The cover, known as a parochet in Hebrew, was donated in the late 1940’s to a Tel Aviv synagogue by the mother of Yehiel Dresner [pictured above], a member of the Irgun underground group (Etzel) who was executed by the British government on the 26th of the Hebrew month Nissan in 1947.
The Jewish underground groups fought to oust the British from Israel, after the British, they felt, had reneged on their mandate to help set up an independent Jewish State. On Monday, the 59th anniversary of Yehiel Dresner's execution, a moving ceremony took place in which the ark cover, which was miraculously discovered, was returned to its owners and hung in the Shaarei Tikvah synagogue.
The parochet was discovered – and finally recovered - through a chain of events which those involved called miraculous.
Until a few months ago, Naftali Dresner, a resident of Shaarei Tikvah, was the curator of the Jabotinsky Museum in Tel Aviv. Two years ago, he was summoned from his office to give a tour of the museum to visiting librarians, when the regular guide suddenly became unavailable.
The head of the museum archives, Mrs. Amira Stern, introduced Dresner to the visitors and announced that he would be taking them on the tour. One of the visitors jumped from her seat and asked Mrs. Stern to repeat the name.
It turned out that a few days before her trip to the museum, the woman had seen the name Dresner embroidered on a parochet displayed on a Judaica site on the internet. The embroidery said, “This parochet was donated by a bereaved mother in loving memory of her son, Yehiel Dov Dresner.”
The woman asked Naftali Dresner if he was in any way connected with the story. “I told her that he was my brother, four years older than me, and that he was sentenced to death by the British,” he recounted to Arutz-7.
Dresner asked her for more information, because he said he never even knew that his mother, who had died in 1960, had donated a parochet. As he related the story of his brother, it became clear that the information matched the details displayed on the internet site, such as his father’s name, his brother’s name and the date of his death – the 26th of Nissan.
The visiting librarian gave Naftali the name and phone number of the man who now owned the parochet.
Dresner recalls, “I called him and asked him if I could see it. He invited me to his home in Bnei Brak and showed it to me. I became very emotional, especially because I had known nothing about it.”
He told the man about the period in which his brother fought the British. At the end of the conversation, Dresner asked if he could take the parochet back. The owner apologized but refused, saying he had made a mistake even putting it on the internet.
“I told him that I was the only one who remained from our family and asked if I could have the sole keepsake that remained of my brother,” says Dresner. During the British Mandate, he explained, Yehiel was wanted by the government for three years. Because of this, his family had destroyed every photo and anything else that might have connected him with his family. As a result, there remained nothing left with which to remember him.
Despite this, the owner of the parochet refused.
Dresner didn’t give up, however. “I am willing to go to your Rabbi,” he told the man, “and if he tells you to give it to me, I hope you will.” Nevertheless, he recalls, “the man stubbornly refused to agree, and insisted that not even in this way would I be able to take it from him.”
The owner then explained to Dresner why he was so insistent on keeping the parochet.
The owner and his father had always prayed together at the synagogue of the old Rebbe of Buhosh in Tel Aviv, he said, and grew up watching how the Rebbe would kiss the parochet with particular holiness and awe. “I had no doubt that this was an especially holy parochet if it was so holy to the Rebbe,” explained the man, “and so it is also important to me.”
The Rebbe eventually died, continued the man, and all the people in his court moved away to Bnei Brak. At that time, he hurried to the synagogue, knowing he would find the parochet in its place where it always was, in the synagogue’s study hall at 112 Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv, and indeed it was there. The man claimed that the parochet had been marked for disposal, and he had just saved it.
“I gave it some thought,” recalls Dresner, “and then told him that my brother would have been 17 years older than he was, and that he used to pray at a synagogue on Rehov HaLevi, where there was a minyan with Rabbi Herschel Twersky.” Upon hearing this, the owner revealed that Rabbi Twersky's minyan was connected to the Rebbe of Buhosh, to whose minyan the ark cover had been transferred.
Nonetheless, the man refused to let the parochet go. Dresner then turned to the grandson of the Rebbe of Buhosh, now himself the Rebbe. “I met with him and the Rebbe was very interested in the same period and how my brother Yehiel was caught. He heard all the details and told me at the end of our interview, 'If the parochet were in my possession, you would have had it back immediately. But because it is with him, only G-d can help you.’”
Dresner took the case to the Rabbinical Court of Rabbi Vozner of Bnei Brak.
