Eliezer Alcalay

Eliezer (Eli) Alcalay was born in December 1912 in Jerusalem. He was the youngest son of Yaakov Alcalay and Miriam Kalderon and younger brother to Binyamim (1893), Menachem, Yosef, Sarah (Shot), Penina, Yocheved (Shmigloski), Leah (Oshri) and Rachel (Tourgeman). Yaakov Alcalay was a wealthy bookseller and the owner of a book store on Kalya Victoria Street (LIBRARIA ALCALAY). The members of his family came to Bucharest, Romania from Alcala, Spain, and from there the family name. Yaakov came to Israel at the end of the 1800's in order to get medical treatment for an eye disease from which he suffered. In Israel he met Miriam Kalderon who was born in Yugoslavia. They married and had 12 children (some of whom died in childhood). They lived in the Ohel Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem. At first they lived in a house owned by the Valero family. They later moved to a small apartment in a house that was underneath the synagogue next to 'Gan Hatut" in the center of the neighborhood (today Bustan Sepharadi). They later moved to two other apartments in the neighborhood. They spoke Ladino in their home. With the outbreak of WWI, in 1914, Yaakov stopped receiving the money that his father used to send to him from Bucharest. In order to make a little bit of money people would ask Yaakov to pray, at the 'Torento Synagogue', for the memory of their relatives who had passed away. As his health began to fail and his eyesight deteriorated, his wife started working to help with the livelihood of the family. She sold watermelons and eggs that they grew in their yard, helped deliver jugs of water to the people in their neighborhood and even sold oranges to the British soldiers in the camp that was located in the "Alliance" School. Yaakov passed away in January 1947. Eliezer (Eli) went to the "Tachmoni" Elementary School in Jerusalem and continued his studies at the gymnasia in the commercial track. His sister Rachel (Tourgeman) was in the same class because there was a small age difference between them. In the beginning of the 1930's Eliezer went to study medicine in Geneva, Switzerland. He completed his studies in 1939. He went to England and France to specialize in orthopedic surgery. Upon his return to Israel he worked as an orthopedic doctor in Haddassah and Sha'arei Tzedek Hospitals in Jerusalem, in the Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and in Kupat Cholim Haclalit. He later worked as a doctor for the medical committees of the Ministry of Defense and the Bituach Le'umi. During the War of Independence (1948) he served as a surgeon in Gush Etzion at the time of its fall. Eliezer met Alice Dreyfus (1921) while studying medicine in Switzerland and they married. The couple had two children: Emanuel, who was born in Geneva and lives in Canada and Dafna, born in Jerusalem. Eliezer Alcalay passed away in Jerusalem in April 1973 at the age of 61. Alice passed away in 2004 at the age of 83. The pictures were given by Dafna Alcalay, daughter of Eliezer and Alice Alcalay. Dafna followed in her father's footsteps and is an orthopedist at the Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. The photo collection includes portraits of family members in Bucharest from the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the pictures were taken in a studio, but the identity of the people is not known. The other photos are of Eliezer Alcalay, his brothers and their children who came to visit him while he was studying in Switzerland. Read more