The Elka and Binyamin Yahalom Branch

Elka Frumkin (1870-1945), the second child of Arye Leib and Sheina,  spent her youth in Lithuania, and when the Frumkin family left for Palestine in 1883, Elka and her older sister Sara Rivka stayed in the care of Sheina's sister Rosa in Pikeln. There she learned the elements of the cloth trade from the Hodess family. She joined the family five years later in 1888, when he father Arye Leib brought her to Petach Tikva. She married Binyamin Yahalom, a learned young man from Jerusalem, who joined the family in Petach Tikva and initially studied, but soon the young couple moved to Jaffa, where they opened a cloth store. He subsequently bought land in Petach Tikva, to produce wine, but local problems led to most of the wine growers in Petach Tikva losing everything in 1899, and Binyamin travelled to London to join his father-in-law Arye Leib Frumkin, soon joined by his wife and 3 children. But the family longed for the holyland and returned in 1907 to the difficult conditions in Petach Tikva, leaving the oldest daughter Sarah in England, returning with their son Yosef and daughter Shoshana. Two more daughters were born in Israel Rivka and Hemda.

The family returned to Petach Tikva, but again moved to Jaffa and opened a cloth store, whose sign can just be seen on the left side of the photograph of Jafa in 1920. Elka often travelling to Beirut to buy cloth. Business was hard, Elka became ill and had to travel to Germany for an operation, the Arabs in Jaffa rioted and the family returned to Petach Tikva, where they remained. Binyamin bought the land which is now Kfar Ganim, and built his house where they remained, Binyamin's purchase of the land in Kfar Ganim was a long and difficult process, but he and Elka persevered through the diffcult times of 1920's and 1930's helping to build up the area and to built a Synagogue. Yosef Yahalom died young but the four daughters married - Sara to Alec Epstein, Shoshana to Nechemia Yisroelit, Rivka to Yosef Marcus, and Hemda to Herzl Straclevitz. Each has raised their own family, with majority of the descendents still living in Israel, having contibuted in their own way to the rebirth of the Jewish State.

	Yahalom Family 1994
	Here we see the four sisters at a family get together in 1980.

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