The Court was surprised to hear the story and set a hearing. At the proceedings, Dresner claimed that his mother had donated the parochet to be hung in a synagogue, not in someone’s home regardless of how important he might be.
During the proceedings, the Court threatened the owner, who claimed he had misplaced the parochet, that if he would not reveal its whereabouts, they would obligate him to take an oath that it was indeed lost.
The owner asked for time, and the rabbinical judge gave him four days to find it. Nevertheless, the parochet was not located even after four months. At that point, the rabbinical prosecutor that Dresner had hired asked the Court to confiscate the parochet and have it brought before them.
Just before the last session, Dresner recalls, one of the judges confided to him that the rabbinical court had its own way of dealing with issues. The parochet was found, though the matter was kept quiet, and it was handed over. The judge did not give any details about how they had managed to retrieve it.
At the end of the court case, the judge asked Dresner for a letter from the sexton of the central synagogue in Shaarei Tikvah, agreeing that the parochet would hang in the synagogue. The letter was obtained, but it was felt to be not enough, and the judge summoned the sexton to court. Only after the sexton guaranteed the court that it would in fact hang there, was the parochet delivered to the synagogue.
Dresner said when he received it, the parochet was badly worn, torn in some places and with embroidery that was impossible to read. Because of its condition, he first took it straight to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the hope that it could be restored.
Just before Passover of this year, the museum completed its work and the parochet was ready for its new home. Dresner arranged with the sexton to hang it in the synagogue for the first time on the anniversary of Yehiel’s death, after the evening prayer service.
“Our family was so happy, after we had struggled so hard and succeeded in bringing the parochet back to us,” Dresner said during the dedication ceremony. Another speaker, former Knesset Member Geula Cohen, talked about the underground fighters who were executed together with Yehiel.
The sole remaining memento of Yehiel Dresner was hung in the Central Synagogue in Shaarei Tikvah on the 26th of Nisan, where it will remain until Israel Independence Day. After that, it has been decided by Dresner’s family that the fragile parochet will be hung for special occasions, which include the anniversary of Yehiel’s death, Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day.
Background on Yehiel Dresner
On December 29, 1946, Yehiel Dresner and four other Irgun fighters departed for a mission on the "Night of Whippings." The Irgun had dispatched cells to whip British officers as vengeance for the whipping and torturing of a captured underground soldier.
Near Lod, their car encountered a British police roadblock. The British opened fire and killed the driver. The remaining four were apprehended and tortured for 20 straight hours in a nearby British installation. They were later transferred to a Jerusalem jail.
On April 16, 1947 [Nissan 26, 5707], the four men were executed by hanging without warning, without allowing them to say final prayers, and without allowing them to part from their families. The British government had said prior to the execution that no hangings were planned for the near future. Their attorney was not even notified an hour before the hanging.
The four men requested to see a rabbi before they were put to death, but their request was rejected, and not one Jew knew of the execution other than their fellow prisoners.
Each of the four went to his death with the national anthem, HaTikvah [lit. Song of Hope], on his lips, each waiting his turn to mount the gallows.
As their fellow prisoners heard them sing, they too joined in until the Song of Hope, which swelled throughout the prison yard where they were hanged.
Yehiel mounted the steps and was the third to be hanged. It took him four minutes to choke to death.
The bodies of the four men were taken in an armored procession to Tzfat, where they were buried near a police barracks, defiled, without benefit of purification by the Hebrew Burial Society and without relatives present to pray at the graves.
With them was also buried their last requests: that they be interred at the cemetery in Rosh Pina, next to their comrade Shlomo Ben Yosef, who had been similarly hanged.
At seven o’clock the next morning, the news of the execution was announced on the radio. A curfew was immediately imposed on the entire country. Despite the curfew, hundreds of people in Tzfat marched to the cemetery in the rain to honor the war heroes.
Yehiel was buried under the nom de guerre Dov Rosenboim, but news of his murder reached the ears of his brother, then imprisoned in Kenya. He did not ‘sit shiva’ for the seven-day mourning period because Yehiel had wanted to remain anonymous, even after his death. Only a year later was his real identity made known.
The Jews of Israel were horrified by the event, and it was condemned by Jewish communities throughout the world. In the United States, even Catholic priests held special prayer services in memory of the four heroes.
For months after, the British guarded their graves in order to prevent the Irgun fighters from moving them to Rosh Pina to lie next to their comrades.
