https://www.facebook.com/2016614558585645/

Shavei Tzion Archives, Shavei Tzion, Shavei Zion (2026)

28/08/2026

As elsewhere in the country, certainly in the co-operative rural settlements, Shavei Tzion's first years were spartan. F***y Berlinger wrote that it "was necessary to wash infants' and children's clothing every day because we didn't have enough." And in the "Between Us" newsletter in 1981, in the column "40 Years Ago Today", Pinchas Erlanger quoted an entry in the minutes of the management committee of the moshav from 1941, in which the committee discussed the request of a family about to celebrate its son's bar mitzvah. The minutes report that the family asked "urgently for 5 Palestine pounds (with which to buy) clothing (for the occasion)." The request was granted as a loan and the sum would be returned, supposed Pinchas, by debiting the family's future clothing allowance. At that time, let's remember, members of the "Kollektiv" received only 60 mils monthly pocket money, that is 60/1,000 of a pound. Five pounds was a lot of money.

Thus, says Amos Fröhlich, those first years were "a time of want… Every possession was cared for and every item that was damaged was repaired… Shirts, pants, socks were mended and patched; children's shoes were cut open so that (our) toes peeped out, in order that they might be worn longer as we grew…" And, in fact, in minutes from March 1953, a short time before the celebration of Shavei Tzion's 15th anniversary, we read that "the Löwengart family in New York, has promised to send a donation of 40 pairs of children's shoes."

Until late spring 1940 when its permanent setting had been built--the present offices of the moshav--the early school was housed in two rooms in a wooden barrack in the Tower and Stockade camp. Minutes from a meeting of the management committee in November 1939 tell us that "several" desks and chairs needed for the school would not be purchased outright but, rather, would be leased. The children themselves quickly learned to make do with little. Remembering those years, Shula Geffen née Schindler, who had immigrated to the Land of Israel as a nine-year-old, wrote, "We discovered countless ways to occupy ourselves. Among the 'lifts' (the shipping crates containing each family's household goods) which stood grouped (just outside the camp's stockade fence), we found our hearts' desire. There, we climbed and jumped and all sorts of broken utensils and junk were real treasure to us and a tremendous inspiration for our games. Really, (it was like) an amusement park." They were happy.

21/08/2026

In his journal entry for the Sabbath, May 7, 1938, Dr. Manfred Scheuer, the British Mandate-appointed mukhtar of the Tower and Stockade camp here, wrote: "(after morning prayers) we all went to swim (in the sea), guarded by Sally Lemberger with his hunting rifle. The sea, because of the waves (breaking against) the rocky shore…makes swimming difficult for us all." He noted as well that Rassco, the Rural and Suburban Settlement Company, which oversaw the establishment of the settlement, had set aside 100 dunams of shore (one dunam equals 1,000 square meters) on which to establish "a bathing beach".

A breakwater would eventually facilitate swimming, and successive improvements to that first breakwater would ultimately create a sandy beach on the southern face of the structure. In 1945, the artificial pool north of the breakwater that we call "The Little Sea", was engineered for the benefit of Shavei Tzion's small children by Reuven Cohen, a construction contractor, the owner of a weekend and vacation home here. The safety of his seven-year-old daughter Dina (later Dina Ron), and of all the children, worried "Mr. Cohen" and so, with the consent of the local authorities, his workers blasted the boulders at the water's edge with dynamite and pneumatic drills, removed the shattered rock, and excavated a large, placid shallow basin.

In December 1961, an article in the Hebrew daily Haaretz reported that the bathing beach here was to be "closed", that is, restricted, and people not residing in Shavei Tzion or staying at one of the hotels here would not be admitted to the beach. In addition to the existing sun shelters, bathrooms and a restaurant were planned by the "Shavei Tzion Beach Ltd." company whose partners were "two local investors" and the Dolphin Hotel. But the communities of the Ga'aton Regional Council demanded that the beach be open to the general public; in return, they committed to taking part in the costs of maintenance.

