Arkin, Mordechai

Son of-Chana (daughter of Rabbi Yitzchak, son of Rabbi Yaakov Mordechai Hirshzon of Jerusalem) and Zvi-Gedaliah (son of Jacob, one of the founders of Ekron), was born on 8.1.1907 in Gedera. Where he completed an elementary school and then the Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. He had excelled in the mathematical professions he had studied, and was about to go to America to study at Columbia University, but gave up because of the father’s illness and the distressed state of the family farm. He began working as a clerk in one of the cities and saved his income to help the economy. During his annual vacations he would go home to help with the work. He expressed his constant longing to return to agriculture, in one of his poems, “To you, Adama,” meaning: “One day you will forgive the crime / I will return to you, helpless, but not lacking, walking in silence / full of deer. ” He edited and arranged the manuscript from the estate of his grandfather and great-grandfather, Rabbi Hirschensohn. He was one of the activists in Maccabi, the Hagana, the Special Police and the Civil Guard. For nine years he worked as a manager of packing warehouses for citrus fruits at the Rokach & Co. brothers, two years as manager of packing warehouses of Pardes in Sharon and Hadera, and for the last seven years as director of the department of mechanical and mechanical laundry at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. In the Haganah, he underwent various courses and guided the Hadassah staff in the subjects he studied. During the War of Independence he remained on duty at Hadassah, on the mountain that was cut off from the city. On the 27th of Adar 2 5708 (April 6, 1948), standing guard on the roof of the hospital, was hit by an enemy bullet and fell. He was buried in Sanhedria. He left behind a wife, a two-year-old boy and a daughter who was born two months after they fell. In his estate there was a whole collection of poems in his own hand, which he wrote in private. On April 24, 1952, he was laid to rest at the military cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem