the regimental mascot of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
According to the Fusiliers Association of Great Britain, "The mascot was looked after by two handlers chosen from the battalion, they would make sure that he was fed and watered and exercised. When on parade they kept him under control by means of two white ropes attached to his collar which was also white, and was emblazoned with a large silver badge. On his back he wore a coat of royal blue, embroidered with the regimental crest, and his horns were tipped with silver cones."1View comments
Fifty thousand Yemenite Jews were secretly airlifted to the new state of Israel in 1949-1950 in order to escape anti-Jewish pogroms that were erupting across the Arab world.
Embroidering and sewing in a shop for Yemenite Jewish-style clothes
(circa 1922, Cigarbox Collection, Keren HaYesod)
The emergency campaign, calledOperation Magic Carpetor Operation On Eagles' Wings, would be repeated decades later to rescue Ethiopian Jewry in the 1984 Operation Moses and the 1991 Operation Solomon when Israel flew thousands of Jews out of Ethiopia and Sudan then plagued by famine and civil war.
Neither the Yemenites nor the Ethiopians were motivated by modern political Zionism as founded by Theodore Herzl. They were fervent believers in the ancient Jewish messianic dream of returning to the Land of Israel. From Gondar in northern Ethiopia and the ancient mountain town of Sana'a in Yemen they were determined to reach Eretz Yisrael,sometimes traveling by foot.
"Arab Jew from Yemen" (original caption, Library
of Congress)
Yemenite Jew probably from Haban (Library of Congress)
Such a group of Yemenite Jews arrived in Jerusalem in 1882, and their story and photographs appear here and here. Many were fed and sheltered by the members of the American Colony of Jerusalem.
The picture above of the Yemenite embroidery and tailor shop from Otti Seidon's Cigarbox Collection was taken well before the large airlift of Yemenite Jews. These are the children of the olim. Note the men, including the hookah smoker, working on the embroidery which is not unlike the silver and gold filigree Yemenite Jewish jewelers were famous for.
Yemenite embroidery on talit (Esther Zeitz)
In the 1950s and 60s, cottage industries were set up for Yemenite embroiderers, and their wares were sold by Ruth Dayan's Maskit fashion house, WIZO's women's organization, and a legendary Jerusalem shopkeeper named Esther Zeitz who employed young blind women to embroider.1View comments
Is this Kibbutz Tel Yosef? Photo from the "Cigarbox Collection" of Dr.Othniel Seidon
The composition of this photo is striking -- a new Jewish settlement at the foot of a mountain ridge and at the bottom of a gorge. On the back someone wrote "Tel Yosef 1921," apparently the year, the only date found on a photo in the Seidon collection. The kibbutz was named after Yosef Trumpeldor, a Jewish Zionist hero who died defending the Tel Hai settlement in 1920.
The photo is an enigma. Tel Yosef is located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel, not located at the base of mountain. Research into Tel Yosef's history uncovered that the kibbutz was located a few kilometers away in its first years, and was located where Kibbutz Ein Harod is located today. But it too was not at the foot of a mountain.
Beit Alpha at the foot of the Gilboa Mountains. Note the
gorge (Google Earth)
Modern technology helped us locate the chalutzim's(pioneers) settlement 90 years ago.
A Google Earth search of the Jezreel-Gilboa area quickly found a possible location of the mystery picture -- the Kibbutz of Beit Alpha. The settlement at the foot of the mountain and the gorge appear identical.
We checked Beit Alpha's history and photo archives and confirmed that the Cigar Collection photo was Beit Alpha and not Tel Yosef. The picture below shows the same tents and buildings.
From Beit Alpha's archives. Note the same tents and cabins as the photo on top 0Add a comment
- MAY16
Introducing the "Cigarbox Collection" -- Donated by Dr. Othniel Seiden of Denver -- An Heirloom from his Father, Dr. Rudolph Avraham Seiden
The pictures inside
A version of this article appeared in The Jerusalem Post Magazine on May 17.
The cigarbox
By Lenny Ben-DavidThe antique wood cigarbox was beautifully crafted, bound like a book and entitled "Gourmet's Delight" and "Grown in California." Opening the box in Efrat, Israel, I discovered it was filled with a stack of pictures from Palestine 90-100 years ago. Almost simultaneously I received an email from a doctor in Denver which began, "I am delighted that the pictures have found a new home!"
Grave of Maimonides (Rambam) in Tiberias (circa 1920). A version of this picture also appears in the Harvard
Library archives attributed to the Central Zionist Archives
When I discovered 22,000 newly digitalized antique pictures of Eretz Yisrael in the Library of Congress archives two years ago, I immediately recognized the pictures' hasbara value. The photos showed Jewish life in the land 150 years ago, well before Herzl and the establishment of the State of Israel.
Metal worker making collection boxes for the
Jewish National Fund (Seidon collection)
A modern day JNF box But many of the pictures were not captioned nor were the dates or locations always correct. I began a painstaking process of research and enlarging photos to identify places, people and the chronological sequences. My analyses became essayswhich now total more than 300 photo analyses in the Israel Daily Picture blogsite. The www.israeldailypicture.com site has attracted some 800,000 visitors, and the Library of Congress has used some of these analyses to correct its captions.Many of the photo essays appeared in The Jerusalem Post Magazine, and I’m in discussions with a publisher about a book.
Math lesson in Machane Yehuda (the shuk area of
Jerusalem). The drill: if a worker earns 17.5 Eretz
Yisrael pounds a day, how much would he receive
for six days?
