IN MEMORY OF BILL MEHLMAN-A DEFENDER OF ISRAEL BY DAVID ISAAC
“Jabotinsky… The Man and His Vision” is the best short work on the Zionist leader Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky I’ve ever read. A monograph of 36 pages, it provides a perfect balance of essential details with brush strokes broad enough to capture the life of this seminal figure.
It was written by William Mehlman, who passed away on April 27 at the age of 91. His death was sudden. He was still lucid, writing up until the end. I always enjoyed my conversations with Bill, whose manner was two parts thoughtful intellectual and one part enthusiasm.
“He was passionate about his views. What he believed in he believed in very strongly,” his son Ira said.
Prominent for Ira, in remembering his father, was his sense of purpose. “He had a sense of purpose every day. He had it even after he retired from working,” Ira said.
That purpose may have come from the sense that time is fleeting, something Bill may have come to understand when he lost his own father, who was only 52 when he died. “He never said that, but I suspect it in retrospect, it does change your outlook. It has changed mine,” Ira said.
For Bill, the purpose that fueled him was defending Israel and the Jewish people. He was going to do whatever he could to make sure Jews would never again find themselves in a position of powerlessness. This worldview was likely the result of living through two seminal events during his formative years – the Holocaust and the foundation of Israel.
Bill grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He went to Torah v’Dat Yeshiva and then to Eastern District High School, a public school. Mel Brooks was in the grade ahead of him. (Bill said he was funny even then.)
His parents came from the lower east side. On his maternal side his family was from Lithuania and on his paternal side from Ukraine. Perhaps political acumen is genetic. Both sides of his family understood they had to flee eastern Europe.
As a young man, Bill spent two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Fortunately for him the closest he ever got to Korea was El Paso, Texas.
After getting married in 1953, he and his wife Sylvia went to Europe to honeymoon. They went to Israel as a result of a chance encounter at a Naples bar. There, they struck up a conversation with the captain of an Israeli passenger liner. He offered to take them to Israel. They ended up staying for a year.
Bill found work at “HaOlam HaZeh,” (“This World”) a magazine edited by Uri Avnery (who would later become infamous for his radical brand of politics). The magazine, which covered topics that the more strait-laced, conservative newspapers were afraid to touch, was quite popular in its day. Bill edited the English version of the magazine.
Bill and Sylvia, however, did return to the States. They probably felt pressure from their families, Ira says. There was no Skype, WhatsApp or internet to stay in touch. In Israel of the 1950s, it was a bureaucratic challenge just to get a phone line installed.
In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Bill worked as a business and sports reporter (He never forgave the Dodgers for leaving for Los Angeles). He also worked as an editor and in public relations. He worked for NBC and CBS news radio 88. He lived with his family in Belle Harbor.
Still, Bill believed his place was in Israel. He tried to make Aliyah, (this time not by chance) and with his family in tow, moved there in 1969. He edited The Times of Israel (no connection to the new online Times of Israel). The offices were in Tel Aviv on Hayarkon Street a block from the beach. It was backed by L.A. businessman Al Epstein. Unfortunately, the financing was such that Bill and his family were forced to return to the U.S.
In 1999, Bill and Sylvia would try again to make Aliyah and this time succeed. They lived in Jerusalem for most of their life as Israelis. In the last few years, they moved to Efrat in Samaria to be close to their daughter. Bill must have felt a powerful attachment to the land. “When he came to visit, he half thought the country wouldn’t survive his absence for a few weeks,” Ira said.
Bill, surprisingly for those who knew him in later years, began as a leftist, even volunteering for Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign. But like many on the Left, he became disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, when Russian tanks crushed a nationwide uprising. As the Left turned hostile to Israel – the watershed being the 1967 Six Day War – Bill moved still further from his youthful political starting point.
Perhaps Bill’s greatest strength as a defender of Israel was his skill as a writer. Bill churned out hundreds of articles. For years, he wrote the lead piece for Outpost, the monthly publication of Americans for a Safe Israel. His articles were always insightful, erudite and well-written. My mother, who edited the publication, always breathed a sigh of relief when one of Bill’s pieces appeared in her inbox. For her, they came with an invisible subject line: “No editing required.”
The piece of writing that Bill was most proud of was a historical novel he wrote. Unpublished, it was about Moses’s life with the Jews in the desert for 40 years. It imagined Moses’s private life, Moses the human being, and not the political leader portrayed in the Bible.
Bill’s funeral was held on Israel’s Memorial Day, as Ira says, “a fitting date for a man who may not have sacrificed his life for Israel but certainly devoted it to the country and Jewish people.”
Bill leaves behind his wife of 67 years, Sylvia, his son Ira, his daughter Tova, his grandchildren, Mollie, Eliat, Natanel, Rachel, Mia and Simone, and great-granddaughter Kayla.
And he leaves behind his friends. Bill, I’ll remember you with deep affection.
Bill Mehlman z”l (April 8, 1929 – April 27, 2020)
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