Judgment in Jerusalem

Judgment in Jerusalem
Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century
1997 – Pnina Lahav

Simon Agranat’s first memory was that of tearfully imploring his father not to take the family to Palestine. He was three or four years old, frightened by the thought of crossing the ocean by boat. He remembered his father, otherwise doting and tender, asserting flatly that “Palestine was their true home” and that “they would be going there, soon.”

Simon was born in 1906 in Louisville, Kentucky, to Aaron-Joseph and Polya (Pauline) Agranat, both Russian immigrants who had recently arrived in the United States. Almost a quarter of a century would pass before the family fulfilled the Zionist dream of leaving the United States to settle in Palestine. Simon’s memory illustrates how insistent, throughout his childhood, was his awareness that Palestine was their true home.

The name Agranat carries two meanings. In Russian the letter h sounds like the English g; thus the name Agranat is Russian for Ahranat or Aharon. In Jewish tradition, Aharon, Moses’s brother, was the great priest, the mediator between God and the people. His offspring, the Kohanim (Hebrew for “priests”) continued to serve in this capacity until the destruction of the Second Temple. According to this version, Agranat traces a family lineage that goes back to the priesthood in the ancient Kingdom of Israel. Another interpretation leads to Spain in the Middle Ages. In 1492 Spain expelled its entire Jewish population. As the Jews moved east, to Germany, Poland, and Russia, their Spanish heritage faded.

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