A Woman of Valor

A Woman of Valor is a monumental family saga that is in effect a history of the Jews in the twentieth century. It centers around a heroine who grows up in Bialystok, survives the Holocaust fighting in the Underground, and rebuilds her family in Israel. The Lefkovitzes are a well-to-do family of five brothers and sisters and sixteen children operating a textile factory that employs 100 Poles and Jews. Emma Lefkovitz, the first grandchild, is born in September 1920 in Independent Poland a month after the Russians are driven out. The children grow up in an often hostile environment but the family flourishes. Then the war breaks out and the long nightmare begins. When the ghetto is liquidated in August 1943, Emma and her husband fight in the uprising, but it is easily suppressed and they flee to the forest to join the partisans. After the war, Emma and her husband, Yoel, make their way to Palestine with other family survivors. In the 1948 war, Emma fights in the Old City of Jerusalem. Yoel fights in the north and is killed. Emma gives birth to a boy, Zvi, then marries the kibbutz accountant and moves to Tel Aviv. She has two more children but in the 1967 war her son Zvi is killed in action. After the war the family continues to grow, experiencing the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. Emma dies at the age of 80. Someone counts the family members at the graveside. The number comes to 150. These are, in one form or another, the Lefkovizes in the year 2000. This is a unique and profoundly moving story. Rarely has ordinary family life been depicted with such verisimilitude, and certainly not in the shadow of horrendous war. The triumph of the Lefkovitzes is not only the triumph of a family. It is also the triumph of a nation.