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A TAPESTRY OF HADASSAH MEMORIES compiled and edited by Miriam Freund Rosenthal with Lonye Rasch. Pittsboro, North Carolina, The Town House Press, 287 pp. $15.
Woven into this tapestry is the story of how David Ben-Gurion convinced Hadassah to locate its new hospital in Ein Kerem, a place then only "rocks and stones, large and small ... with the wind howling all around." We also hear how Hadassah persuaded Marc Chagall to create his windows for its hospital synagogue ("Cher Maitre, I come not only on behalf of Hadassah, but on behalf of the Jewish people. This is your opportunity to create something that will live for the ages and that will be an indissoluble bond between you and the Jewish people"). The book relates memories of waking to "a strange noise: Henrietta Szold doing calisthenics at five a.m. !" and of welcoming the first group of Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany by Youth Aliya. Hadassah members recall one another, especially the towering figures the organization has produced, and they remember their past selves...