Tallises (Prayer Shawls) of the Illegal Immigrants

By: Yaakov Rosenfeld, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem

The First Light at the Haifa Port

The sun will rise

on the shore of Haifa

and to shower it with blessings

a soul will fly.

On the deck of a ship

The image of a fleeting vision

A soul of humanity

Between water and sky.

This is the land… just to see,

And therefore, it is permissible to weep.

And he stands, wrapped between the wings of –

One of thousands

One of the wings

Family members

The ones who remained from the Valley of Tears.

Silent  in front of Mount Carmel

Holding a siddur (prayerbook) and muttering

And no one sees, no one hears

Only a broken heart and a weeping soul

Under the wings of the floating Shechina (G-d’s presence)

A pure soul, a clouded eye

And from the depths it says:

My G-d, the soul that you have given

You have created it

And you have formed it

From hunger and from murder

You will be blessed forever

On the beloved land that You have given

On the luminaries of light that You have created

You will be blessed forever

Creator of holy ones

Those who are slain for you, lights of splendour

Martyrs who are under the Throne of Glory.

Someone in the corner

On the deck of a ship

A figure shivering in the cold

Hiding in secret

And there is no lamentation, no resentment

only supplication

She is only whispering a prayer.

The Dov Hoz ship

On Lag Ba’Omer 5706 (May 19th, 1946), early in the morning, the illegal immigrant ship Dov Hoz docked in the port of Haifa, along with its companion, the “Eliyahu Golomb.” The long voyage was accompanied by noise and storm. The Jewish world closely followed Dov Hoz and the hundreds of Holocaust survivors who had been on board for nine months, risking their lives. The Jewish community in Israel demonstrated for Dov Hoz’s illegal immigrants through a hunger strike and other actions that turned Dov Hoz into a miniature “national struggle.” When the saga ended and Dov Hoz docked in Haifa, the leaders of the Jewish Zionist community rushed to seize the opportunity and boarded the Dov Hoz ship at dawn to meet the heroic illegal immigrants who were, as described to this day, “Zionists and free.” However, in the “Yomon HaTzaharaim Haifa,” which was published that day, a few lines were published, on which this poem of ours is based:

“When Mr. Remez (David Remez, chairman of the Settlement Committee) boarded the ship in the morning, he found many Jews wrapped in tallises and praying” …

In the next article in the series, we will briefly describe what the survivors said about the Seder and the kosher and joyful Passover that they celebrated.

Ganzach Kiddush Hashem is looking for the descendants of the survivors on the Dov Hoz who were “wrapped in tallises and tefillin” as we would like to document their story and legacy.