Good Memories From Childhood
Last week I happened to read an obituary of an Israeli hero named Eli Gil who passed away at the age of 82. The obituary spoke of his being in the 1st Elite Commando Unit in Israel and what a great man he was, and since I’d never heard of him before, I decided to ask my husband Haim if he remembered him or what he was famous for.
Haim told me that he not only knew who he was and what a hero he was considered during the years he was growing up, but that there was another side of Eli Gil that only kids growing up in Jerusalem in the ’50s and ’60s would remember with great fondness for this unusual man.
Kids growing up in Jerusalem in those years were a part of the overall life struggle people throughout Israel had during those difficult years. Times were tough and extras were not the norm in those days, so the ability to go out and see a movie for kids was a major event.
Eli Gil would come to the neighborhood maadon (community center) every Thursday afternoon with two metal cannisters of 18mm movie film together with a separate machine for subtitles. The subtitle machine would show the Hebrew subtitles to the left of the movie screen independent of the actual movie being shown. All of this would cost each kid 25 grush, or about 25 cents.
Many times, you didn’t know what to watch first the movie or the subtitles!
The guy in charge of running the subtitles was Yitzchak Mevorach, who was the closest we had to someone who had a passing knowledge of English.
The movie of the week was run in the maadon, which was really a small one-room building in the middle of the square of the shechunah (neighborhood) about the size of a 20×20 area.
Everyone needed to bring their own chair to see the movie, so you would see kids from all corners of theshechunah bringing chairs from their homes for the big event. There would always be some men who could be seen with their kids in tow carrying recliner chairs for them so they could watch the movie as well. Those with recliners took up the space of two chairs instead of one.
There were no movie screens to be erected for displaying the movie (Who had a portable movie screen?) so the movie was projected directly onto the wall inside the maadon.
The room was packed wall to wall with excited moviegoers! The movie would start and Yitzchak Mevorach in charge of the machine with the Hebrew subtitles would first have to figure out what the movie was saying in English and then post the appropriate place where the subtitles should begin, so many times you would see a cowboy threatening to shoot someone and kill him in the Hebrew subtitles, but when you looked at the actual screen, the guy being threatened was already dead on the ground minutes before.
For some reason, every week around midway through the movie, Yitzchak Mevorach would fall asleep, so a commotion would break out with people trying to wake him up because the movie would suddenly be running with no concurrent subtitles! The whole house would start yelling at him so they could figure out what the people in the movie were saying.
“Most of the movies Eli brought each week were cowboy movies. I figured that all Americans were cowboys or Indians based on these movies!” said Haim. “As a kid growing up back then, Eli Gil was larger than life, both for his army role and also for those Thursday afternoons, which were the highlight of the week for so many people during those difficult years.”
In memory of Eli Gil and Yitzchak Mevorach.
Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit her website at AVCRealty.com. She can be reached at 516-569-5007 or please send any questions or comments by email to [email protected].
