Tag Archives: Romanian Jews

Jews of the Week: Sara Braverman and Hanna Szenes

First Ladies of the IDF

Sara “Surika” Braverman (1918-2013) was born in Romania. She joined Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement, when she was just 9 years old. She made aliyah at 20 and co-founded Kibbutz Shamir in the Galilee. She served with the pre-IDF Haganah, and then joined its elite special forces unit, the Palmach. During World War II, she agreed to join a group of soldiers to form a “Jewish commando” unit that would parachute into Nazi-occupied Europe with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). The mission was to go undercover and assist in underground operations while rescuing Allied pilots and helping Jews escape. Out of 240 that volunteered, 110 were taken for training in Egypt, and 33 were ultimately selected, including Braverman.

Another inductee was Hanna Szenes (1921-1944), originally from Hungary. Her parents noted her bright mind early on, and put her in a prestigious private school. However, Jewish students had to pay triple the tuition, and Szenes nearly dropped out because she couldn’t afford it. (The school later reduced her tuition as she was a gifted student.) Such discrimination led her to become a passionate Zionist. Upon graduation, she made aliyah and studied at the Nahalal Girls’ Agricultural School. Szenes soon joined a kibbutz, as well as the Haganah. In 1943, she joined the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and became a paratrooper. She was then recruited by the SOE and met Sara Braverman. In March of 1944, they were air-dropped in Yugoslavia. Their mission to go into Hungary was called off, but Szenes went anyway with part of the group. They were captured and tortured. Szenes refused to give up any information, and was ultimately executed by firing squad. Her remains were returned to Israel in 1950, and her diary and inspiring poems (in both Hebrew and Hungarian) were posthumously published and became hugely popular. Meanwhile, Braverman had stayed behind and joined Josip Tito’s underground partisans. When her mission ended, she was smuggled out through Italy and returned home. At the start of Israel’s War of Independence, Braverman founded the IDF Women’s Corps at the request of Chief of Staff Yaakov Dori. She recruited 32 other women and the group trained together in Tel Aviv. She went on to promote IDF service among Israeli women for decades to come, and is today known as the “IDF’s First Lady”.

Words of the Week

The gravest sin for a Jew is to forget what he represents.
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Jews of the Week: Marcel and Sylvan Adams

Canadian-Israeli Mega Donors

Marcel Adams and Sylvan Adams

Meir Marcel Abramovici (1920-2020) was born to a traditional Jewish family in Romania and became a leather tanner like his father. After three years in Nazi labour camps, he escaped to Turkey, and then to Israel, where he fought in the War of Independence. A few years later, he moved to Canada and got a job working at a Quebec tannery, where his boss told him to change his last name to “Adams”. Once he saved a little bit of money he began investing in real estate. In 1958, Adams became a full-time real estate investor and founded Iberville Developments. Today, the company has over 100 shopping centres, residential buildings, and industrial properties across Canada and the US. Before he passed away, Adams was the world’s second-oldest billionaire, and a noted philanthropist. He established Tel Aviv University’s Adams Institute for Business Management Information Systems and the Adams Super Center for Brain Research.

His son Sylvan Adams (b. 1958) took over Iberville Developments in 1990, and served as its CEO for the next 25 years, until making aliyah and settling in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, he took up professional cycling and in 2017 won the World Masters Championship in England. The following year, he opened the first indoor velodrome in Israel (and the entire Middle East). He gave 80 million shekels to bring the 2018 Giro d’Italia, one of cycling’s prestigious Grand Tours, to Israel, marking the first time that the tournament was held outside Europe. Adams has signed the Giving Pledge and is a huge philanthropist. He donated 100 million shekels to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center in 2019, and financed a new children’s hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. Earlier this week, he announced $100 million to Ben-Gurion University in the Negev to “rebuild and strengthen” the south of Israel following the October 7 massacre. His foundation provides doctoral scholarships at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and funds the Nefesh b’Nefesh “Bonei Zion Prize” for immigrants to Israel who make a profound impact on the country. He also donated $5 million to SpaceIL to develop Israel’s nascent space program and put an Israeli spacecraft on the moon. Adams is still cycling, and earlier this year won the UCI Cycling World Championships in his age category.

Chanukah Begins Tonight – Chag Sameach!

Chanukah & the Light of Creation

Words of the Week

We must support the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, and visit the gentile sick along with the Jewish sick, and bury the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, for the sake of peace.
– Talmud, Gittin 61a

Jew of the Week: Sammy Ofer

Israel’s Richest Man

Sammy Ofer (Courtesy: www.sammy-ofer.com)

Shmuel Hershkovitz (1922-2011) was born in Romania and raised in Haifa. He grew up by the seashore as his father ran a ship supply shop near the port of Haifa. Hershkovitz himself worked for the Dizengoff shipping company in his youth. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the British Navy and served on a minesweeper in the Mediterranean. He later fought in Israel’s Independence War serving in what would become the Israeli Navy. Hershkovitz was among Israel’s first naval officers. After the war, he worked for the family business before purchasing his own ship to import goods for the new State. As the business expanded and the fleet of ships grew, Hershkovitz changed the name of the company, and his own last name, to “Ofer”. In 1969, the company partly merged with Israel’s largest shipping company, ZIM. It continued to operate under the management of Ofer’s brother, while Ofer himself moved to Europe to start a new shipping business. By the late 80s, his company had a fleet of over 200 ships, and partly owned Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. It later expanded into real estate, banking, and other industries. Ofer became Israel’s richest man, with a net worth of several billion dollars. He shared a lot of that wealth, too. In 2007, he donated $25 million to the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, most of which went to build a 2000-bed state-of-the-art underground, bomb-proof hospital. (The facility has now been converted into a coronavirus treatment centre.) The following year, Ofer donated £20 million to London’s National Maritime Museum—the largest private donation to a museum in British history. He gave sizeable gifts to Tel Aviv Medical Center and IDC Herzliya as well, and established the Medicines Foundation to subsidize the cost of cancer treatment for those in need. All in all, Ofer donated over $100 million to hospitals in Israel. He also gave $20 million to build the Sammy Ofer Stadium, the home of Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Haifa soccer clubs and Israel’s second-largest sports facility with over 30,000 seats. In 2008, Ofer was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. His two sons remain among the richest Israelis in the world (though they live in Monaco). Last week, his son Eyal donated 10 million shekels to three Israeli hospitals to help fight coronavirus. His other son Idan gave the largest ever donation (£25 million) in honour of his father to the London Business School, whose townhall has since been renamed the Sammy Ofer Centre.

Words of the Week

Every Jew is obligated to study Torah, whether he is poor or rich, healthy or ill, young or old. Even if one is destitute or if he has familial obligations, he must still establish fixed times for Torah study.
– Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam, 1135-1204 (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:8)