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Culture & Jewish Life
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Friday, March 30, 2007
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From Ultra-Orthodox to Believer in Yeshua
“My earliest memories date to the riots of August 1929. Arabs from lower Lifta
wanted to march on the Jews of Romema, but the Arabs from upper Lifta stood in
their path, warning them in no uncertain terms: only over our dead bodies!” The
above is an excerpt from Dov Chaikin’s storied and miraculous life.
Raised an ultra-Orthodox Jew in British Mandate Palestine, he became a Messianic
believer in Yeshua (Jesus) in the modern-day State of Israel. Dov was born in
London in 1926. When his father—in Palestine on family business—died of typhoid
in 1928, Dov was taken in May with his two older brothers to live with his
paternal grandparents in Palestine.The family lived in Jerusalem’s Romema
neighborhood, near the modern day Central Bus Station. Dov’s grandfather, “a
wonderfully God-fearing Orthodox Jew,” was one of the founders in 1921 of Romema,
on land purchased from the friendly neighboring Arab village of Lifta.
Underscoring the good relations, when Dov’s grandmother died in 1941, there was
heavy mourning in Lifta.
In April 1942, Dov claimed he was 18 and volunteered for the British Army, in
which he served until March 1947. Part of his service was with the Independent
Jewish Brigade Group. Army life took him to Egypt, Libya, Italy and Belgium
during (and immediately after) World War II.
Dov was working at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in 1948, in a section of
Jerusalem cut off from Jewish neighborhoods. On April 13th, Dov witnessed the
infamous Hadassah convoy massacre in which Arabs attacked a Jewish convoy of
doctors and scientists, almost all unarmed, and slaughtered 78 people. “My best
friend from the Jewish Brigade was in that convoy,” Dov told Israel Today.
Dov, who was raised speaking Hebrew, English and Yiddish, got a job with the
Israel Government Press Office in 1968 and eventually headed its English
Division. By this point, Dov was a secular Jew and a political leftwinger. But
in 1976 he met his future wife Tehilah, and his life was about to change course.
“There I was, at 50-plus, holding down a very interesting post, unaware of
coming upheavals,” he said.
Tehilah, who is from Norway, tried to share her faith in Yeshua with him, and
was initially rebuffed. “But because I was rather interested in her, I was
curious why she wanted to attend the Narkis Street congregation,” Dov said. “So
I tagged along, little knowing what I was letting myself in for.”
(More in israel today from March 2007)
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