In a letter to the editor of Ha'aretz on April 18, 1966, Hans Bloch, chairman of the Shavei Tzion Local Council, responded to scrutiny of the bathing beach and its facilities published in that newspaper several weeks earlier. He wrote that the company that had been operating the bathing beach had done "nothing" to improve its facilities and that the Council would be obliged to take on that responsibility, despite the limitations of its budget. Although in the approaching bathing season the beach would be open to the public at large, Hans noted that the shore accessible for swimming was insufficient to accommodate large numbers of beachgoers. The Council hoped to expand that access and would welcome a serious partnership in improving conditions. Three years earlier, a committee representing Nahariya, Acre, Shavei Tzion and the Sulam Tzur Regional Council had undertaken to improve the appeal of the Western Galilee to vacationers and tourists.

In June 1971, the journalist Yehuda Ariel reported in Haaretz that no fee was levied for entrance to the bathing beach and the adjacent parking lot in Shavei Tzion, and he noted the restaurant at the beach where the verandah offered views of the seashore to the north and of the Carmel Ridge to the south. But the showers and changing rooms were inadequate, he wrote, and bathers had no way to secure their belongings. Still, he added, visitors enjoying free facilities needed to show respect for the place and not litter the beach. There were other demands, too, on the operators of the beach and in another letter to the editor of Haaretz, in July 1969, Local Council chairman Hans Bloch complained that a reported incidence of hooliganism had actually occurred the year before and had been handled efficiently by the staff at the beach and the police. Because the beach was open to the public, he wrote, youths from a neighboring village couldn't be refused entry but they, like every visitor, would be obliged to comport themselves appropriately.

Our beach had been intermittently open and closed to the general public over the following years until 2016, when all "municipal" beaches in Israel were finally declared open and a comprehensive ban was placed on charging entrance fees. Today, as we wrote here last week, the beach in Shavei Tzion is a very popular destination which attracts both casual visitors and serious sportsmen from places even dozens of kilometers away.

14/08/2026

We've heard it called "Karmiel's beach". Well, Karmiel sits 28 kilometers (about 17 miles) east of Shavei Tzion and it's true that some folks come from there, and elsewhere, to enjoy "our" seashore. In good weather, on any day, there will be swimmers and splashers, kayakers, surfers, stand-up paddle boarders, kitesurfers and sunbathers. But our beachfront is also busy with planned, community activities including sport competitions, musical events, dance evenings, movie screenings, yoga sessions, the annual "swim", and much more. Most recently, a series of beach volleyball games was held there, culminating in a tournament advertised by a poster showing two convincingly buff young people, bare-chested and bikinied.

The website of the Israeli Volleyball Association tells us that the game has been played in this country since the 1920s with the men's league established in 1956 and a women's league founded really not very much later, in 1960. Sixty years ago, Shavei Tzion people regularly visited the gardens of the Kupat Holim Rest Home (just opposite Gan Otto Hirsch), often playing volleyball and ping pong, too, with the guests there.

The black and white images here show a volleyball tournament on the basketball court beside the Beit Löwengart community hall. The reverse sides of this series of photos are all marked "Tu B'shvat 1962". That year, Tu B'shvat, the Hebrew holiday of trees, fell on January 20, a Saturday, with temperatures that day in Israel's north a mild 18.2° C (about 64° F). But the warmish weather hardly explains why even the adult onlookers are dressed in light summer clothing. The date recorded as Tu B'shvat seems to be off. And what is the connection, after all, between this sport and the tree-planting and the dried fruits that are customarily associated with the holiday?

07/08/2026

Today, of course, we have clever electronic means by which we locate and communicate with our contacts. But in 1938, at Shavei Tzion's founding, and into the war years, family and friends maintained their connections, as best they could, as long as they could, by post and by telegram.

