You see them in little shops wedged between bigger stores on the street or sometimes in freestanding kiosks on the sidewalk.
Usually, an elderly man is sitting behind a counter or at a small table, with a few tools hanging on the wall or scattered around, an old sewing machine in the corner, and all sorts of laces, belts, and shoe polish for sale. These are your cheerful, local shoemakers. Cobblers, strictly speaking (“menders; patcher-uppers”), because they usually don’t make the shoes anymore; they just fix them.
But a couple of younger, even boyish-looking ones manning two shops in different parts of town? Not so common. And then you find out that they are actually brothers who have decided, in this digital, virtual, fast-paced world, to follow in their footwear-fixing father’s footsteps – now there’s a rare foot feat!
“It all started when I was in high school, when my father had his shoemaker shop on Bar-Ilan Street,” David Arabov, now 38 years old, told In Jerusalem from his own shop in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood, about two kilometers southeast from there. He looks 15 years younger; you wouldn’t think that he is a father of five.
“After school, I would go and watch what he was doing,” the then-fascinated son of a cobbler man said. “He didn’t tell me, ‘Come sew this, take that, hold this’ – he didn’t tell me anything. I was just watching him while he was working. If he had to go out for an hour or two, he left me to watch the shop.”
My family used to bring our shoes to Shmuel Arabov’s shop on Bar-Ilan Street – and I remember David as a boy sitting there sometimes while his father was away for a while.
“What I saw him do – that’s what I started to do. First, I would take scrap pieces of leather, and I would start to sew them with his sewing machine. Just for fun, not for work. Then he gave me easy Velcro to practice on,” David recounted. Twenty years later, the apprenticed son has his own shop across town.
Shmuel moved his shop down and across the street a few years later, to where it is today – manned by his youngest son, Yisrael, David’s younger brother. We kept bringing our shoes to Shmuel there even after Yisrael took over the operation when Dad “retired.” When I saw Yisrael a couple of weeks ago, I thought he was David. “No, my brother has his own shop in Beit Yisrael,” he said.
But even though their father officially retired about 10 years ago, he still comes in a few times a week because he loves what he did, so he still does it. He was there that day, which inspired this shoe story.
We’re back from the USSR
Shmuel Arabov made aliyah with his family from Samarkand in the southeast of Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country landlocked by five of the other six “stan” countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and huge Kazakhstan – larger than all the others combined, and includes Pakistan, the seventh one farther south from the “place of the Afghans” (the Persian/Urdu suffix -stan also means “where one stands”).
Like David, Shmuel has five children – three boys and two girls – whom he brought to Israel with his wife, Tamara, and parents, Malchiel and Ferecha, when he was 37.
“Yisrael was born just a couple of days before we arrived – our new ‘mitzvah’ whom we merited to bring on our long dreamed-of other mitzvah of coming to the Land of Israel,” he said proudly. He was just like the biblical Jochebed, mother of Moses, who was born as Jacob/Israel’s family was crossing down into Egypt.
“We came right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,” he said. Except for Afghanistan and Pakistan, all of the other “stans” had been among the 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (the “SSR” of the USSR).
They moved to Neve Yaakov, 11 km. north of the two shoe shops. “We went there straight from Ben-Gurion Airport because my cousin, Isaac Yeshuvayev, who passed away recently, lived there.” Besides Hebrew, the family still speaks Russian and the Judeo-Persian dialect of Bukharian.
“Wasn’t it dangerous to live next to Arab communities – then and now?” I asked Mr. Arabov, whose family was given their surname because officials centuries earlier thought they were Arabs, since they came from Iraq. “No, no problem with the Arabs – everything is fine,” he reassured me.
All in the family
Besides his mother and father, his sister and four brothers also came home to the homeland. “My father was also a sandlar” (Hebrew for “shoemaker” – from “sandals,” the original, open-on-top footwear), he said.
“Your uncles, too,” chimed in third-generation sandlar Yisrael.
“Yes – my uncles, my brothers – all sandlarim,” Shmuel confirmed, adding that he also sandaled for 15 years in Romania, and his father also worked in north-neighboring Kazakhstan.
