Tag #127749 - Interview #89861 (Dan Mizrahy)

In 1943, when the Alyat Hanoar scholarship expired, I started living ‘on my own.’ I rented a small room that was modest, but located downtown, and I lived there until the summer of 1944. In 1943 I met a Romanian-born gymnastics teacher. His name was Beny Blumenfeld and he ran a gymnastics club in downtown Jerusalem, on Betalel Street. He hired me to be his repetiteur. [He needed to be accompanied by music for his gymnastics classes.] That same year I had the chance to meet two personalities of the Israeli ballet: Rina Nikova and Hasya Levy. The former was, at the time, about 45 years old, and was recognized as a ‘peak’ of the Israeli ballet school. An expert in classical ballet, she had started working on the rediscovery of the Jewish traditional dances even before the war, analyzing and updating the ancient Hebrew dance. She also held classes of classical ballet with paying students who took weekly lessons. [Mr. Mizrahy played the piano for these classes.] I think my fee was 300 mils per hour. If we take into consideration the fact that a meal at ‘Palestine Restaurant’ or at ‘Mitbah Hapoalim’ – literally meaning ‘workers’ kitchen’, but translated as ‘canteen-restaurant’ – cost 100 mils, just as much as an ‘expensive’ film ticket in the evening, or that a falafel cost 10 mils, as well as the fact that, from the very beginning, I had at least two or three sessions of several hours every week, I think I don’t have to explain the material and moral impact that this ‘job’ had upon me.