A firsthand view of war

Zionism in this region dates to the late 19th century, but only in the 1960s did locals begin regularly traveling to Israel for vacations, extended trips and settlement.

Working with the regional Israel Aliyah Centers in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh Zionist District began holding aliyah forums as early as 1966, bringing national figures to town to discuss the opportunities and challenges of making aliyah.

The American Zionist Federation was established in 1970 to coordinate Zionist activities in the United States and to encourage Americans to spend more time in Israel, in addition to spending money. A slur tossed around at the time was “alimony Jews,” those who supported Israel financially but wouldn’t visit the country, let alone live there.

The American Zionist Federation of Pittsburgh also began in 1970 and became the local group most closely associated with aliyah. It regularly hosted informational sessions for locals interested in making aliyah for “any length of time” and even arranged an “Aliyah Month” in early 1974 with speakers, programs, and informational displays.

According to Israel Central Bureau of Statistics figures extrapolated by the Jewish Virtual Library, around 1,000 people made aliyah from the United States and Canada in 1968. Then, rates from North America soared: more than 6,400 in 1969, more than 7,100 in 1970, and more than 8,000 in 1971, which remains the highest annual total on record.

Determining local figures is tough. In an article in this newspaper in the early 1970s, Asher Calingold of the Israel Aliyah Center in Philadelphia estimated that more than 400 Pennsylvanians had made aliyah in the record-breaking year 1971. That would suggest that rates of aliyah from western Pennsylvania were in the low double digits.

Judging from anecdotal evidence in the archives, young people from Pittsburgh increasingly spent time at Israeli kibbutzim, schools, and youth programs starting in the mid-1960s, joining the small group of young families who made permanent aliyah during these years. And so, when the Yom Kippur War started in September 1973, Israel was home to a small but notable contingent of Pittsburghers.

Yom Kippur fell on Shabbat that year. This newspaper published a rare eight-page special issue the following Tuesday with news about the war and the local response.

The editor at the time, Al Bloom, maintained ongoing contact with the Pittsburghers living in Israel. He published their correspondence in a series called “Letters from the Yom Kippur War,” running from October through December 1973.

It is fascinating to see the war through the eyes of community leaders like Kitty Ruttenberg, Katharine Falk and Gloria Elbling. But with the benefit of hindsight, the most remarkable letters in this collection come from the Pittsburgh teenagers and 20-somethings who happened to be in Israel when the war started. A few selections:

“Aba, I really feel like your daughter and that I have to carry out this task well. But let me tell you, please don’t worry but for the first time I’m scared.”

“Look — I’ve been pretty honest. Everyone keeps saying they don’t know what to write home. That if they tell their parents they are sleeping in shelters they’ll get hysterical. Look —there’s really no danger here. At this point the Syrians are much more concerned with survival than with their frogs (surface to surface missiles). But we want to be careful.”

“I do not want to come home. I feel safer here than at home at night in our house or even in a plane over the ocean. Also, in my heart I could not leave now. I can’t run out of something I don’t even feel worth running out on. It makes no sense to me. I could do nothing for them in the states if I leave now.”

The best part about working at a community archive is the ongoing relationship between paper and people. Every historic document is connected to someone you know.

Some of the young people who wrote these letters in late 1973 are now grandparents, still living in this community. Some can be seen attending the “Bring Them Home Now” vigils outside the Squirrel Hill Post Office on Sunday afternoons.

In these letters, you can feel young people struggling to capture a moment they know is historic. That’s the way history is taught — as a sequence of major events.

But history isn’t lived in moments. It is lived as a continuum. Each of us is perpetually being influenced, and each of us is also perpetually exerting an influence.

For anyone who lived through that period from the Six Day War in 1967 through the Yom Kippur War in 1973, especially young people who were still developing their worldview, the tenor and the significance of that era hangs in the air like gunpowder.

The same process is silently happening today. Anyone born Jewish in the 21st century has been developing a worldview amid a decade as intense and consequential for American Jews as any in the history of this country. However young people process these events today will inevitably define Jewish communal priorities in the mid-21st century. PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org or 412-454-6406.