As I said before, my dad worked at a bank - an Algerian company. At two, or two thirty, he would leave work and go to Boulous Fraire on the Normandy hill. They sold electronics there. And at night, he would accompany mom to the club. The club was open every day from Sunday to Thursday from four o’clock. Women would go there to play cards. They would get dolled up, dressed, do their hair, put on blush, and be tip top. High heels and handbags, everything tip top like Lebanese women. And the men would accompany them too. They would all be sitting together and play a card game, tell jokes and coming home. On Saturday night we would go have dinner with dad at the restaurant, and on Sunday we would also spend time with them. And on summer holidays, the three months of the of summer, we would go out to Hamdoun and Aley. Some of the Jews in Hamdoun and some in Aley. Some would be at the beach and on the weekend would go out to the mountains. And all the Jews would do that together, and the neighbourhood together. In Beirut, Wadi Abu Jmil, there are no remnants (of Jewish life) other than the Great Synagogue. But in Hamdoun there are still a few remnants. The road to […]. Then…the woman did not work (in those days). Very few would work. You could count the girls, very few would work. But my mother would teach at the American University, teaching English. And she would swim, do swimming competitions. And she won three times - twice in Beirut and once in Syria. They took her to a pool in Syria. It was before (19)48. That’s the story they told me about them. She had…she was number one in swimming. We would go to the beaches often. And we would meet there at the beach […], we would meet the Christian families who were from the Phalanges. Pierre Gemayel, doctor Fattal. All of those people would come. We were with them…they were very good relations between the Jews and…even with Muslims. We had Muslim friends, everything was good. After that, after the Six Day War, things changed. The beach…we would all meet, all the Jews, was Long Beach. Every day we would leave the hose at seven in the morning, until nine at night when it closed. We would spend every day, every day, every day at the beach, all of us together, the children. And the mothers would also meet there and play cards…in French, [other names]. And we would…be together. And […] together from the house. Very, very beautiful memories.

Pesach…someone would come into the Wadi with a truck with boiling water. They would dunk all the cooking pots they cooked in, the pots…they would put it into it, to boil it…boil it in boiling water. That’s how they would be made kosher for Pesach. We would do the holidays very nicely. The holiday was very beautiful. The whole family would meet, all the children, (more) children, (more) children and (more) children. We would wait for the Pesach and Rosh HaShana holidays. We would be maybe 30-40 people. It was very beautiful. And we would sing the Pesach Hagada. They would begin it in Hebrew and after they would say it in Arabic. I can tell you…like “one is Gd”, the would sing “Allah hu Allah hu la illah illahu”. It was very….beautiful. And we felt…and we left, and we came here. And all the time my family would reminisce about Lebanon. We were forced to leave, like everyone left in the end. Some left by force. I mean, things happened…thank Gd nothing happened to us. We left in time. In the year…we kept […]. The Lebanese Jews travelled and emigrated, and started wanting to marry the daughters off. Someone would come living in Mexico, one lived in…they tried….they wanted to only marry each other to preserve the Lebanese traditions and upbringing. And…it was very important, till today. Then we left and lived in Brooklyn. I returned to (be) with the community. And we got involved with them again, and the children got to know the community more. Because here we weren’t…we weren’t with the community. We (Lebanese Jews in Israel) were very few because everyone who came settled in Bat Yam, in Ramat HaNasi. We lived in Herzliya. The whole family is all over the world and our friends are all over the world. And I communicate with all of them. I was in Mexico, I was in every place…I knock on the doors and say “hi, coucou!”. And afterwards, I arranged a meeting with all my friends from my class. I made a meetup for them here in Israel. I organised an outing for them on two Fridays. And we sang our school sings we used to sing…we would sing before leaving the class. We would sing…in French and in Arabic we would sing the Lebanese national anthem. And that of Syria - I don’t know why.

After the Six Day War, which was in June…in December, my mother said to us one day before “prepare yourselves - tomorrow we’re going”. We didn’t know a thing before. I was at school, and I had started the brevet. They were scared to say it. We left - me, my mother and two sisters. Dad stayed in Beirut. He couldn’t come. And at first, he didn’t want to come to Israel. We travelled via Turkey and…three days. I was crying, because we were scared. We didn’t know what Israel was. We didn’t have anybody (in Israel). And we arrived here. It wasn’t easy. At first, mom was on her own. They gave us a house in Herzliya. Ground floor. We slept on our own. After, I went to Meir Shfeya, me and my sister Vicky who passed away, may she rest in peace. Then, I came back a year later. I went to Herzliya high school. I did regular 10th grade, and then I went back and did clerical 10th grade and clerical 11th grade. I left, and later dad came to Israel. We were scared because there wasn’t much money. I started working […], and thank Gd everything was good. And dad came to Israel and worked at Bank HaPoalim. My sisters studied…my sister finished the bagrut. I only did clerical 11th grade. I mean, I finished with a secretary diploma. That’s how we studied. We started working, and thank Gd.

