‘He engulfed me’ — Ben and Yael’s love story
The battle-scarred Canadian commander was rude. The big-eyed Israeli didn’t notice. It was war. It was Israel. Rude came with the territory.
But moments after the terse handover of top-secret orders, Ben Dunkelman thought twice about the beguiling young army clerk he had so contemptuously dismissed.
He made inquiries. She was single. He was smitten. They courted and married, in a whirlwind romance that unfolded even as the Toronto volunteer led his army through a series of conquests that helped shape Israel’s borders.
Sixty-seven years and six children later, Ben is gone. But the native Israeli, the love of his life, is still very much with us, living in Toronto, memories intact. The speed of her tears as she casts back to their courtship in the middle of the war of 1948 is a powerful testament to the life they shared.
“He engulfed me — I don’t know how else to say it,” said Yael Dunkelman. “Not at first. The fact that he was rude made no impression on me — that was normal. It was the way he apologized the next time he saw me that made the impression. He was so big and charming. It all happened so fast.”
She was 22, he was 35. They wedded in the lull between battles. And planned, for a time at least, to stay in Israel. But fate took them instead to Canada, where Dunkelman was needed to help run the family firm, Tip Top Tailors.
“There was no kissing before marriage. You didn’t hold hands. It was a very different time,” Yael recalled. “But I knew Ben had experienced terrible things in war. The first night of our honeymoon, he was up pacing. I thought maybe I had done something wrong. But all he said was, ‘I’m thinking about all the men who are gone, who will never have a chance to be this happy.’ ”
After a lifetime in Canada, Israel no longer draws Yael as strongly as it once did. The hardline politics, the growing social gaps, the hold of religion on government. She gave her life instead to art, persuading Ben to take the plunge on a gallery.
“One of the things about living this long is you find your friends are gone,” she said. “Ben and I did everything together, everything. Our work, our lives outside work . . . But I do miss the smell of the earth in Israel. I will never forget it.”