In the centre of Hebron are situated many Jewish owned buildings. After the Jewish community had been forced to leave Hebron in the period of the British Mandate, Arab squatters took over these buildings. These buildings include Bet Hadassah, Bet Romano, Bet Schneersohn, and the Avraham Avinu complex.
Sadly, with the liberation of Hebron, the Israeli Government did nothing to return these buildings to the Jews. Any action to reclaim them had to be done, over the opposition of the Israeli Government, by individuals �taking the law into their own hands.�
It was soon after Pesach 1979 that a group of women in the dead of night �broke into� Bet Hadassah and set up residence. The Government put a siege on the place but the women stuck fast. Gradually the siege was lifted.
On the morning of the First Day of Rosh Hashanah 1979, a Minyan had been held in Bet Hadassah and in the afternoon, a message was sent to Kiryat Arba that people should come on the following day to strengthen the Minyan. I went along. At the time they had no Aron Hakodesh and the Sefer Torah was kept in a recess in the back wall.
For Yom Kippur, I, together with Meir Peretz converted a big wooden carton into an ark by lining it with a sheet. The guard at the gate of Bet Hadassah allowed us to take it in; in those days, one could not be sure what would happen! After my meal before Yom Kippur, I hurried down to Bet Hadassah. I arrived about five minutes before the start of the Fast and they asked me whether I wanted a drink but I declined. An hour or so later I was sorry; all the running down there from Kiryat Arba had taken its toll. All this added to the affliction which is the Mitzvah of Yom Kippur.
The following morning I again went to Bet Hadassah, first going into the Cave of Machpelah to say some Tehillim. I spent the whole day in Bet Hadassah. During the break between Mussaf and Minchah, Rabbi Levinger brought some mattresses for people to rest on. After Yom Kippur, I asked someone to loan me some money, in the hope that I would find an Arab taxi to return me to Kiryat Arba. Fortunately, I soon found such a taxi.
I had wanted to join the pioneers in Bet Hadassah, but there was then a problem. The eating was communal and the Shemitta year was just starting and they were utilising the �Heter Mechira� which I did not use. However in the summer of 1981, when the products were no longer Shemitta produce, I was able to realise this ambition. It was on Lag B�Omer, a Friday, that there was the consecration of the rebuilt Avraham Avinu Synagogue and on the same day the Levinger family moved from Bet Hadassah to a refurbished house next to this Synagogue. Two days later my family moved to Bet Hadassah.
That day, I asked Chai Sa�adia, who had a small van whether he could take our effects to Bet Hadassah. He told us that by coincidence his family were also moving there that day. He accordingly took the effects of both families there. Bet Hadassah became my family�s dwelling place for nearly two years. I shall now briefly describe a few of the incidents during this period which come into my mind,
My family received a room which was situated on the top floor - the far room on the left hand side. The room already had internal brick wall partitions and was internally divided into three rooms. When one entered the main door of the room one came to a narrow room - about 2 metres in width, which extended along the whole length of the room. Off this room were two squarish rooms which we utilised as bedrooms - one for Dina and myself and the other for the children, who then numbered six. A few months later the seventh was born. The latter room was filled with beds, a double bunk and cots. When we first received this area, the narrow room was filled with all sorts of furniture and junk and we spent some time clearing it and sorting it out.
Several families were living on the two floors of this building, each of them having received one room. The corridor of the lower floor was used as the communal dining room. One room on the upper floor served as the Bet Hamedrash. Every facility involving water was confined to the front area of the building.
In the city of Hebron, there were often water stoppages. In such cases, the army would bring along water in big tankards and from them fill our tanks. In 1982, Rosh Hashanah was on Thursday and Friday, meaning that there would be three days, when if there were stoppages of water, we would not be able to call on the army. We accordingly asked, Rabbi Lior, if on Yom-Tov we could get the Arab Hebron Municipality to fill our tanks from their tankards. I was told that he gave permission for Yom-Tov but added that such permission did not extend to Shabbat. In fact all this was fortunately unnecessary, since the army instructed the Hebron Municipality to ensure that the water to Bet Hadassah would not be cut off during these three days.
During the period I was in Bet Hadassah, we managed to gain possession of other Jewish property in Hebron such as Bet Schneersohn and Bet Harokeach. As soon as we gained possession, we immediately �created facts� and transferred families there. The Sa�adia family went to Bet Rokeach and the Oriel family to Bet Schneerson. In the latter there was a problem. One of the rooms there prior to 1929 had been used as a Synagogue and the question arose whether one could now use it as a living room.