The text here looks at the struggle of two brothers to maintain their belief that they could be reunited despite the terrible depredations suffered by German Jewry even before the war. Then, the four envelopes pictured here have something to tell us about a different family establishing itself in the Land of Israel, and about the new settlement of Shavei Tzion itself.

The Fröhlichs were a family of six when they immigrated to Palestine in September 1938. There were Julius, his wife Liesel, and their four children: Sonja (later Noemi), 12 years old; Helmut (Elkana), 11; Walter (Amos), 8; and Elionore (Esther), 6. Julius' younger brother Simon and his family had stayed behind. But, Amos Fröhlich has written, "(the younger couple) could no longer leave Germany, because of various family obligations, because of restrictions placed on them, (and because) of the lack of funds that thus resulted, and especially because of the certificate (the visa granted by the British Mandate in Palestine) that they were unable to obtain…"

Simon and Marta Fröhlich, said Amos, "had been part of the Rexingen group planning to immigrate to Shavei Tzion… (In Wiesenbronn, where they lived), they had had a store that specialized in furnishing every necessity for young married couples. Their stock included sewing machines, clothing, linens and the like…(but) they were thrown out of their home, the business was expropriated, (and) they were forced to live in a ramshackle shed in their village." Simon and Marta, wrote Amos, "petitioned the authorities to allow them to move into Grandmother's house in Rexingen where there was still a Jewish community, but to no avail. The bar mitzvah of (Heinz) Jakob, their son, was held there in the prayer hall (since) the synagogue had already been desecrated and burnt. It was the last bar mitzvah held there. Only after many petitions (and) about a year after Jakob had left (Germany), were his parents allowed to move into Grandmother's house in Rexingen where they lived less than a year before they were deported to the East, to extermination."

While Simon and Marta still harbored some hope that they would be able to leave Germany and immigrate to Palestine, before they could foresee their final parting from their only child, a charged correspondence opened between the families of the two Fröhlich brothers, in Wiesenbronn and in Shavei Tzion. On August 17, 1939, Simon wrote to Julius and Liesel: "…of course, I'll try to take with us all the old things but because I'll have only a small shipping container I'll need to give up even some of the cupboards… my dear sister-in-law, I'll try to get hold of the things that you left behind. In any case, we'll help one another and we'll try to be one family." In that same letter, Marta added, "We hope, too, that Heinz's arrangements will quickly work out. You can imagine for yourselves what it would mean to us to depart without the boy…" They had been afraid that they might receive a certificate that wouldn't include their son.

Simon wrote to his brother and sister-in-law on December 1, 1939: "My dears, receive this sign of life from me… If only peace were to come already, with God's help, because in the matter of our emigration, which was approved in Berlin already on October 20, on November 23 we received a notice from the bureau in Berlin with the sad news that there are no more certificates to distribute. Imagine for yourselves how disappointed we are, we're in shock, the more so because the transfer (of funds) and all the documents had already been approved. It must be said that the (Jewish Agency) settlement department in Berlin was willing to do everything so that we would be accepted for "special training", and to continue to oversee the business of the transfer. We have to hope for the best, otherwise we would already have lost patience… I don't see how we can prepare a shipping container…"

Two weeks later, Simon wrote, "I want to bring you up to date (and tell you that) apparently our dear Heinz will leave Trieste on a ship (sailing) to Palestine on December 28. We received notification today. Please inform the whole family immediately." And on December 28, Marta wrote, "…We hope that by the time you receive this letter, our Heinz will already be with you. Of course, you can imagine how impatiently we're waiting for first news (of him). We know he'll be in such good hands with you and we thank you for everything. Now, we have only one wish—to see you soon. Maybe somehow you can help in this, because here (our) chances aren't very good. The journey was undoubtedly a beautiful experience. Tell us everything in detail, dear Heinz. How quiet and lonely it is for us now, but the hope that we'll soon be together strengthens and encourages us. Warm regards and kisses to everyone from Marta/Mother/Aunt, with love…"

