Zipporah Porath
Biography
Zipporah “Zippy” Porath (1924–2020) — Haganah medic in the siege of Jerusalem and member of the Israel Air Force Intelligence unit.
Born and raised in New York, Zippy was the daughter of Samuel J. Borowsky, a renowned Hebrew educator, prominent Zionist, and one of the founders of Young Judaea. In 1947 she arrived in Jerusalem on a one-year scholarship to the Hebrew University and, like a number of other Jewish American students, was swept up in the War of Independence. She abandoned her studies and enlisted in the underground Haganah, serving as a medic during the siege of Jerusalem and helping to set up infirmary services for the fledgling Israel Air Force. She was later transferred to the IAF’s Intelligence unit, where among her duties she served as liaison to the foreign press.
Zippy captured her experiences in letters home, rediscovered four decades later and published as Letters from Jerusalem: 1947–1948, an eyewitness account of Israel’s birth. After the war she briefly returned to the United States as Executive Assistant to the Consul General in New York, where she met and married Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Porath, then Israel’s assistant Military Attaché. She made her life in Israel, working as a freelance writer, editor, and publications consultant, and in her later years became a popular lecturer and a prominent member of the World MACHAL Committee, representing the thousands of overseas volunteers who fought in Israel’s War of Independence.
She died on December 30, 2020.
Read her biography at the Jewish Women’s Archive →
Works
- Letters from Jerusalem: 1947–1948 — her eyewitness account of the siege of Jerusalem and the founding of the state.
- Machal: Overseas Volunteers in Israel’s War of Independence 1948–49 — the World Machal anthology she compiled and edited, gathering the stories of the overseas volunteers. Read the Machal booklet (PDF) →