Yehiel was 25 years old when he died. Streets in many cities in Israel are named in his memory.
The Jewish underground groups fought to oust the British from Israel, after the British, they felt, had reneged on their mandate to help set up an independent Jewish State. On Monday, the 59th anniversary of Yehiel Dresner's execution, a moving ceremony took place in which the ark cover, which was miraculously discovered, was returned to its owners and hung in the Shaarei Tikvah synagogue.
The parochet was discovered – and finally recovered - through a chain of events which those involved called miraculous.
The 50-year-old, restored ark cover now hanging in Shaarei Tikvah
Until a few months ago, Naftali Dresner, a resident of Shaarei Tikvah, was the curator of the Jabotinsky Museum in Tel Aviv. Two years ago, he was summoned from his office to give a tour of the museum to visiting librarians, when the regular guide suddenly became unavailable.
The head of the museum archives, Mrs. Amira Stern, introduced Dresner to the visitors and announced that he would be taking them on the tour. One of the visitors jumped from her seat and asked Mrs. Stern to repeat the name.
It turned out that a few days before her trip to the museum, the woman had seen the name Dresner embroidered on a parochet displayed on a Judaica site on the internet. The embroidery said, “This parochet was donated by a bereaved mother in loving memory of her son, Yehiel Dov Dresner.”
The woman asked Naftali Dresner if he was in any way connected with the story. “I told her that he was my brother, four years older than me, and that he was sentenced to death by the British,” he recounted to Arutz-7.
Dresner asked her for more information, because he said he never even knew that his mother, who had died in 1960, had donated a parochet. As he related the story of his brother, it became clear that the information matched the details displayed on the internet site, such as his father’s name, his brother’s name and the date of his death – the 26th of Nissan.
The visiting librarian gave Naftali the name and phone number of the man who now owned the parochet.
Dresner recalls, “I called him and asked him if I could see it. He invited me to his home in Bnei Brak and showed it to me. I became very emotional, especially because I had known nothing about it.”
He told the man about the period in which his brother fought the British. At the end of the conversation, Dresner asked if he could take the parochet back. The owner apologized but refused, saying he had made a mistake even putting it on the internet.
“I told him that I was the only one who remained from our family and asked if I could have the sole keepsake that remained of my brother,” says Dresner. During the British Mandate, he explained, Yehiel was wanted by the government for three years. Because of this, his family had destroyed every photo and anything else that might have connected him with his family. As a result, there remained nothing left with which to remember him.
Despite this, the owner of the parochet refused.
Dresner didn’t give up, however. “I am willing to go to your Rabbi,” he told the man, “and if he tells you to give it to me, I hope you will.” Nevertheless, he recalls, “the man stubbornly refused to agree, and insisted that not even in this way would I be able to take it from him.”
The owner then explained to Dresner why he was so insistent on keeping the parochet.
The owner and his father had always prayed together at the synagogue of the old Rebbe of Buhosh in Tel Aviv, he said, and grew up watching how the Rebbe would kiss the parochet with particular holiness and awe. “I had no doubt that this was an especially holy parochet if it was so holy to the Rebbe,” explained the man, “and so it is also important to me.”
The Rebbe eventually died, continued the man, and all the people in his court moved away to Bnei Brak. At that time, he hurried to the synagogue, knowing he would find the parochet in its place where it always was, in the synagogue’s study hall at 112 Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv, and indeed it was there. The man claimed that the parochet had been marked for disposal, and he had just saved it.
“I gave it some thought,” recalls Dresner, “and then told him that my brother would have been 17 years older than he was, and that he used to pray at a synagogue on Rehov HaLevi, where there was a minyan with Rabbi Herschel Twersky.” Upon hearing this, the owner revealed that Rabbi Twersky's minyan was connected to the Rebbe of Buhosh, to whose minyan the ark cover had been transferred.
Nonetheless, the man refused to let the parochet go. Dresner then turned to the grandson of the Rebbe of Buhosh, now himself the Rebbe. “I met with him and the Rebbe was very interested in the same period and how my brother Yehiel was caught. He heard all the details and told me at the end of our interview, 'If the parochet were in my possession, you would have had it back immediately. But because it is with him, only G-d can help you.’”
Dresner took the case to the Rabbinical Court of Rabbi Vozner of Bnei Brak.
The Court was surprised to hear the story and set a hearing. At the proceedings, Dresner claimed that his mother had donated the parochet to be hung in a synagogue, not in someone’s home regardless of how important he might be.
