To whom it may concern,
I promised to write about my family’s journey to the Land of Israel. I will try to convey the story as it was told to me by my grandfather, Tzidkiya ben Jabhair, and my father, Khani ben Tzidkiya, of blessed memory.
My family left the city of Urmia in 1924 and reached the Land of Israel only in 1926. It is difficult to put into words the suffering they endured on their way. They traveled on foot and, at times, on donkeys, through cold nights without food or water. For part of the journey, they survived on dried fruit instead of regular food.
My family was one of approximately 300 families who immigrated during those years. At the time, our community was called Aramuzhena, immigrants from Azerbaijan, and our language was called Targum, or, as our people called it, Lishanan Lishan HaKodesh Ila.
Naturally, because of the conditions in which they lived, the dates cannot be considered completely precise.
My father was born in 1905 in the city of Urmia, near the lake. He had one brother and two sisters. Their lives were marked by the upheavals of war and the Russian Revolution during the First World War, from 1914 to 1918. During those years, the area where they lived changed hands repeatedly, sometimes falling under Russian control and sometimes under Turkish control. When the Russians ruled, they persecuted Jews and Christians; when the Turks ruled, they persecuted Jews and Muslims.
Those who nevertheless helped the Jews to some extent were the Armenians. My grandfather, of blessed memory, worked as a goldsmith and was invited to the homes of wealthy Armenians who treated him with great respect. He made all kinds of jewelry, swords and spears, belts and kumazim, as well as other ornaments from silver and gold.
The Armenians loved him greatly. When my aunt, my father’s sister Goli, reached marriageable age, Muslims wanted to abduct her. The Armenians took her into their home for about two years and said that she was a Christian, and in this way she was saved. Later, she married a wealthy man who lost his fortune as a result of the Russian Revolution.
In 1924, my family left Urmia and reached Baghdad, Iraq. On the way, my father’s brother died, apparently after falling from the donkey he was riding on his way to the Land of Israel. His name was Rafael, may his memory be a blessing.
The family remained in Baghdad for about a year and a half. They worked and saved money so they could continue their journey. From there, with the help of an organized Jewish group of immigrants from Tehran, they were taken as far as Aleppo, Syria. There they became stranded because they did not have enough money to continue.
My grandfather had no patience for waiting. He said, “I am so close to Jerusalem and I am not willing to wait any longer.” He took his goldsmithing tools, carried them on his back, and walked all the way to the Old City of Jerusalem.
There, local Jews welcomed him and gave him a place to sleep in a synagogue until the rest of the family arrived about two weeks later. They arranged a place for the family to live in the Old City of Jerusalem.
My parents married in 1927. My father worked for a short time in construction and then began learning goldsmithing from a relative named Shem Tov, also from the city of Urmia.
About ten years after arriving in the Land, between 1934 and 1936, he built a house in the Machaneh neighborhood of Jerusalem and lived there until his death in 1998.
My mother died of cancer at the age of 62 in 1976. Together, my parents raised three sons and three daughters. One of the sons, Benjamin, was killed by members of the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948, may God avenge his blood.
In 1953, my father and I opened a successful goldsmithing business in Jerusalem’s Bukharim neighborhood. Our paths separated in 1959, when I moved to another city. My father continued to practice the craft of artistic goldsmithing, in which he was exceptionally gifted, until his peaceful death in 1998.
He lived to see 16 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren, all of them living in the Land of Israel. May his memory be a blessing.