CALDWELL – Through 94 years of life, Maraglit Edelson has seen the world change in ways very few can grasp.
From living in Palestine to moving to Caldwell where she raised her family, she has seen the birth of a new country as well as the birth of the town she has called home for the past 50 years.
Edelson has recently wrote a book, “I am a Palestinian Jew,” that was released this past May. She says the inspiration to write her book came from Rabbi Alan Silverstein, former spiritual leader of Congregation Agudath Israel (CAI).
“When he talked about that time, about Palestine, he always used to say, ‘Margalit is a Palestinian, also,’” Edelson said. “He always mentioned that I’m a Palestinian. That gave me the idea of the title for the book, and really the inspiration to start and and write it. I thought maybe there was something that would would be of interest to other people.”
Edelson was born and raised in Palestine and her book focuses on her experiences, her family life and the conflicts going on during that time-frame between the Arab and Jewish people.
She also wrote about the paramilitary group she joined that would protest British involvement in Palestine as well as how she eventually made her way to the U.S.
“My family was something like an ordinary Jewish family, that’s the way I looked at it,” she said. “There were Arab attacks, occasionally, sometimes more concentrated and sometimes just one Arab with a knife, but sometimes it was mobs that attacked certain areas.
“I remember when I was, I think three years old, my father said to me that there are rumors that there’ll be Arabic attacks and people might flee from their homes, and we’re going to open our home for people that need to come in,” she continued.
While her father, who worked as a printer in Jerusalem, warned her of rumored attacks, Edelson has never been attacked herself. She said she always had to stay alert when walking anywhere, like when she walked home from school.
Her home in Palestine had no running water, but her family had a well behind their house. She said her mother would pump water and an Arab friend of the family would help her clean it and help with other chores. She explained that while the Jews and Arabs were fighting, some parts of those groups did not want to see any violence towards one another.
“The Jews didn’t want to expel them or want to kill them and there were many Arabs like that,” Edelson said. “The other side was the Grand Mufti and the people that followed him, and his aim was to get all the Jews out of Palestine, rid Palestine from Jews, kill them, throw them into the sea, whatever.”
The Grand Mufti was the leader of the Arab population in Palestine and was selected by the British in the area, according to Edelson, and seemed to be behind any Arab attack that threatened the Jewish population.
Edelson went to a British Jewish school, the Evalina de Rothschild School for Girls, where girls learned to speak English and do simple mathematics, among other subjects. Previously, she said she had grown up only speaking Hebrew.
“It was an experience of really learning, extreme discipline and responsibility,” she recalled. “Eventually, I graduated and this school started from what we would call first grade, through high school, all in one school, all under the same principles.”
Paramilitary Groups
During that era of conflict, there were three groups fighting for the Jewish people in Palestine, whether they were fighting against the Arab people or the British who controlled the territory at the time.
Edelson belonged to one of the groups called Irgun, sometimes known as the Etzel. Of the three main groups, she said, the Irgun were more restrictive when it came to violence and against civilian casualties.
“There was another one a smaller one called Lehi, which did what the Irgun were doing, but was less restrictive,” she said. “The third organization was the Haganah, which was part of the official Jewish Agency paramilitary arm. Sometimes those three organizations worked together fighting the British, but very often, the Haganah, after a certain incident, would try to get Irgun members and reveal them to the British so that they would be arrested.”
Edelson’s role with the Irgun, after joining in the early 1940s, was to send envelopes and flyers around Jerusalem to inform people of what the Irgun were doing. This and her other responsibilities within the paramilitary group are detailed more in her book.
She said she and a friend were enlisted to try to rent an apartment in Jerusalem for the Irgun when the two of them were only 14 years old.
“We searched and we found a small apartment close to the center of town and it was on the first floor so that was good because we didn’t want an upstairs apartment where going up and down, people would think, ‘What are these teenagers doing here?’” she said.
“In order to actually meet the owner of the apartment, we had to dress up in our dresses, put on shoes and put on a little lipstick, all of that so that we would look a little older.”
Edelson and the other younger Irgun members would set up their offices from the apartment. Her group was given a phone book and were tasked with finding addresses throughout Jerusalem to hand people flyers about the Irgun. The apartment was also used for meetings with the group and kept highly secretive.
‘’I am a Palestinian Jew’’ ends with a tragic fight between the Irgun and the Israel Defense Forces that would kill about 19 people, known as the Altalena Affair. Like the book, Edelson’s work with the Irgun would end there.
Journey To Caldwell
Edelson eventually went to law school at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and after her third year there, her Baptist friends, who were missionaries, invited her to go with them to the United States that summer.
“I visited them, and then decided to go up to the northeast, and there was a cousin of my father’s that I was going to visit,” Edelson said. “I thought, ‘Well, I still can come back in a little while and finish the rest of the last year,’ and then spending more time here in the United States, it was too late for that.”
At that time, she was in New York City and looking for work, where she found a job at the Jewish Education Association.
“I had an interview with the director, and the director said to me, ‘OK, can you take shorthand?’” she said. “I said, ‘No, but I can write fast.’ So he says, ‘OK, sit down,’ and he dictated something and I really wrote it until my hand felt like it was falling off. At the end, he says, ‘I’m going to hire you because no one before had said they don’t take shorthand, but can write fast.’”
She worked with the association “for a while” before joining the workforce at Camp Ramah, a Jewish overnight summer camp for children entering grades 4-11, in Wingdale, N.Y., as a dance instructor. She said growing up she was “dancing all the time,” so the job came naturally to her.
Towards the end of camp, when the kids had left, ther was a young adult seminar for a weekend and Edelson stayed to teach the participants how to perform Israeli dances. One of the gentlemen there had been looking for the past dance instructor, who he had wanted to meet again and instead ran into Edelson.
“He met me, and he became my husband,” she said.
Ken Edelson, was born in Newark, but was raised in the area that is now West Caldwell. His family was very active in the Jewish community there.
The married couple bounced around the East Coast for a while before eventually settling down in Caldwell. The Edelson’s would raise two children in town, one of whom currently lives in Arizona and the other in Bergen County. She is also a grandmother to three grandchildren.
When asked about how she has seen Caldwell change over the years, she said she misses the nature that surrounded her house on Highview Road and that has since been replaced with more housing and developments.
“When we bought the house, all of the area all the way to Lane Avenue was woods and the deer and the rabbits and all of that. It was all over,” Edelson said. “Gradually, more houses started to be built nd then a big complex that that is being built. Today, I look out and I don’t see woods, I see big buildings and parking areas.”
She said she lives on a beautiful street and has great neighbors around her. While she misses the nature around her, she does like going on Bloomfield Avenue to grab a slice of pizza every once in a while from Cedar Grill & Pizza.
The most important place for her is CAI, where she and her late husband had gotten married.
“This is very important, to me, and to many, many people in the area, because it’s a synagogue that offers the opportunity to get together in a communal prayer,” Edelson said.
“After the Sabbath prayer, there is what is called the Kiddush, or another prayer, but it is sort of a reception or a luncheon, where people sit and talk to each other.”
“I am a Palestinian Jew” is available for purchase on Amazon.
Contact Anthony Gabbianelli at anthonyg@newjerseyhills.com
CLICK HERE TO DONATE AND SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
BE YOURSELF. We do not accept and will not approve anonymous comments. Kindly add your full name and hometown to the end of your comment.
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.