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Living Legacy: December 2003

Willheim legacy: A Lifetime of Tzedakah

Rebecca and Eddie Wilheim

By Shelley Leveson

Rebecca Willheim was living in Los Angeles and pregnant with her daughter when Israel was declared a nation. She immediately set-up a campaign to send clothing, medicine and vitamins to the fledgling state, rallying those she knew to help. Her father-in-law, who owned a furniture store, gathered the donations in his delivery truck. Friends spread the word. The Pioneer Women – women in the Labor Zionist Organization – shipped the donations out. "Someone had to do it," Rebecca says simply.

Rebecca has never walked away from a challenge. Or maybe she never saw them as challenges; she just did what needed to be done.
Rebecca Willheim's story is the stuff of television dramas — exotic places, untimely deaths, life-threatening illnesses. But rather than see her life as littered with tragedy, Rebecca feels blessed. Blessed to have had two loving husbands. Blessed with children and grandchildren. Blessed to have such an illustrious family history. Blessed to be able to have contributed so much to her communities and Israel. "Tzedakah and commitment – that's the lifeline of our people," says Rebecca.

Rebecca and her late-husband Eddie Willheim certainly have done their share to keep that lifeline strong, both here and in Israel. They've been staunch supporters of the Technion Institute, seeing it as the hope for Israel's future. Eddie served on numerous boards, including the APJCC, the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose and Temple Emanu-El, and was the leader in the negotiations to obtain the present site of the JCC.

Rebecca also has a long history of involvement, from the time she helped to reactivate Junior Hadassah in San Francisco at age 19, to her years of teaching Sunday school, to her zeal for soliciting for worthy causes. She also established a Living Legacy Endowment through the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose.

"I firmly believe in the Federation system, its programs, its goals," says Rebecca. "Eddie did too. I want to make sure they continue."
Rebecca still lives in the house she and Eddie moved into nearly 40 years ago. Paintings and other works of art adorn nearly every wall. Many were painted by Rebecca's uncle. Others are by favorite Israeli artists, purchased at the artist colony Ein-Hod. Others merely caught her fancy. "When Eddie and I would fight," says Rebecca mischievously, "I would buy art."

Rebecca Willheim was born Rebecca Papo. Her mother's side were Chasidim in Romania. Ardent Zionists, they were among the "Chovevei Zion" – Lovers of Zion. They sent their oldest sons to the Holy Land and planned to join them, but died before their dream was realized. After their death, Rebecca's mother Cecilia, then 16, and her younger brother, set out for Palestine to join their older brothers. When she was 18, she met and married Rebecca's father, Michael Papo.

Michael Papo, born in Jerusalem, came from a long line of Sephardic rabbis and scholars. His great grandfather, Eliezer Papo was Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria and had sent his sons to Palestine in 1820 in order to raise their families in the Holy Land. "One of my great-grandfather's books, Pele Yoetz, is still used by Sephardic Jews around the world as a supplement to the prayer book," says Rebecca.

Michael Papo was an agronomist trained at Mikveh Israel – the first agricultural school in Palestine, which he entered at the tender age of 11. After experimenting with the growing of various field crops, trees and farm animals, Papo sent a specimen of his cotton to Baron Edmond de Rothschild who entered it in the Paris Exposition. It won first prize, establishing that cotton could thrive in the soil of Israel.

Rebecca describes her father as a dedicated idealist who faced every challenge with equanimity and resolution — a quality his daughter obviously inherited. As the director of agriculture, he trained and advised the new colonists of Metulla, the northernmost point of Israel. The work was arduous and dangerous. He lost his first wife to malaria seven years after they were married. Mosquitoes weren't the only danger. He established the practice of arming farmers to protect the cattle and crops from theft, and, along with the other settlers, he often stayed up all night guarding the fields. Nights that he was away, Rebecca's mother frequently took over guard duty. A picture of these first armed watchmen hangs in the Haganah Museum in Tel Aviv.

Papo also served as the administrator of a settlement called Yessod Hamala. Among his other duties, he was obliged to spend several weeks in jail each year for the failure of the settlement to pay the exorbitant taxes levied by the Turkish government. Many years later, Rebecca, as a youngster, asked her father how he felt to be in jail. He replied, "It was cool and I could catch up with my reports and correspondence."

Shortly before World War I, Michael was sent to Egypt to learn how to mass-produce cotton and wheat, and to pay off debt accumulated from three consecutive years of poor crops. Two of his six living children joined him to attend school. (One daughter had died before she was two.) When war broke out, the Turkish government closed the borders and communication with his wife and children ceased. Michael regularly sent money, but it never reached them in Metulla – Turkish officials forged Cecilia's signature. The situation for the settlers, including Cecilia, grew dire. Two more of their children died and Cecilia moved in with a long time friend of the family. (She repaid the friend's kindness by proving to Turkish authorities that he was not a spy, saving him from certain death.)

Michael did not learn of his children's deaths until after the war ended. He also found out that their land in Metulla no longer belonged to them. Cecilia had used the land as security to borrow money to feed her family and, despite their protests, the administration had turned the land over to a new kibbutz.

Rebecca was born after the family reunited in Egypt. The loss of their land was a heavy blow to Michael. Rather than stay in Egypt, he decided to immigrate with his family to America, where he hoped to accumulate enough money to buy back his land. His dream was not realized. Little more than five years later, the man who had survived malaria and Turkish prisons died of pneumonia.

When Rebecca was 16, her mother remarried an old friend of the family from Palestine, who now lived in San Francisco. "His wife, who knew she was dying, made him promise he would marry my mother upon her death," recounts Rebecca.

It is after her move to San Francisco that Rebecca's own story really starts. She went to Heald Business School and landed a job at RKO Pictures. At the onset of WWII, she joined the Red Cross and ended up at the Long Beach Naval Hospital. She immediately joined the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), the L.A. Federation, and Hadassah, and taught Sunday school. "I was one of one of the first 10 in Los Angeles to be certified as a Sunday school teacher," says Rebecca.

She met her first husband, Alex Weinberg, through his roommate whom she had met at a Hadassah dance. They married in 1945, and happily celebrated the birth of daughter Louise three years later. Then Rebecca came down with a debilitating illness, which left her nearly immobile. It was later traced to a systemic infection from an improper dental procedure. As she was slowly recovering, when Louise was just nine, Alex was killed by a drunk driver.

Rebecca had no desire to remarry or even date, but went to meet Eddie Willheim at the insistence of his aunt, a friend of hers from the UJA. "I figured at least I could get him to sign up with the Z.O.A.," says Rebecca. "And he did, I left with his $15 membership fee."

Eddie, a widower, had three children of his own. A former English professor, he had become a CPA after he decided that teaching was a field in which it was hard for Jew to get ahead.

Rebecca, reluctant to take on added responsibilities, took four years to agree to marry Eddie. "Once I did though, I never looked back," she says. The family of six soon moved to San Jose where Eddie established a thriving practice and Rebecca got to the work of raising four children.

Rebecca has many fond memories of her years in San Jose and the Jewish community here. Her wishes are simple. "May it just grow and be strong."

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