Recalling the 'Betsy Ross of Israel' - Rebecca Affachiner and her flag

One of the iconic items from the birth of Israel is the handmade Star of David flag, which was flown for the first time on May 14, 1948. The flag is preserved in the Ben-Gurion archives in Sde Boker. Its story is fascinating because of Rebecca Affachiner, an American immigrant (olah), who fashioned the flag from a bedsheet, coloring it with blue crayon.

The hero of the story of the flag's preservation is the late Ezra Gorodesky, the noted collector with over 900 Judaica items at the National Library and 300 buttons at the Shenkar College of Fashion in Ramat Gan.

Rebecca Affachiner was born in Poland in the 1880s. She moved to the United States in the 1890s with her parents and several siblings. Her father was a member of the Association in New York of merchants who closed their stores on Shabbat. Rebecca was a most committed student, earning a bachelor's and master's in social work.

Deepening her Jewish education

Interested in deepening her Jewish education, she was the first graduate in 1910 of the Hebrew education program at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Chancellor Solomon and his wife Mathilde Schecter befriended and assisted her in obtaining the superintendent position at an East Side School for Young Women, which, under her guidance, became a model school.

Rebecca's achievements between 1912 and 1920 included attending and being on the initial board of Hadassah; being invited to be a JWB War Worker, she spent the last year of WW1 in France caring for Jewish soldiers in her JWB hut; returning to the USA and attending an Art School where her portrait, now at the Israel Museum, was painted by a fellow student who became the leading artist of the shores of the state of Maine.

Since all her archives are at the National Library in Jerusalem, I will not attempt to describe her diversified career in the world of social activities. In 1934, she made aliyah as a single woman hoping to work with Henrietta Szold, which did not come to be. What she accomplished as a single American olah in Eretz Yisrael is monumental.

Her fame has been sealed because of the Star of David flag she made in her apartment on  Jabotinsky Street in  Jerusalem. In stories not published in her archives, flags frequently appear. I have called her in writing about her "a flag woman." On May 14, across from where the Van Leer Institute is located in Jerusalem, she went out on her small balcony and waved her flag after hearing over the radio Ben-Gurion had proclaimed Israel a state.

Regularly, into the 1960s, on Independence Day, she flew her flag. In 1960, a young oleh, Ezra Gorodesky, befriended her. When she died in 1966, she willed him the flag. For the next 56 years, he tried to place the flag in a public institution. When I made aliyah in 1977, we met, and I became the "scribe of the flag" and named Rebecca the "Betsy Ross of Israel." I was fortunate to pen articles about her in Hebrew and English here in Israel.

Finally, with the assistance of Toni Young, a historian, philanthropist, and noted member of the Board of Ben-Gurion University (BGU), Ezra presented the flag to BGU President Rivka Carmeli and then traveled to the Ben-Gurion archives, where the flag was presented to the curator and placed in the vault along with the original Ben-Gurion diaries.

I witnessed that day the joy in Ezra's face as he said, "Becky, we did it."