Ednah Michalowitz
This photo was taken in Beit Lehem in 1957, and is of our daughter Ednah Michalowitz, née Beer.
In February 1953, Ednah was born in Beit Lehem Hagalilith. My mother came to help me, and then Karmela, who at that time was serving in the army and had a couple of days off. When Ednah was three months old, we moved from our temporary dwelling. We were assigned a field on which stood a wooden shack. For the first few months we didn't have electricity; Ednah was already standing, the first time we turned on a light bulb, and said "or" meaning light in Hebrew. Sometimes we didn't have water, there was no paved road or sidewalk, and during the winter there was deep mud everywhere.
First we started growing vegetables, then we got a cow, and later some chickens, part of which went for meat and the rest remained to lay eggs. Close to the piece of land where we were intending to build our house, we planted fruit trees, many kinds for our own use; we had beautiful guavas, big and small, mandarin and regular oranges, grapefruits, lemons and all sorts of fruits and an almond tree that never bore even one almond. When Shimon was building something, he poked a couple of sticks in the ground to mark something for himself; the result today are two huge mulberry trees.
In the meantime, like everyone else we began building our house, and in 1958 we moved into it. We didn't have an electric refrigerator; I was still lugging ice, that they'd bring three times a week, and which would always melt before the next would arrive. All that time, besides working in our household, I also worked in agriculture - I singled, weeded, hoed, harvested, and packed dozens of crates of lettuce, sewed sacks of potatoes and onions shut, fed chickens, and learned how to milk a cow, but my hands are too small for that, and I wasn't able to finish milking more than one cow.