Amos Fröhlich's memoir tells us that while "the world war was already underway, a way had been found to save (Simon and Marta's) son, sending Jakob alone with Youth Aliyah to the Land of Israel, (and his parents) didn't hesitate… On January 2, 1940, 13-and-a-half-year-old Jakob arrived…". His parents sent with him a small shipping container and, Jakob's daughters have written, "Uncle Julius Fröhlich met (him) at the port in Haifa with a horse and wagon. The household goods (that his parents had sent) were piled onto the wagon: bedding, tablecloths, and amazing porcelain tableware, some of which didn't survive the voyage." In Simon and Marta's letter of January 13, 1940, sent after they had been notified of their son's arrival in Shavei Tzion, they wrote, "…from now on, dear Liesel, you'll have more work. (We) hope that Heinz won't overburden you…" Amos wrote, "Jakob was received by our family and by Shavei Tzion with warmth and love and from that time we lived side by side…"

In Germany, after their difficult parting from their son, after the emotional and material upheavals they had experienced, Simon and Marta Fröhlich were themselves ultimately riven from one another. In 1985, Jakob told the bulletin of the Denkendorfer Kreis für christlich-jüdische Begegnung: "In 1941, my parents were deported from Rexingen and sent from there to Poland. My mother, of blessed memory, was shot by a special commando force as soon as she arrived at the camp and a selection (of prisoners) had been made. My father, of blessed memory, according to testimony, still lived in the Riga ghetto in 1944, (but then) all traces of him disappeared."

31/07/2026

This year, the Hebrew calendar put Tu B'Av on July 29, just two days ago. In the July 1980 edition of the moshav's "Beneinu" ("Between Us") newsletter, Ami Olami, the son of Pesach and Rivka, wrote, "In ancient times, Tu B'Av was a major holiday, but we've ceased almost entirely to observe it today. The day was so important that the Gemara tells that "There were no days so joyous for the Jewish People as the Fifteenth of Av and Yom HaKippurim" and Ami noted five reasons why that was true of Tu B'Av.

As well, he wrote about the customs associated with the holiday in antiquity: "On Tu B'Av, the daughters of Israel would go out to dance in the vineyards, dressed in borrowed white clothing (borrowed so as not to embarrass any maiden who hadn't suitable clothing of her own). And (on that day), the men of the tribe of Benjamin were allowed to take young women in the vineyards and to marry them." And the Gemara says, wrote Ami, "The attractive (young women) would exclaim: 'Choose beauty, for this is the purpose of a wife'; the ones of noble birth would say: 'Choose family, for family is the purpose of a wife'; the unattractive ones would say: 'Choose your mate for the sake of Heaven, but adorn her with gold.'"

The photographs here show the festive celebration of Tu B'Av in Shavei Tzion in the early 1970s, with not a group of young women dressed in white dancing in the vineyards but rather a mixed group of dancers and a very mixed audience. The moshav's vineyards were long gone and time had moved on. Today, the fifteenth of the month of Av has been re-branded in secular circles in Israel and is noted as "a holiday of love", somewhat in competition with Valentine's Day, a foreign holiday that, like Hallowe'en, of all things, is aggressively marketed and growing more popular here and around the world.

In the 1940s, among the other inspired projects he initiated and underwrote in Shavei Tzion, Joseph Grünblatt was responsible for creating the wide grassy "Big Lawn" park at the center of the village, and he offered prizes there in the framework of the Tu B'Av celebration for the most beautiful family gardens.

