Interview with Esther Sapiria - Naama's grandmother

Jan. 1, 2004

N. Where were you born and where did you live before you came to Israel?

E: I lived in Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco. I lived in an aristocratic neighborhood, and there were a lot of Jewish schools in the area.

N: Until what age did you live there?

E: I lived there until after high-school, 18-19.

N. What technological invention of your youth surprised you the most?

E. The TV. When I was a young girl in Morocco, we had TV, but when we moved to Israel there wasn't any TV yet..

N: When you were a child, what was the greatest invention for your mother for daily living?

E: The invention that helped my mother the most was· I think· if Iâm not wrong, it wasnât the washing machine yet, but it was the refrigerator.

N: How did it help?

E: It really helped my mother. I donât know how they managed before the refrigerator. They probably cooked everyday and did not save food for the next day. My mother had to go shopping for food every day, and when the refrigerator was invented it was a big relief.

Another invention was the gas stove. Before they started using gas I remember they used a kerosene burner.Before that, for example, during war times, they would use coal, like an earthenware pot and inside it coal which they lit and put a pot on it to cook. Sometimes, during the war, there wasn't coal. Then they would make balls out of coal dust and sand together which held the heat..

I think the refrigerator and gas helped very much.. the gas stove helped most, but really all new technology makes life.easier..

N: How often was technology used in your house in everyday life?

E: Very little, very little. If we begin with the radio, so yes, we did use it to listen to news, but it wasnât like in Israel nowönews every hour, or maybe it's like that all around the world now ö rather, it was twice a day, I think. I remember my family listening to news twice a day, and we heard songs on the radio and listened to all different kinds of things, we used the radio a lot. What else can I say about technology·we did not have a phone in our house, so we wrote a lot of letters, messages, and things, thatâs what I can remember.

N: What did you do to wash clothes or dishes without a washing machine or dishwasher?

E: We had a very nice lady, who washed our clothes once a week. In every house they built on one of the porches of the apartment what they called the ãwashing porchä. On that porch they built a huge sink and near it was a wavy part. My mother would come in the morning before the laundrywoman would come. She would put the dirty laundry in warm water with soap and soak it.  When the washer woman came later on, the clothes were soaked already and with her hands she would rub the clothes on the wavy part near the sink. When she was done washing everything with the soap she would rinse everything, and then hag up the laundry to dry and that was it. And dishes we did by hand. We did the dishes in the kitchen like everyone..

N: Was the amount of technology in Morocco different in the villages than in the cities?

E: Of course it was different. I donât believe that refrigerators and electric steam irons got to the villages because in the past they used irons with coals inside them. The iron had a lid and people would put the coals inside and lit them to warm the iron. But in the cities, we surely had good irons.

N: When did the telephone come into the cities and villages in Morocco?

E: I can tell you that from the time I was a child there were telephones in the cities; I assume that there were also telephones in the villages. But in the villages there was a telephone in the post office, and whoever wanted to use it had to write a letter to the person he wanted to talk to saying, ãon this and this day be near your phone because I am going to call you.ä

In the cities there were telephones in offices, banks, work places, and in a few houses. We did not have a telephone. There was no need for it; itâs interesting that there was no need for a phone. The minute that technology brought something new, suddenly there was a need for it. There were telephones in the offices and good public phones.

N: Were there any technological devices in your house in Morocco that you didnât have when you arrived in Israel?

E: It was weird for me when I came to Israel and there was no TV. Even though we did not have a TV at home, it was weird because no one in Israel had even heard about TV; nobody knew what it was at all. In Israel they also had no idea what plastic products were. It is interesting that in Morocco there were already factories that made plastic. By the time I got to Israel, they started making containers out of plastic in Morocco. It was just plain weird that nobody in Israel knew of these things.

There was no electricity [in some places in Israel]. When we came to Israel and arrived in Ashdod, we did not have electricity for two years; so for those two years we would light a kerosene lamp or use candles.

In Morocco we had an electric refrigerator, and when we brought it with us to Israel we couldnât use it. People would say to us, ãWhat?! You have an electric refrigerator?ä In every house in Israel there was only an ice box: a little cupboard in which we would put ice that we bought and then food in to keep it cool. That was the one thing I missed that I had in Morocco and not here.

N: In what conditions did you live in your first month in Israel? In what conditions did you live in Morocco?

E: [In Israel] we lived in a tin hut·and the place was called a transit camp (maabarah) because everyone was living in tin huts. For every two, three, or four huts, they would build a tiny tin hut that would serve as the bathroom. There were no toilets and no running water. The ãtoiletä was a kind of board with a whole in the middle and outside there was a faucet·and that is where we washed our hands. Meaning, we moved from a modern apartment, normal bathrooms, with rooms, with a porch·with a kitchen, with a laundry porch...,I just got to this kind of tin hut that I didnât know how to get used to. It was very cold. We didnât have a lot of things. We didnât have blankets; we didnât have anything. But we received metal beds and mattresses made of seaweed, like in the past, in addition to blankets,from the Jewish Agency for Israel.  We received a box with canned food inside to have something to eat. We received kerosene lamps so we would have light. But two years without electricity was very hard.

N: In your opinion, what is the greatest technological invention that helped mankind?

E:  I think the computer is the greatest technological invention.

N: Why?

E: Because the computer speeds up all kinds of mental operations, so it improves all kinds of things, improves technology.

N:  In your opinion, what is the most unnecessary technological device?

E: I think the cell phone is the most unnecessary device; it is like an illness. Everyone has a cell phone in their pocket/bag, they take it everywhere: on the bus, when they are just walking in the street, in stores, they just take it everywhere.

N: In what profession do you work or in the past?

E: I was a director of social welfare office..

N: Is there any device that helped make your work better, easier?

E: We return again to the computer· I am not dependent on the computer as I am dependent on the phone; there has to be a phone. But when they installed a computer in the social welfare office it really helped us. Instead of taking out a file all the time we could use the computer to help us. Sometimes, we would have to give reports on families with one parent, or a few families of old people or a few families with children from one age to another·so the computer really helped us to remember, and to concentrate things, it allowed us to access information with ease·the data was entered into the computer and it was easy to access information·

N: In your opinion, is life easier with technology or without it?

E: That is really funny·I think now you cannot live without technology·every good thing you get used to is hard to get rid of because it is good, and it helps·For sure with technology itâs a lot better.

N: But donât you think that now there is a bit too much technology and they invent things that arenât so important?

E: Except for the cell phone, that I canât stand, I think that until now the things are good, necessary, and essential, and of course they make life easier.. Technology helps greatly and makes time available for doing other activities. Right now I can sew, because technology allows me to have the washing machine wash the clothes and at the same time I can sew, Yes, because I have the washing machine so I have time for other interests.