Leah Goldberg-The Mistress of the Palace 2023 — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

At the end of June 2023, we gathered for a general meeting at Beit Vilna. After the meeting, we heard Eli Eshad's lecture about Leah Goldberg and the play she wrote, 'The Mistress of the Palace'.

Eli told about the connection between Lea Goldberg and Gershom Shalom, who was a well-known Kabbalah researcher, a connection that was kept secret and was not widely known. Most of Leah Goldberg's correspondence was kept by Tuvia Rivner who was Goldberg's student.

The play 'The Mistress of the Palace' was almost the first to deal with the Holocaust and was groundbreaking and considered one of the best known Hebrew plays.

The plot of the play was written against the background of a huge project of searching for Jewish books in post-war Europe that were looted by the Nazis bring them to the Land of Israel. Saving books as Sutzkever did in Lithuania during the war.

Gershom Shalom was a great expert in Jewish books and served as a representative of the National Library and he came to the Czech Republic where Rosenberg assembled a large collection of looted Judaica items.

This was the background of the play and the spirit of Shalom runs through it. The play has a mystical atmosphere and was different from other Goldberg plays. She tried to change the character in the play so that Gershom Shalom would not be recognized even though both characters did the same job of collecting books. The relationship between them helped Leah Goldberg a lot and thanks to him she developed her career at the Hebrew University, succeeded and prospered in a surprising way and was appointed as head of the literature department. Gershom Shalom was the strongest man in the university and he fought for her. The question Eli Eshad asked is why he supported her so much? He is mentioned very little in Goldberg's diary. The hypothesis is that there were close ties and they hid and even destroyed any reference to it. Gershom Shalom eulogized her after her death and everyone was surprised because they didn't know about an intimate acquaintance and a close relationship of many years between them.