Batya Jaspan

My cousin-by-marriage Batya Jaspan (nee Dredzen) was born in a small gold rush era hamlet called Pilgrim's Rest, in the picturesque Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Her parents owned the general store there which is now preserved as one of the town's Victorian era buildings

She was an earth mother figure, maternal, kind, strong, principled, taking under her wing many waifs and strays - including myself - who over the years wondered in and out of the kibbutz. Batya was born Cecile, but as a teenager in the socialist Zionist, avowedly secular Habonim youth movement she changed it to Batya, which ironically means in Hebrew "daughter of G-d". She left South Africa in 1949, and helped establish the new kibbutz, Tzora, in the Judean foothills, about midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In this photograph, taken circa 1952, she is holding her first child Yael.

The next black and white photograph shows Tzora in 1954.

Batya said later in her life said she may have unconsciously gravitated towards Tzora because its hilly location was quite similar to the hills around Pilgrim's Rest.

Batya lived on Tzora, with her life long friend, husband and partner Zvi Jaspan, from 1950 until her death in 2016.

This poem was written in 2016.

KADDISH (lezichra shel Batya Jaspan z"l)

May the name that every person
takes or makes
be blessed enough
as was yours
child of God

Not knighted or praised,
not glorified and exalted,
not extolled and adored and lauded,
but yes, honoured
and well regarded
be

not so much just your name,
but the work of your hands
and your heart

blessed she

above and beyond all the blessings,
hymns, praises and consolations
that are clung to in this world

May the earnest prayers
of all the House of Israel
be accepted by the Source
That walks amidst the trees
of the hills of Yehudah
and who is here
in the Dining Room
and the Clinic
and the Children's Home
where you worked 

may there be abundant peace from the cotton fields
contentment, equilibrium, satisfaction, help,
comfort, refuge, redemption, forgiveness,
remembering and forgetting
for us and for all who love

May the One who makes peace low and high grant peace
upon us and on all those who mourn
that the light has flickered and dimmed for a while
before it shines again from the North and South
from the East and from the West
above Tzora and
Pilgrims Rest