Rosh HaShana…we would do the holidays with family together. But Rosh HaShana we did for two nights - one night for Israel and one for abroad. And Passover too, we did two nights. And we would always do it at my uncle’s house, who was […] lived with him. All of the holidays we were all together there. Yom Kippur…they would take us to do kapparot in a place where they would bring all the chickens…and do (swing it in a circle) kapparot, kapparot, kapparot. That’s how we would commemorate it. I didn’t like it because it was very strong to slaughter it in front of us for kapparot. That’s how the tradition was before Yom Kippur. And later…we would come. Yom Kippur we would go to the synagogue. My father who was…we weren’t, religious but we would fast on Yom Kippur. And…we would meet, all of us, together there. There was the big synagogue, and at Alliance, the school, below, there was a small synagogue. We would go to Alliance, underneath. The whole community would meet and fast, and walk and be together. We did the holidays very nicely. Then, on Sukkot, they would make a big sukkah, and they would do slikhot and you would hear […] in every place. Even from the Wadi we would hear from Normandy and we would…because it wasn’t very far. The Jews would work…in all jobs, all the professions. But in many cases they would work between each other; this person would sell to here, this kosher one would sell to the Jews…and it was very interesting. The meat, we would go to the person selling kosher meat.

In the very beginning, we lived in a building which was owned fully by Jews, and every night we would meet up. There was the the Hayim family and Roni Mann, Joseph and Roza Baghdadi and mami, Yvonne and Marius Grego. We would have dinner together every night, the children would play together and the family would be together for many years. I even remember in the…what’s it called? The civil war that was in Lebanon in 1957 (?) how they were firing. We we were sitting at our neighbour’s place and bullets came through the windows. But we were always together until…later, the building got old, and everyone moved to a different place. My father decided to live with Muslims. We were in the Ayn El-Mreisseh neighbourhood. In our building there were the Negri and Mahlab families. And I communicate with all…with many people from the community, the community. And we fulfil and preserve things from home, the Lebanese Jewish traditions. The holidays, the Lebanese food from my mother. And at home we weren’t kosher. My father worked with the French. He grew up with the French. And I felt a bit foreign, not like everyone. But we would go to the neighbours place, listen to the holidays and listen to kiddush, go to the synagogue. My uncle was very, very, very religious. He worked at the synagogue. And he would smuggle Jews coming from Syria to Israel via Beirut. He would hide them in the synagogue and help them flee. Today there are very few Jews in Beirut. I have two cousins who live in Beirut and married with non-Jews. And I’m in communication with their children and with them.

Every Friday night, we would go to a place called Gigi R. We would meet there and open the holy book, the bible. And we’d read in it “lekha dodi, likrat Shabbat”. We would do a sort of Shabbat - we, I mean the children. The students. And then we would feel as though we were doing Shabbat, and we would say “Shabbat shalom”. And we would go home.

Then, after our building had to be demolished, we moved to Ayn El Mrayseh. Ayn El Mrayseh is a Muslim neighbourhood. And we were there about two years when the Six Day War started. And we were at the Alliance school. They said “hurry hurry, the war between Israel and Arab countries has started”. We immediately went home by taxi. It was very scary, because in our building there were many Muslims, there were Christians, and they didn’t like us. We closed the door. But the owner of the building knocked on our door and said, “if you need anything, don’t go out to the street. Don’t go outside or they might kill you. I’ll bring you whatever you need.” We didn’t leave the house for seven days. Before we went out, after the war, when the war started we went into the house. We saw words written in a large font: “Zionist! Slaughter the Zionist! Throw him in the sea! Many things against Jews were written in Arabic. And they were all doing this stuff and shouting “kill the Jews! Slaughter the Jews!”. It was very scary. Seven days passed, which weren’t easy. We went back to school. The Phalangists helped us. They would stand out the front of the school and protect us. Then one family started…a terrorist killed a Jew. Then they kidnapped a Jew. Things against Jews started happening. We were at school and my mother said to me “you have one night to say ‘bye bye’ to your friends. Tomorrow we’re leaving to Israel. And your father isn’t coming with us”. It was a very big shock because we had no prior knowledge of this. We had friends, and school, the brevet - we had started the brevet diploma.

And then I progressed bit by bit. I travelled to London to learn English. I was very strong in Latin language…in the Latin languages. And I returned here and got married, and worked. I was always working. Then we travelled to America. We were in New York for about seven years. Then we returned to Israel. The whole time I wanted to return to be around my family. There’s nowhere like Israel, but at the start I didn’t like it. Over time, I liked it a lot. We didn’t lack anything. Life here is very close to how it was in Beirut. People are very…talk to each other, help each other, whether Arab or Jews. We’re the same. Just like in Beirut. In Beirut we lived…Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Christians, Druze…we were in the same building. There was no problem.