The stern looking man in the photograph with the short white beard was dressed in what I knew to be traditional Bukharan garb – a small fur hat and a richly embroidered kaftan. So this was the powerful Moshe Aharonoff that Chenya had told me about, my husband’s great grandfather. I had suspected as much when I had spied the photograph, leafing through the old book in a stall in the flea market in Jaffa.

I sipped my coffee, enjoying the warm spring sun, as I watched Chenya carefully studying the old photograph. I was still shy of my new mother-in-law, but I had discovered to my delight that she loved talking about the early days of Tel Aviv, when the city was still innocent and clean, before it had grown too fast, before it had aged prematurely.

"Oh, Grandpa Moussa was a very important figure in Tel Aviv in the early days," Chenya said excitedly, "Very well connected to the ruling Turks. Does the book tell about the British attacking? Does it tell about the gold?"

Moshe Aharonoff was mentioned in the book in a letter between two local functionaries of the young city. They hoped Mr. Aharonoff would be able to persuade Jamal Pasha, the much feared military commander of the region, to cancel the decree of 1917 to evacuate Tel Aviv.

The book told of Moshe Aharonoff's background, confirming what I already knew – that he had been born in Bukhara, in what was now Uzbekistan, and brought up as a Muslim in the Bukharan emir’s court; that his father, a valued minister of the emir, had been forced to accept Islam, but had continued to keep his true religion in secret; and that he was later to return to Judaism, moving his large family to the Holy Land.

Chenya was happy that her new daughter-in-law was showing an interest in her family history. "Grandpa Moussa was very wealthy.” She explained with pride, “He owned land all around Tel Aviv and Jaffa.”

I thought about the monthly mortgage installments Chenya’s son and I had recently begun paying, and wondered where all that wealth had gone. Chenya leant forward and lowered her voice, as if sharing a secret with me, although no one in the busy, noisy street was taking any notice of us, two women sitting at the entrance of a tiny café, "He had a son, Shimon, my half uncle,” she explained. “He gambled it all away at the tables in Monaco. Not that it would have made any difference, mind you.”

There was a forgiving warmth in her voice, as she revealed a sad truth, “Grandpa Moussa had two wives (1), you see, and my father’s mother was the less loved wife, to put it mildly. Grandpa Moussa treated her badly.”

Chenya glanced up at the clear blue sky above the rundown South Tel Aviv buildings, blackened by years of neglect, and exposure to the heavy traffic, “My father left home in his early teens, taking his mother with him. But that is another story.”

“Everyone knew about Grandpa Moussa’s riches. A popular local legend told that he had hidden gold in the walls of his house. Otherwise, why had he built such a big one, two whole stories high, and with such thick walls?” Her eyes twinkled, “The real reason was that his two wives refused to speak to each other, of course, and each occupied a different floor of the house.

“Anyway, in 1917, the British started bombing Tel Aviv from their warships in the Mediterranean. One of their targets was the Turkish munitions factory that just happened to be situated right behind Grandpa Moussa’s big house.

“You can imagine what happened when that particular house was hit. They came from all over Tel Aviv and Jaffa as soon as they heard.” Chenya laughed, but then she added, thoughtfully, “You couldn’t really blame them. Food was scarce.”

“Everyone was there. It was like a big party. They trampled over my grandmothers, and my uncles and aunts, who were just little children and must have been in a state of shock from the bombing, poor things. How they must have felt, with all those strange people rushing around, poking about what was left of the walls! It was the gold, of course. They had all come to look for the gold.”

Not that there really was any gold in the walls of Moshe Aharonoff’s house all those years ago. “Why would there be?” Chenya wondered out loud. “It was just a story, a fantasy, the celebrity gossip of the day. People like to tell each other such stories. They make life more interesting.”


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(1) Polygamy was practiced by Jews in recent times only in Arab and Muslim countries, and even then it was more the exception than the rule. Polygamy is illegal in Israel.