The Library of Congress archives' largest collection came from the American Colony Photographic Department in Jerusalem. Other pictures on the sitewere taken by some of the first pioneers of photography in the 1850s and 1860s. I have also published essays based on the photos (only after securing permission) from the archives of Harvard, the New York Public Library, and a Scottish medical school archives that contained antique pictures of the Jews of Tiberias amidst anatomical photographs of limbs, operations, and disease.
The Cigarbox Collection
Dr. Othniel Seiden of Denver is a fan of theIsrael Daily Picture and offered hisexceptionalcollection. A friend from Efrat was going to Denver and served as courier. I was very grateful, but asked one more favor from Dr. Seiden -- that he tell the story behind the collection. His recollection follows:
Arab village of Kalkilya. The small structure (right) is
apparently a well with a woman standing with a
jug on her head
My father, Dr. Rudolph Avraham Seiden, was born in 1900 and was first involved in Palestine through a Zionist organization in Vienna called Die Blau Weiss or the "Blue White." As a teen, sometime around 1919, he started smuggling Jews out of Eastern Europe into Palestine through Blau Weiss. At that time, a whole family could travel to Palestine on a family visa. The organization established a front travel agency and hired a Greek ship in order to put together strangers as families and
arranged tours to Palestine for these "large family groups." When the tourists got to Palestine they "disappeared," and their return tickets were sold to people wanting to go to Europe from Palestine.
Matzah factory in Haifa. Sign on the wall on the right reads
"No spitting, No smoking." Sign on the left reads "For the
mitzvah of matzah" so that workers devote themselves to
the making of matzah
My father's intent was to move our family to Palestine, and in the mid-1920s he went there to check things out. He was the first chemist to take minerals out of the Dead Sea, and it was his intent to set up a factory to do that. Unfortunately he contracted malaria and had to go back to Vienna.
He still longed to move us all to Palestine, and in the late 1920s my mother's family, the Abileahs, moved there. In the meantime, he worked in Vienna and held the first patent on tempered glass.
Workshop for making wagon wheels in the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school
When Hitler came to power and the Austrian Nazi Party gained status, my father suddenly couldn't publish anymore and saw the writing on the wall. In 1934, when we were planning our move, my mother's family said that life in Palestine was very difficult, and if we had a chance to go to the U.S. we should do it. In 1935 we moved to the U.S. Many of the Abileahs are still in Israel. [Othniel's uncle Beni Abileah was a well-known Israeli diplomat.]
The children of Nahalal (circa 1925)
In 1980, I started an organization called "Doctors To The World" which took medical personnel to various areas in the world to do volunteer work in needy areas. We sent dentists into villages in Israel to serve mostly Israeli Arabs and anyone else needing help. That was when I took out Israeli citizenship so I could get a medical license in Israel.
Bedouin Arab family near Lake Hula and their reed huts My father took only some of the photos. Many were either post cards or some other stock photos. Those that had an imprint on the back [some are stamped "Keren Hayesod Photo] I assume is that of the developing and processing individual.
When I asked for formal permission to publish the photos, Dr. Seiden responded: I give you full permission to use the photos I sent you in any way you feel fit, for educational purposes, or to lend and permit to be used by other media and organizations that will use them for educational or historical purposes.Thank you Dr. Seiden. Yes, I should name it the “Seiden Collection,” but I will always consider them the “Cigarbox Pictures.”3View comments
Jews around the world commemorate the holiday of Shavuot this week, the day on which tradition says the Torah was given to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai.
Torah scrolls in the ark of the Istanbouli Synagogue in the Old City
of Jerusalem (circa 1930), "one of the oldest synagogues
in Jerusalem." The synagogues in the Old City were all
destroyed after the Jewish Quarter was captured in 1948.
(Library of Congress)
The Torah -- also known as the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses -- has been the foundation of the Jewish faith for 3,000 years, the basis for the monotheistic Christian and Islamic religions, and an inspiration for spiritual, moral and ethical values.
A Yemenite Jewish scribe and his
father, Shlomo Washadi (c 1935)
The Torah scrolls are handwritten with quills by God-fearing scribes on the parchment made of the skins of kosher animals. One skipped or illegible letter of the 304,805 letters of the Torah makes the scroll invalid for reading in the synagogue service. A Torah damaged beyond repair is buried.
Samaritan high priest with
his sons and Pentateuch
scroll (c 1911)
Doctors Herbert and David Torrance of the Scottish Mission hospital in Tiberias and the photographers of the American Colony
Photographic Department took several portraits of Jews and their Torah scrolls. They were also clearly fascinated by the scrolls and practice of the Samaritans, an ancient offshoot of Judaism who are not considered Jewish today.
The Dundee Medical School archives in Scotland contains many anatomical pictures taken by the Torrances, but also fascinating pictures of the Galilee Jewish community. We published one photo captioned "Rabbi and Torah scroll." After we identified the picture as a Samaritan, the archives corrected their caption to "a Samaritan leader with his sect’s scroll."
Jewish rabbi or Samaritan priest with scroll 
A desecrated synagogue in Hebron
with Torahs strewn on the floor (1929)
The Library of Congress archives also include pictures of the Hebron Jewish community after they were decimated in a pogrom by Arab attackers. Among the photos are pictures of a destroyed synagogue and its Torah scrolls.
Enlargement of the scrolls on the floor 0Add a comment
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Jewelry-Making in the Holy Land: A Wise Profession for a Peripatetic People - picture a day
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
View comments