The Minchas Elazar’s contention, that the events of 1929 were the result of Zionism and not of inherent Arab hatred toward Jews, is borne out by a recently published account of the pogrom. Rabbi Dov (Benny) Cohen was brought up in Seattle, Washington. In 1926, shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his parents sent him to study in the famous Slobodka Yeshiva of Lithuania, which had recently relocated to Hebron, Palestine. He witnessed the pogrom of 1929 and the events leading up to it, and he miraculously survived it all. After 1929, he moved back to Seattle, where he raised a family and lived to an old age.
Like all the surviving yeshiva students, he was shaken up by the events, and for fifty years he kept silent. Only his diary preserved his memories of the slaughter. But 15 years before his passing, Rabbi Benny Cohen opened his heart and mouth, and began to tell his family the events he had witnessed. He visited Hebron and gave interviews. After his passing, his family found his diary and has published his story as a book, “Vayeilchu Shneihem Yachdav.” The following are excerpts from the book.
“Hebron is called by the Arabs ‘Al Khalil,’ which means ‘the Beloved,’ their expression for the Avraham Avinu – the common ancestor of Jews and Arabs. On this note, we can say that a strong friendship existed among all residents of the city.
“The friendship found expression in the fact that we used to go to attend Arab weddings and wish them mazel tov. Of course we didn’t eat anything at the weddings, but we were welcome guests at all their happy events. Sometimes we would come there even before the ceremony, while they were cooking the lamb and rice, the main dishes served at their parties in those days.
“The Arabs, and even their sheikhs, used to attend Jewish weddings as a sign of friendship. I remember that my mother as well, who spend a few months in Hebron after bringing me before returning to America, participated in an Arab wedding, at the dancing ceremony. The custom was that the bride danced before the groom, a ceremony at which only women were present. The Arab neighbors invited my mother, and she came.
“The friendship and trust was such that we, the yeshiva students, used to go down sometimes to the village of Tarkumia to buy eggs and other products, sometimes even after midnight. In those years we walked around freely, without security patrol and without any weapons of self-defense, in all the Arab villages. No one had any fear. It happened once that as we were returning from shopping in Tarkumia, a group of villagers came out to greet us with dances and timbrels. When we asked what the occasion was for such rejoicing, they said that they were doing it in our honor, to express the villagers’ respect for the yeshiva students.
“Every month on Erev Rosh Chodesh, the yeshiva, including Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein and Rabbi Leib Chasman, would go to pray at the Cave of Machpelah. We were welcomed there. I remember that the Arab caretaker of the mosque used to watch over the rosh yeshiva’s gold cane, and he even allowed us to go above the famous seven steps, sometimes one extra step and sometimes more, I think until the eleventh step. It was well-known that when the yeshiva considered moving to a different location, the local Arab leaders stood up to prevent it.
“The events leading up to the pogrom began at the Western Wall on Yom Kippur, 1928. Until that time, Jews had prayed at the Wall in an unofficial way, without tables or chairs, and without a partition between men and women. On that Yom Kippur they set up a partition, brought benches for the elderly, and installed lighting. The Arabs, under the leadership of Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, saw this as an encroachment on their territory, and they threatened to attack the Jews if nothing was done to stop them. So the British Mandate police entered the praying crowd and removed the partition by force.
“In the course of time, the British government, in an effort to strike a fair balance between Jews and Arabs, set exact regulations for what could be done at the Wall and what could not be done. Reading the Torah was permitted on some days but not others, blowing shofar was prohibited at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, and the chazzan’s prayer stand could not be above a certain height.
“The Zionists seized on the conflict over the Wall as an opportunity to start a dispute with the Arabs and the British authorities. Over the heads of the poor, humble Jews who prayed at the Wall, the Zionist leaders opened a wave of protest, for they saw the stones of the Wall as symbolic stones of conflict, over which there could be no compromise. On Tisha B’av of that year [1929], which fell on Thursday, the Zionist Jews held a massive demonstration, which culminated in a march to the Wall, accompanied by the cry, ‘The Wall is our Wall!’
“These cries, which were heard clearly in the houses of the Muslim Quarter, spurred the Arabs to prove that the Wall was theirs… Following the demonstration, the Mufti’s agents spread rumors that the Jews were trying to conquer the Temple Mount. The next day, Friday, the Arabs held their own demonstration, during which they struck many of the Jews praying at the Wall, broke tables and burned prayerbooks.”
“After the Mufti’s speech in the Al Aqsa mosque that same day, an Arab mob armed with knives marched out of the Damascus Gate toward the Jewish neighborhoods. Over the following week, nineteen Jews were killed in Jerusalem.” Rabbi Benny Cohen goes on to describe in great detail how on the following Shabbos, 67 Jews were massacred in Hebron.
Unfortunately, the general Jewish world failed to learn the lesson the Minchas Elazar learned from the events of 1929. The Zionist movement reacted by transforming its Haganah forces from a tiny, untrained militia to a capable underground army of 50,000 soldiers. In the 81 years since then, Zionism’s actions have only led to more bloodshed and sorrow. It is time to heed the words of Moshe Rabbeinu: “Do not ascend, for Hashem is not in your midst, so that you do not get smitten by your enemies!”
Excerpted from:
https://torahjews.org/2023/11/26/parsha-pearls-parshas-shlach
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Minchas Elazar – Dov (Benny) COHEN –
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