When he wrote about Tu B'Av in 1980, Ami Olami was a graduate of the Yeshivat HaKotel and a combat soldier in the armored corps of the IDF. At the end of his article, with his characteristic grace, he added a footnote thanking Chana Weil for the "wonderful parcels" he was receiving every month, packages of necessities and treats that the moshav sent each of its young people doing his or her compulsory military service. Chana was in charge at that time of gathering the items for the generous parcels and sending them off. Later, Ami would be ordained as a rabbi and would found the yeshiva in Otniel where he lived with his young family and served as the community rabbi. On November 27, 1994, at the age of 34, Rabbi Amiram Olami of blessed memory was murdered by Hamas terrorists. He left five children and Tirza, his pregnant wife.

24/07/2026

Last year when we visited the kindergarten here and were giving the children a pint-sized version of Shavei Tzion's story, we told them that the early settlers had received a wonderful gift: a milk cow. The little faces fell as they seemed not to understand how a cow could be "wonderful". It's been many years, after all, since our dairy herd left the moshav and was reestablished in a business partnership at Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan.

When once our preschoolers would have often visited the dairy farm here and seen calves paraded at our Shavuot celebration, the present children had no idea: we might have been talking about the gift of a kangaroo. But we persisted. "That cow really was a wonderful gift", we said. "And what do cows give us? Yes, milk. But what else?", we asked, and were thinking "cheese" and "ice cream". After what looked like a difficult conversation with herself, one little girl said, "Soy milk".

In the past, each moshav family owned an aluminum can of a size sufficient to supply the household's needs with the rich raw milk from our dairy: one liter, two liters, two and a half liters. The cans were filled and left at the creamery for the housewives to pick up (where the entrance to the Breakfast Club café's kitchen is now). Later, though, the cans were left for collection at the grocery shop. People of the moshav could very typically be seen with the wooden swing handle of a milk can hooked over one end of a bicycle handlebar and a woven shopping basket over the other.

In about 1990, Smadar Keinon put together several pages of practical information for candidates for membership in the co-operative. About the fresh milk, she wrote that if a new family needed a can, one could be ordered from Nahum Levi in the accounting office where he worked when he wasn't away purchasing goods and matériel for the co-operative and its members. On days when the grocery shop was open (at that time, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings), the cans were to be brought there at 7:30. They would be filled and left on shelves at the back entrance. If a can was brought only in the late morning, its owner was to fill it herself. If a can seemed to be forgotten, it would be placed in the refrigerator. Cans were to be marked with the name of the family. The milk was distributed at no cost to the members.

Newcomers, of course, were cautioned to "boil" the milk, but that rather spoiled the good, fresh taste. On the other hand, if the raw milk were strained before boiling, you might catch any stray bits of hay or straw that had found their way into the family milk can. Boiled or not, cream would eventually rise in the milk and that could be used in coffee or in desserts.

The WIZO This Is How We Shall Cook cookbook held in the archives has five variations on a basic recipe for homemade "ice cream" using plain milk, with its fat component to be somewhat reconstituted by the addition of margarine: coffee ice cream, and chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and "nut" flavors. Those recipes must be an artifact of the austerity years as the book was originally published in Hebrew in 1946 and, in the edition we have, in German in 1954. The regulated austerity program in Israel ended only in 1959. But the cookbook offers a sixth, more appealing recipe for "Orange Ice Cream", no margarine.

Strain the juice of six oranges. Add and mix well, the finely chopped zest of two oranges, two beaten egg yolks, 50 gr sugar cubes, 25 gr pudding powder and 1/4 liter cream. Bring to a boil in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Cool the mixture in small containers and freeze.

17/07/2026

Every photograph, document and object held in our archives is worthy of respect and conservation and if not all then many of those items merit exposure to the wide circle of Shavei Tzion's current and former inhabitants, and its numerous friends in Israel and abroad. The humble school notebook shown here will be traveling to Germany in the fall, on loan to an exhibition opening at Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism and running until the middle of January 2028. That exhibition, titled "The Class Photo", will look at the lives of the children who made up the third-grade class of the Jewish elementary school in Munich in 1937. Sara Hinde ("Rali") Schindler, the eldest child of Shavei Tzion first settlers Esther and Ruben Schindler, was a member of that class and this was her notebook.

