Saul and Johanna
Naomi Frankel
1967
All of a sudden, Grandmother’s empty burial plot is occupied. They finally returned mother to father’s side. One tree spreads its shadow over both their graves. Grandmother, too, finally gets what she had wished for her entire life. Grandfather is next to her, resting in his place. [ . . . ]
A spacious burial plot, covered in snow. Here and there…
Creator Bio
Naomi Frankel
Born into an assimilated family in Berlin, Naomi Frankel joined the Socialist Zionist youth group Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir as a teenager. After being evacuated from Germany to Palestine in 1933, Frankel served in the Palmach during the War of Independence. Later, she joined Kibbutz Bet Alpha, where she began writing, exploring the interactions of Zionism and the prewar German Jewish milieu she had known as a child. In 1970, she left the kibbutz and became observant, rejecting the leftist politics of her youth. She moved in 1983 to Hebron, where she remained the rest of her life, advocating actively for the creation of Greater Israel.
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