Passover cleaning turns up historic gem
A journalist finds a 1973 pay slip belonging to prime minister Menachem Begin in her Tel Aviv apartment
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
The typical pre-Passover house-cleaning uncovers loose change, old bus tickets and a wide range of odds and ends. But Amalia Duek, a writer for Channel 2 news, found something a little more exciting.
As Duek was cleaning her Tel Aviv apartment before the Jewish holiday of Passover, she found a relic from a previous tenant — an old pay slip belonging to former prime minister Menachem Begin.
The pay slip, from 1973 when Begin was a member of Knesset but not yet prime minister, was in a pile of papers in a closet that Duek had never gone through before. But during the cleaning that most Jews do before the spring holiday, the journalist finally went through the documents in her closet and was shocked by what she found, Channel 2 news reported Tuesday.
“I live in a fairly standard rented apartment in Tel Aviv, but the person who had lived there before me was Yehiel Kadishai, the secret-keeper and chief of staff for Menachem Begin,” Duek explained.
“This past Passover we started digging into the pile and this was one of the first documents we found.”
According to the pay slip, Begin received 1,388 Israeli Lirot — equivalent to approximately NIS 30,000, Channel 2 news said — for the month of July 1973, somewhat less than the NIS 39,562 (before taxes) a member of Knesset earns today.
