Batya Jaspan: Video Excerpts

Small snippets from long interviews with Batya and Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora in Israel. The excerpts posted here were done around 2004 (or perhaps 2006?) when the couple were visiting the country of their birth, South Africa. The rest of the interviews were filmed in their home on Tzora around 2005.

Batya (nee Dredzen's) family had owned the General Store in Pilgrim's Rest, a gold mining rush town on the Escarpment of what was then Eastern Transvaal, today Mpumalanga. You can still visit the preserved town today, and see the corrugated iron Dredzen General Dealer shop.

Here is an excerpt in which Batya describes how she changed from being a Cecile to being a Batya, and her childhood and youth in Pilgrim's Rest.

Here Batya talked about their first days in Israel, when they arrived there in 1949:

Although these snippets lack all important context, I hope to post more excerpts which will together build a more 3 dimensional picture. Here Batya talks about her discomfort with some of the features of Israeli society that have emerged and solidified across the last 40 years.