102-year-old Israeli man gets kindergarten enrollment letter
‘It’s been a few years since I’ve attended kindergarten,’ quips Yosef Eshed, who fought in Arab Revolt of late 1930s; officials blame mix-up on computer error
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Yosef Eshed, a 102-year-old Israeli who fought alongside the revered British soldier Orde Wingate to put down the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, can now register for kindergarten.
Eshed, of the village of Motza, near Jerusalem, apparently was one of 20 Israelis over a century old to receive a kindergarten enrollment letter recently, the Ynet news site reported.
“Are they crazy?” Eshed was quoted as asking, joking that he didn’t mind because “it’s been a few years since I’ve attended kindergarten, and that was in Poland.”
He emigrated from Poland 80 years ago.
Local officials are calling it a computer snafu. Ynet quoted a local official who blamed the confusion on a database program erasing the first digit of their ages.
Eshed was one of the founders of Kibbutz Hanita and fought in the Special Night Squads founded by Wingate, a Christian Zionist figure revered in Israel for his role in training pre-state Jews in combat, when the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine rose up against British rule.
After the mistake was discovered, a local official told Ynet that “we would be honored to host him in our schools so he can tell children his amazing life story.”
The Times of Israel Community.