Dr. Marjorie Kenyon has practiced medicine for over seven decades, earlier this year she was honored for her current volunteering at Yad Sarah.
By RUTH EGLASHmarjorie kenyon(photo credit: Esteban Alterman)
One might assume that when Marjorie Kenyon made aliya in 1987, then 73, she came here to retire and lead a quiet life as a doting grandmother and great-grandmother to her youngest daughter's brood. However, when the London-born doctor arrived in Jerusalem, her first port of call was at city hall, where she offered to set up a health clinic for older women.
"I went there and told them that I admired the work they were doing for children and young mothers, but that there was nothing for the grandmothers," recalls Kenyon, who trained as a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women and graduated in 1936. "I offered to start a clinic for older women that would provide them with medical advice and certain free tests that they had not been receiving."
Among the services provided by Kenyon were breast cancer examinations, advice on sexual issues and other problems experienced by older women.
"I think they liked coming and seeing an older female doctor, who could understand some of their problems," explains Kenyon, adding that with only a basic grasp of Hebrew she often had to resort to "pantomime, the age-old language."
While Kenyon no longer runs the clinic, which has since been incorporated into a Tipat Halav clinic in the capital's Mahaneh Yehuda market area - she had to stop 10 years ago when she could no longer drive - the 94-year-old is still an active volunteer, helping out once a week at medical organization Yad Sarah. Earlier this year, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski honored Kenyon for her voluntary work and the medical contributions she has made.
"I don't know why they made such a fuss of me," she says. "I was a little bit overwhelmed because I didn't really bring any new ideas, I just did what I wanted to do.
"The truth is that it [volunteering] makes me feel as though I am still of use in this world. It's what keeps me going and creates meaning in my life," continues Kenyon, whose current voluntary work is for Yad Sarah's Da'at program and involves sitting down at a computer once a week to answer ordinary people's medical queries.
"I'm a medical librarian of sorts," explains Kenyon, who learned how to use a computer only some 10 years ago. "Nothing is that difficult if you put your mind to it. We answer people's medical questions from all over the world, for both religious and secular people. I like the work a lot because it helps me keep up with the literature and I get to be in a place with like-minded people.
"Medicine has changed enormously in recent years. Today, there is keyhole and laparoscopic surgery, it's so different from when I first practiced.
"Back then most medicines came from plants. If someone came to me with a sore throat, I would prescribe for them honey with an onion dropped in it or a woolen sock filled with heated salt to rub on the neck - no different really from those beanbags you have today that you put in the microwave.
"In fact, those [natural] ingredients do have some relevance today in modern medicine and, besides, alternative medicine is regaining popularity today."
KENYON grew up in the London neighborhood of Highbury, in a "more Anglicized" Jewish community than the traditionally recognized Jewish area of the East End.
"My father had grown up in the East End, but my family had managed to progress from there and we were more established than other Jewish immigrants," says Kenyon, whose grandfather had arrived in England from Russia in the 1890s.
From an early age, she knew that she would become a doctor.
"Being a doctor was almost foretold," she says. "I was always interested in caring for other people and even when I was as young as nine my friends would make me take them to the school nurse."
In many ways, the medical profession was a natural option for her, says Kenyon, whose father was a scientist and whose aunt had been a prominent London surgeon in the 1920s.
"Everyone said I had to become a doctor and that is really what I wanted to do. For me it was never about the money," she says.
While it was her disposition to become a doctor, Kenyon's connection to what would later become Israel was also a constant element during childhood.
"Even though Israel had not yet been created, I learned at an young age about the need for a Jewish state," she recalls.
One of her earliest memories was from during World War I. She describes how sometimes her father would be very happy and sometimes her mother would be very happy because "I had one uncle fighting in the German army and another in the British army. After the war, in 1922, I met my German cousin who was the same age as me and she did not have a father, he had been killed in the war.
"It was then that I realized Jews should not be fighting each other... they should have a land of their own. The struggle for Israel then became a personal one for me."
One of her relatives, Annie Landau, who is mentioned in the memoirs of Abba Eban, wrote and invited her to come to live in Mandatory Palestine and put her skills and training as a doctor to good use.
However, says Kenyon, it was during the 1930 Arab riots and her father felt "it was not the appropriate time to go."
"The British were limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine too and my father thought it was not fair for me to take away someone else's chance to go," she remembers.
Instead of moving to Israel, Kenyon accepted a position as a junior doctor in Manchester and it was there that she met her husband, Ralph Kenyon, and started a family.
Although the couple entertained the possibility of moving to Israel one day, her husband, also a scientist, began work for a pharmaceutical company and the family became immersed in Manchester's Jewish life.
Kenyon, however, allowed her patriotism and connection to the Jewish state to flow through her two daughters, both of whom were involved in Jewish youth organizations and spent significant time here during the country's early years. One of her daughters ended up making aliya.
"My eldest daughter, who is an orthodontist, lives in Los Angeles," Kenyon says.
The couple moved back to London in 1961 and Kenyon, who was already nearing retirement age, continued to work in public health, providing medical services to Britain's growing immigrant population.
"I suppose I should have retired but did not want to stop working," she says. "I was working with a wide range of cultures then, including with Rastafarians, and I really started to understand their world."
Following her husband's death in 1975, Kenyon spent much of her time shuttling between her two daughters. But she continued living in London to be near her sister. When that sister decided to make aliya in the early 1980s, however, Kenyon realized there was nothing left to connect her with England.
"I had been mulling over leaving Britain for about 10 years, since Ralph died," she says. "In the end, I decided it was more practical for me to live in Israel. I was in my 70s when I came here and made the decision then not to become the forgotten grandmother. I wanted to continue working and carve out a life for myself here."
Today, outside of her one-day-a-week volunteer work, Kenyon spends time with her daughter, four grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. The evidence of this is clear in her modest Jerusalem apartment, which is decorated with photos and scattered with children's toys.
"They visit me and tell me about all their work and studies," she says proudly. "It's important to have an active mind, even if one must learn to accept the physical disabilities that come along with old age."
Asked what the secret is to her longevity and continuing energy, Kenyon quips: "One can't really choose ones genes; my mother lived until she was 92, and was active until the end. I suspect I take after her."