Geography was one of the subjects studied by Zev and Margalit Berlinger's pupils in our early school. There were lessons, as well, in history, Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible, English, Arabic, math, physics, chemistry, natural history, music, gardening, physical education, and more. The notebook here is undated but, judging by the changes in Sara-Hinde's handwriting in earlier and later dated notebooks, we suppose that it was used during the first years of the world war when Sara-Hinde was 12 or 13 years old. In photographs of her classroom here, we see the flags of the Allies--Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union--hung on the back wall of the space as small posters, perhaps hand-made.

During those war years, as Yehudit Marx Yardeni wrote in reminiscences composed in 1993, the schoolgirls "knitted hats for soldiers at the front, and scarves, and we wrote letters to soldiers we knew and to soldiers we didn't know", that is, the Palestinian Jews of the Jewish Brigade of the British army. Yehudit remembered, too, that Margalit encouraged her pupils to write to English children but the children of Shavei Tzion were well aware of British intransigence about Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel and the families here were in anguish about their relatives who remained in Germany. "At that time," wrote Yehudit, "we hadn't much sympathy for the English".

In a very practical "geography" lesson, a little bag was made for each child for to use should "the Germans" invade the region and evacuation from Shavei Tzion become necessary. Miriam Oberndörfer (Ofer and later, Klein) remembered that each bag was about 10 centimeters square, marked--perhaps embroidered--with its owner's name. "We thought," said Miriam, "that the adults would stay on to fight".

This image: Sara Hinde Schindler's geography notebook. Undated. Light card covers and paper, 20 x 16 cm (about 8 x 6 in). From the collection of the Shavei Tzion Archives (328).

Tucked into the center of the notebook are several loose pages of geography work, not on graph paper as seen here, but on ruled paper, apparently taken from a different notebook altogether. The back pages of this notebook include lessons in magnetism, electricity and chemistry. The double page in this image shows maps and descriptions for France, Belgium and Holland. Of interest on other pages is the careful mapping of countries where traditional names have fallen into disuse or polities or boundaries have changed: Indochina, for instance, the British Empire, and Yugoslavia. As well, for some but not all the countries studied, both the total population and the Jewish population are noted. The numbers of Jews, reflecting pre-Holocaust populations, make grim reading.

10/07/2026

What had been a local landmark and from 1942, in its several iterations, an ambitious and important player in the hospitality industry in the Land of Israel but derelict and decayed for many years now, the Dolphin House Hotel was razed this week. What's left is a terribly sad rubblescape.

The Dolphin House—a reimagining of the original small pension of the same name in that location--was once a pearl on the Shavei Tzion shore, one of the finest hotels in the country. In 1958, the monthly magazine of the "Hadassah" organization in the United States named the top eleven deluxe hotels in Israel, counting the "Dolphin House Country Club” among them, along with the "King David" in Jerusalem. This revamped Dolphin House in "Shavei-Zion on sea", offered its guests fancy, modern rooms and facilities, as envisioned by its dynamic owner, the South African Norman Lourie.

The schedule of activities at the resort--"Where sun, sea and fashion meet"--was full and varied, with daily water games, swimming, miniature golf, horseback riding, and spear fishing.
Evenings at the Dolphin were gay and sophisticated, with live music and dancing beside the swimming pool. The hotel was a favorite of President Zalman Shazar who vacationed there every year, and it was frequented, too, by foreign diplomats and personalities from the entertainment industry abroad. Among the "famous people" (in Shavei Tzion parlance) who stayed at the Dolphin, our veteran residents remember Danny Kaye, Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Eddie Fisher and Peter Finch. Norman Lourie had connections in the cinema world and when a foreign film was being made in Acre or the vicinity, it was understood that the actors would stay at the Dolphin.

