Efratia Gitai : Correspondence 1929-1994

Efratia,

Like others of her generation born in the Land of Israel,

Was neither a woman of the Diaspora nor an lsraeli.

Israel did not yet exist.

Her generation will invent its own identity,

Their own sense of belonging.

 

Efratia wrote letters all her life,

Keeping them from an early age,

As if she wanted to retain traces of

Her journey;

As if she sensed that her inner world

May embody the fate of her country.

 

Efratia's letters attest to the life

Of a woman, my mother:

Her intimate reflections and her doubts,

Her thirst for independence,

Her heated debates with her father

About the destiny of her country.

Her loves, cuit of friendship,

Motherhood,

And later periods of mourning and loss, old age,

and troubled times.

 

I can still hear her voice,

The Ancient Hebrew of a daughter of the first

generation of labor pioneers

Who wanted their child to speak a Modern Hebrew

For our time.

Amos Gitai