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Aliyot to Palestine
RETURNING TO THE PROMISED LAND

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Binyamin and Hana-Rivka Gorodenzik
Neve Zedek, Palestine
cir 1930


 

The Family of Shlomo Gorodenzik
location unknown
circa 1910

Seated: Hana Riva (mother).
Standing from right to left: her children
Sara-Faigel, Zvi, Rachel, Shlomo,
Frieda (Kazurin). Seated: Yael (Krupik).

The seated man is unidentified.

 
Neve Zedek (today’s Tel Aviv)
and the Gorodenzik Family Era

The branch of the Benderly family that is the Bashan family originated from the brother Yosef (1822-1870) who immigrated to Palestine as a teenager. One of his five children, Nisan-Zvi (1845-1911) had also five children. One was Yosef Benderly, Jr. (1870-1933), who lived mostly in Zafed and, in his late years, in Neve Zedek, (buried in Zafed) and his wife Soshana-Reizel, an orphan from Galicia who came to Palestine in search of a husband. They were the parents of Mina Benderly who married Shlomo Gorodenzik and was the mother of Sara Bashan.

Yosef Benderly (the younger) was an ultra-religious Hasid, as is obvious from photographs of his late years, including typical Hasidic dress he wore most of his life. His sole occupation was to study in religious school (Yeshiva); he was a useless businessman. Because the family received no Haluka funding (donations from Jewish European communities), no support from other Benderlys who were rich merchants in town, and produced eight children, they were extremely and continuously poor. They had a small grocery store in Zafed that hardly supported them. During the WWI, they frequently went hungry. This bleak economic situation improved somewhat after the arrival of Australian soldiers to Zafed with the Egyptian (British) Expeditionary Force of General Allenby, who were willing to pay well for salt.


Shlomo Gorodenzik was probably born in the village of Ekron, between Jaffa and Jerusalem, in 1887. (His son, Avram Gorodenzik, the last person still having the original family name, says that his father was borne in Jaffa). He was the son of Binyamin Gorodenzik and Hana-Rivka Shkolnik, who had immigrated to Palestine from Grodna, Byelorussia in 1883.

Of the ancestral branches of the Bashan family, the roots of the Gorodenzik family are less clear. From bits and pieces of information, a general picture can be seen. Bynyamin Gorodenzik immigrated to Palestine with his father Avraham-Yosef Gorodenzik and five brothers; all were carpenters. These brothers were extraordinarily-skilled furniture carpenters, apparently wealthy from their trade, and, as a donation, built the Tabernacle that contains the Torah scrolls of the synagogue in Neve Zedek. Bynyamin Gorodenzik arrived first to Jaffa and sometimes lived there. Eventually, he moved to Neve Zedek and built a large home that still stands. Their father, Avraham built another historic large house nearby. The brothers were very religious people and part of they holdings were donated to religious charities. Normally (with information available only on the activities of Bynyamin and his father Avraham), they did not help their children, who were left to their own initiative to advance their personal economic welfare. Binyamin travel frequently to South Africa to earn more money. He died in 1946 in Tel Aviv. He is buried in the Olive Mountain Cemetery in Jerusalem, together with all his brothers in the family “mausoleum.”

Contrary to his grandfather and father, Shlomo Gorodenzik and his wife Mina (Benderly) were small merchants, working from before sunrise to well after sunset in their grocery store. They had no entrepreneurial spirit and were not interested in expanding their business. Initially, Shlomo built a grocery store in the market of Jaffa. In the second Arab uprising of 1936, the store was burnt to ashes and he moved the store to the living room of his father’s home on Achva Street in Neve Zekek. This small store, that still stands, was their sole livelihood, until their death. Both are buried in Tel Aviv. Shlomo and Mina Gorodentzik were the parents of Sara Bashan who together with her husband Avner Bashan started the Bashan Family.  next ►►
 

        Text written by Dr. Yoav Bashan of the Bashan Foundation .
 


 



 

 


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