However the major building which we regained possession of, was Bet Romano. This was a very large building owned by the Lubavitch. Up to that period, the Arabs were using it as a school. On the same day as we gained possession, Rabbi Levinger told us to go there and take out all the furniture. This was not a simple job. In any school there is a mass of school desks and other equipment. We moved most of it into the grounds at the back until it was chock-a-block with furniture. At a later date, the Hebron Arab Municipality took away the furniture. To make as much use as possible of the place, we immediately opened a Bet Hamedrash there in place of that at Bet Hadassah. Within a few weeks a Yeshivah, Shavei Hevron was opened there.
The Religious Council of Kiryat Arba extended the Eruv to incorporate all these buildings. I was asked to check each week that the wire near Bet Hadassah was still intact.
When my family first went to live there, we took only a limited amount of furniture but as time progressed we took down more things. In the beginning we would eat in the communal dining room, but after several months, we decided we would install our own private kitchen in our room. We therefore employed a plumber to install a sink together with a draining board and cupboards underneath it. Since the source of water and the drainage was at the opposite side of the building, we had to install extensive piping. We also brought over our refrigerator and gas cooker from Kiryat Arba.
However one cannot live without problems. It was during Pesach 1982 that our refrigerator suddenly stopped working. Fortunately there was a big communal refrigerator in Bet Hadassah and we transferred there all the food from our refrigerator. I had paid for a service contract on this refrigerator and immediately after Pesach, I ordered the technician. He refused to come! He was frightened to come to Hebron and he made the absurd suggestion that I bring it to Kiryat Arba. We were not talking here about a portable machine such as a radio but a very large machine. They argued that my address was registered as Kiryat Arba. That was no argument - according to the service contract, one could notify them of change of address. In addition, when a few months later it came up for renewal, I wrote my address as Hebron and they accepted my renewal without argument. But they still refused to come.
I was not prepared to pass over all this without comment and I put the matter in the hands of the complaints department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Sadly, I received no sympathy from them. They argued I lived �outside Israel� and the law of service contracts only covered the area of Israel. When I pointed out that in my renewal I had changed my address to Hebron, they had the chutzpah to criticise me for doing it �surreptitiously.� They argued that I should specifically pointed this change out to them and got their agreement! In the end, my refrigerator remained in an unusable state until I took it back to Kiryat Arba, when we finally returned there.
On Sukkot, a big Sukkah was built in the grounds of Bet Hadassah. In addition, on the two Sukkot when I was there, I arranged for Chai Sa�adia to bring the sections of my Sukkah to Bet Hadassah. On one evening during Chol Hamoed, I went to a Simchat Bet Hashoeva out of town. I returned to Kiryat Arba in someone�s car at about midnight. I then walked alone in the dead of night unarmed to Bet Hadassah. Then only sounds I could hear on the way were dogs barking.
The second Purim I was there, occurred on Motzoei Shabbat. The Ulpana at Kiryat Arba had asked me to read the Megillah for them that evening - my �unique style� of reading it was very popular - and it was arranged that they would collect me by car immediately after Shabbat. However, no-one knows what the weather will be like and that Shabbat it snowed; by the end of Shabbat the roads were blocked. I therefore ended up hearing the Megillah in Bet Romano.
On one occasion, the Israeli television came to film how we were living and at a later date I saw the programme. My daughter Hadassah was an expert in getting in front of the camera! She would conveniently appear several times wheeling a pram backwards and forwards and again �conveniently� appear to lay cutlery on the table.
The Bet Hadassah building was in a poor state of preservation, We lived on the top floor and we could see the metal girders in the roof which were very rusty and, as we learned towards the end of our stay there, very dangerous. It was on one Motzoei Shabbat that I was in my room, when I heard a loud bang. A sizeable chunk of the metal girder had fallen off hitting the fluorescent light during its descent. Fortunately, I was not in direct line of the projectile!
We then saw that we could not continue living in that particular room, and we moved to a room on the lower floor. Since this room was much smaller, we also partitioned off a part of the adjacent corridor. Soon after, the Government agreed to completely renovate Bet Hadassah and it was thus necessary for all the families to vacate it. We therefore returned to Kiryat Arba in time for Pesach 1983. We had been pioneering there for almost two years and thus had made our contribution to the resettlement of Jews in the heart of Hebron.