I asked why his family name is not Sandler (like other, more famous Jews such as Adam, Jackie, Jared, and Boris). He laughed – and nodded when I said that one of the Tannaitic sages was named Yochanan HaSandlar – Johanan the Shoemaker. According to the Talmud, “the most important thing is the feet,” Shmuel responded.
The 71-year-old ped-protecting patriarch proudly told In Jerusalem that from his five children, he has 30 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren – and he remembers all of their names. “Six of our grandchildren already got married, bless God,” he exulted, lifting his hands and eyes up to the heavens above his cobble shop.
“My eldest son, Rabbi Avraham, lives in Elad and teaches children in a Talmud Torah,” he said. “All the others are Jerusalemites. My eldest daughter’s husband reads the Torah scroll in synagogue and works at a bank. My other daughter’s husband is a synagogue rabbi.”
“You raised such a big, religious family just from being a sandlar?” I asked incredulously. “No,” he answered matter-of-factly.
Arabov didn’t return to cobbling immediately upon coming to Israel. He worked in another kind of skill shop – with aluminum. “When I came to Israel, I worked at Mifromal Aluminium in Givat Shaul for 15 years,” he said. Then, in 2005, he returned to his family’s boot roots and opened his cobbling business. And now, 20 years later, post-retirement and on a National Insurance pension, he still comes around to fix another shoe or two. But why?
Coming with a smile, leaving with a smile
“I like it, of course. Fixing shoes is good for people,” he said pragmatically. “They come with a smile and leave with a smile.”
And they do come. Five or six customers came in during the half hour I was there. Eitan, a longtime customer and friend, was there when I arrived.
“He is a great seamster, whose work is 100% – everyone is very satisfied with it,” he said. (Yes, seamster is the male version of seamstress!) A woman came with her two kids, waiting patiently as Yisrael fixed a shoe while sharing his story. Another one came with her husband, also telling me how much she appreciates the Arabovs and their shoecraft. Shmuel said that a family even brings their shoes when they visit from the US.
Yisrael, who took over the original Bar-Ilan branch, now down and across the street, is 35 and has four children. He also doesn’t look his age – neither does his dad, for that matter. They all look 15 to 20 years younger than they are. Fixing shoes is apparently somewhat of an elixir of youth. How did he get into this footish family profession?
“Like my brother, I just like to do it,” Yisrael said. “I was a cook – also in the army – but also came around to this.” He’s done more than 100 days of reserve duty so far in the current war. David worked in the sterilizing department at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Mount Scopus, as a car mechanic, and then in various factories before coming around to shoe fixing and seamstering.
“I like it because it’s quiet work,” David said. “Work where no one stands on your head; just you and the shoe, and you fix it.”
“Don’t more people nowadays just buy inexpensive new shoes and throw away their old, damaged ones?” In Jerusalem asked. “No, people still fix them like they always have,” Yisrael said. Shmuel interjected: “People like their old shoes – they get used to them.”
Like father, like son – again?
Does the younger Arabov think his own kids will follow in the family footsteps? “My wife, Michal, doesn’t want that,” Yisrael quickly responded but added that his mother did like it. Tamara is now retired from the Jerusalem Municipality but was also a seamstress. “I used to watch her sew,” David said, “so I also learned that skill, which became part of my work.”
What does the “pedegal” son’s wife think about his cobbler calling?
My wife, Helena, at first wasn’t so excited about it because it’s a profession that doesn’t engender much respect. To say to someone, ‘I’m a sandlar, I’m a seamster – it’s not a profession nowadays that someone boasts about,” David replied. “But I connect to it, so she went along with me; whatever was good for me was good for her.” How nice!
And what does she do? “She works in a school as a teacher’s assistant, straightens hair, and does nails,” he said. It helps the family cobble along.
How does the elder cobbler feel about two of his sons continuing on his footpath? “They are good children, bless God,” he kvelled (expressed proudly). “They don’t go on the wrong path.”
Jerusalem’s Arabov family surely shows that even such an ancient, disregarded, quiet profession can still inspire certain kinds of people to love and practice it, even to the point of encouraging capable and appreciative children to follow in their parents’ literal footsteps. If the shoe fits, fix it – and wear it.