As a means of interesting domestic tourists in a vacation here, the hotel posted advertisements in the Hebrew, English and German newspapers, and the weekly "Dolphin Journal" was published every year in Haaretz and in The Jerusalem Post for months before the summer season opened. The ads announced a "Festival of Music, Dance and Sport" that would include activities from "sunrise to sunset," among them an underwater fishing competition and "a dancing competition to the music of Jossy and his Dolphin Rhythm Band". The festival would climax in the crowning of the "Queen of the Dolphiniad" in a much talked-about beauty contest. In summer 1959, print ads placed by Arkia suggested that tourists "fly to the Western Galilee" and the airline promoted "comfortable and fast flights" at "popular prices" from Tel Aviv to several destinations: Nahariya, Hanita, Acre, and Shavei Tzion. There were a number of hotels and guest houses in the area at that time but, in Arkia's ad, only the Dolphin was mentioned explicitly.

In 1955, the Dolphin House figured prominently in a film produced for the Israel Government Tourist Office. It was, said the narrator, "…a white and gracious resort hotel that looked transplanted from the Riviera: sunlit rooms with balconies opening on the sea, and one touch that could only be Israel—the gardens where they've gathered together every tree and shrub and flower mentioned in the Bible… The hotel was the last word in luxury…"

Watch this clip from a 20-minute home movie made by moshav member Zev Tisser in 1963 to mark the 25th anniversary of Shavei Tzion's founding. The 8mm film was converted to DVD in 2007 and a pop music underscore added. From the collection of the Shavei Tzion Archives.

03/07/2026

"We've gathered here this evening," recited young Hannah Scheuer in rhyming Hebrew verse in July 1943, "in honor of the end of the school year. Like every year, we're very happy, and like every year, we're looking forward to vacation. I've been asked to talk, briefly, about our studies. We're standing at a turning point, having completed eight grades. Now, we'll be workers.

Five and a half years ago, we arrived together in Ahuza (in Haifa, at the immigrants' hostel there). We were still little then, and needed Margalit (Berlinger's) care. (Afterwards) we loved our life in Kiryat Bialik (at the 'Ahava' school), where we studied, sang and rambled about. Then, we moved to Shavei Tzion where we learned to love the community and, there, our lives were a bit different: we studied, worked, and helped at home.

We went to school every morning and, once every year, we were especially happy on our annual trip, this year to the Sharon plain." Hannah recalled, in rhyme, how the children had teased Lea Heidelberger (later, Neugebauer) on that trip, and how Lea had accepted the teasing with good humor. "There were lots of incidents on every trip," wrote Hannah. And she added that the children were always sad when they returned from one of their treks and had to settle down again to their lessons.

"But today," she said, with underlining in her poem to emphasize the status of her school-leaving classmates, "we're graduating and we wish you (the younger pupils) lots of happiness in the coming school year".

In his memoir "Our Family", Amos Fröhlich wrote, "When we finished elementary school in Shavei Tzion, the graduates joined the moshav's work force. Literally that. We did have twice-weekly afternoon lessons during the following two years, and we undoubtedly benefited from Zev Berlinger's efforts to impart additional knowledge to us. The graduates were assigned jobs in every branch of the farm, and they were expected to demonstrate diligence and devotion to their work. Our parents, German immigrants, demanded that of themselves and therefore expected the same of their children. Sometimes, it was hard physical labor, even beyond what could normally be demanded of children of that age."

"Now", Hannah Scheuer had said, "we'll be workers…"

See the images here for a photo of Shavei Tzion's elementary school—the teachers and pupils, and the building which now holds the offices of the co-operative agricultural society, the moshav sh*tufi—and for the verses that Hannah Scheuer wrote in 1943 for the end of the year party that marked the graduation of the eighth-grade class.

Shavei Tzion Archives

28/08/2026

21/08/2026

14/08/2026

07/08/2026

31/07/2026

24/07/2026

17/07/2026

10/07/2026

03/07/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The School

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request