During the proceedings, the Court threatened the owner, who claimed he had misplaced the parochet, that if he would not reveal its whereabouts, they would obligate him to take an oath that it was indeed lost.
The owner asked for time, and the rabbinical judge gave him four days to find it. Nevertheless, the parochet was not located even after four months. At that point, the rabbinical prosecutor that Dresner had hired asked the Court to confiscate the parochet and have it brought before them.
Just before the last session, Dresner recalls, one of the judges confided to him that the rabbinical court had its own way of dealing with issues. The parochet was found, though the matter was kept quiet, and it was handed over. The judge did not give any details about how they had managed to retrieve it.
At the end of the court case, the judge asked Dresner for a letter from the sexton of the central synagogue in Shaarei Tikvah, agreeing that the parochet would hang in the synagogue. The letter was obtained, but it was felt to be not enough, and the judge summoned the sexton to court. Only after the sexton guaranteed the court that it would in fact hang there, was the parochet delivered to the synagogue.
Dresner said when he received it, the parochet was badly worn, torn in some places and with embroidery that was impossible to read. Because of its condition, he first took it straight to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the hope that it could be restored.
Just before Passover of this year, the museum completed its work and the parochet was ready for its new home. Dresner arranged with the sexton to hang it in the synagogue for the first time on the anniversary of Yehiel’s death, after the evening prayer service.
Naftali Dresner (left) and a family relative at the ark cover hanging ceremony.
“Our family was so happy, after we had struggled so hard and succeeded in bringing the parochet back to us,” Dresner said during the dedication ceremony. Another speaker, former Knesset Member Geula Cohen, talked about the underground fighters who were executed together with Yehiel.
The sole remaining memento of Yehiel Dresner was hung in the Central Synagogue in Shaarei Tikvah on the 26th of Nisan, where it will remain until Israel Independence Day. After that, it has been decided by Dresner’s family that the fragile parochet will be hung for special occasions, which include the anniversary of Yehiel’s death, Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day.
Background on Yehiel Dresner
On December 29, 1946, Yehiel Dresner and four other Irgun fighters departed for a mission on the "Night of Whippings." The Irgun had dispatched cells to whip British officers as vengeance for the whipping and torturing of a captured underground soldier.
Near Lod, their car encountered a British police roadblock. The British opened fire and killed the driver. The remaining four were apprehended and tortured for 20 straight hours in a nearby British installation. They were later transferred to a Jerusalem jail.
On April 16, 1947 [Nissan 26, 5707], the four men were executed by hanging without warning, without allowing them to say final prayers, and without allowing them to part from their families. The British government had said prior to the execution that no hangings were planned for the near future. Their attorney was not even notified an hour before the hanging.
The four men requested to see a rabbi before they were put to death, but their request was rejected, and not one Jew knew of the execution other than their fellow prisoners.
Each of the four went to his death with the national anthem, HaTikvah [lit. Song of Hope], on his lips, each waiting his turn to mount the gallows.
As their fellow prisoners heard them sing, they too joined in until the Song of Hope, which swelled throughout the prison yard where they were hanged.
Yehiel mounted the steps and was the third to be hanged. It took him four minutes to choke to death.
The bodies of the four men were taken in an armored procession to Tzfat, where they were buried near a police barracks, defiled, without benefit of purification by the Hebrew Burial Society and without relatives present to pray at the graves.
With them was also buried their last requests: that they be interred at the cemetery in Rosh Pina, next to their comrade Shlomo Ben Yosef, who had been similarly hanged.
At seven o’clock the next morning, the news of the execution was announced on the radio. A curfew was immediately imposed on the entire country. Despite the curfew, hundreds of people in Tzfat marched to the cemetery in the rain to honor the war heroes.
Yehiel was buried under the nom de guerre Dov Rosenboim, but news of his murder reached the ears of his brother, then imprisoned in Kenya. He did not ‘sit shiva’ for the seven-day mourning period because Yehiel had wanted to remain anonymous, even after his death. Only a year later was his real identity made known.
The Jews of Israel were horrified by the event, and it was condemned by Jewish communities throughout the world. In the United States, even Catholic priests held special prayer services in memory of the four heroes.
For months after, the British guarded their graves in order to prevent the Irgun fighters from moving them to Rosh Pina to lie next to their comrades.
Yehiel was 25 years old when he died. Streets in many cities in Israel are named in his memory.