It’s not just because a picture is worth more than a thousand words that photojournalist Sarah Davidovich is such a popular figure in Jerusalem and beyond.
Admittedly she takes good photographs, even though she never uses a telescopic lens but relies on the small, pocket-size camera that she carries in her purse. The camera contributes to her popularity, but it’s her personality that wins the Jerusalem-born Davidovich so many friends from all strata of society.
She is one of those rare creatures who never bad-mouth anyone, and she exclaims with genuine delight when she receives a phone call from a friend or acquaintance or bumps into anyone she knows.
With carte blanche at most of the capital’s luxury hotels, Davidovich does not differentiate in her attitude between management and line staff. She greets both with equal enthusiasm, often accompanied by a hug and a kiss.
We saw this in action upon meeting her at the Jerusalem Waldorf Astoria Hotel last month, where she insisted that we select anything we wanted from the menu. When we let it slip that a birthday was coming up, she insisted on ordering champagne.
She is both hospitable and generous. It’s part of her personality.
So is her smile. She has a friendly smile for everyone, and it’s her passport to a lot of places where reporters and other photojournalists are often barred. She can walk into the offices of the president and the prime minister, and has been known to take famous dignitaries to meet one or the other – and vice versa.
Not everyone in high office is sufficiently confident to introduce themselves to another dignitary or celebrity, and visitors from abroad, as well as local high society figures, have often asked her to make introductions.
Davidovich always agrees. Personal assistants or bodyguards, who might stop other people from entering an inner sanctum, just wave her through. Sometimes it seems as if she knows everyone, and everyone knows her.
It’s true that she grew up with a lot of Jerusalemites who made very successful careers for themselves, so there’s a familiar connection from childhood. But people she met as an adult are just as happy to be in her company – and don’t seem to mind if she pops into their offices in the middle of a meeting just to say hello or to introduce someone who wants to meet them.
The difference
One might think that other photojournalists would be resentful, but they don’t really mind because they don’t see her as competition. They view her primarily as a society photographer, whereas they see themselves as news photographers – and there is definitely a difference.
That difference is also obvious in her appearance: Always well dressed, well coiffed, and well accessorized, she seems to have an endless variety of elegant pants suits – on the day we met, it was a flattering electric blue. She doesn’t wear sneakers. Her preference is for stiletto-heeled shoes – the higher, the better. Other photographers wear the most casual of clothes, unless they are part of a contingent on a state visit.
But the real secret of her many friendships and invitations to photograph is her discretion.
“I see things and I hear things,” she said, “but I never tell.”
Included among her friends is Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. Other friends of the Netanyahus who have stayed the course – because they likewise don’t tell – are the prime minister’s personal physician Herman Berkovits and his wife, Elizabeth, a senior instructor at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music, who taught Yair Netanyahu to play the piano.
We couldn’t resist asking Davidovich whether the stories about Sara Netanyahu are true. She refused to comment, beyond saying that “She’s a good wife, a good mother, and she’s very clever.”
We tried to probe further and ask whether Mrs. Netanyahu really does have a say in her husband’s decisions. The family’s friend replied that marriage is teamwork. She recalled that when Ehud Barak was married to his first wife, Nava, they also worked as a team. Davidovich declined to give details, but it was obvious that Nava Barak was not one to sit in the background.
A career begins with Golda
Davidovich received her first camera, a Leica, as a gift when she was in her early teens. She was only a couple of years older when she met her husband, Mati (Matityahu), who was in the air force. He is a talented singer and instrumentalist, and she met him at a Hebrew University event where he was performing, introduced by a mutual friend. Mati was performing again the following night, and he invited her to come along. It took very little time for them to become an item, and they married when she was only 18.
Mati was getting a lot of gigs, and she accompanied him. On one occasion, he was invited to perform at a reception attended by Golda Meir. Guests were endlessly shaking hands with Golda, and photographers were feverishly snapping away. Davidovich said afterwards to her husband that “so many photographers were taking photos of Golda, and I didn‘t get a single one.”
“What’s the problem? You’ve got a camera,” he responded. “Use it.”
She took his advice, and because he had so many engagements to perform, she was able to take photos of the who’s who of Jerusalem.
She was noticed by Haim Shibi, who was then the Jerusalem bureau chief of Yediot Aharonot. At that time, there were no local supplements of daily newspapers. Shibi asked her to come to his office and show him her photos. He was impressed and gave her a double-page spread – and thus her career as a photojournalist was born. He continued to publish her photos, and not long afterwards Yediot Yerushalyim came into being and paved the way for other local publications as weekly supplements to daily newspapers.
For some years now, Davidovich has been supplying photos to Maariv Yerushalayim, which is part of The Jerusalem Post Group. Sometimes she has as many as four full pages of photographs of events such as Knesset activities, weddings, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, conferences, concerts, business openings, diplomatic receptions, and senior citizens centers.
Close circle of family and friends
As busy as she is, Davidovich never neglects her family and friends. She has two sons and a daughter plus several grandchildren. She refused to say how many because in religious circles, counting [heads] is just not done.
Although the family was traditional, they were not Shabbat observant until she met the noted Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, who had a profound influence on her and her family.
Davidovich did not entirely change her lifestyle. She doesn’t cover her hair, and her preference is for pants suits rather than skirts or dresses, but she frequently quotes from Jewish liturgy, and recites blessings aloud before and after eating, as well as on other occasions.
Through Kaduri and the observant family of her daughter Karin’s ex-husband, she began to meet more religious figures from Jerusalem’s North African community. Not that she personally differentiates between diverse streams of Judaism or even between Jews and non-Jews. To Davidovich, people are people, and she’s very much a people person, seeking primarily to find commonalities rather than differences.
This can be seen among a group of women with whom she has been meeting regularly for years. They come from various backgrounds and are at varying levels of education and society but have remained firm friends, discussing events of the day, meeting on an almost weekly basis for lunch, and coming together for major celebrations in one another’s families.
Some are leading figures in municipal affairs and various prestigious organizations. All of them figure prominently on the pages of Maariv Yerushalayim.
When asked about why they appear so often, Davidovich explained that they are so frequently together, and nearly every time they meet one of them has a birthday, which is duly documented on camera. The photojournalist photographs them en bloc and also in clusters, and sometimes some of the women appear in two or three clusters and later dominate the page, not because she particularly favors them but because of the other women in the groups.
THESE MEETINGS are usually lunchtime affairs because some of the women no longer live in Jerusalem.
Each gathering is in a different venue – the Israel Museum restaurant, the music center off Hillel Street, various hotels around the city, and a series of restaurants in midtown neighborhoods.
Because nearly all the women are active in organizations, Davidovich is invited to various significant events – and, of course, photographs from those events find their way to her pages in the newspaper.
She often brings a friend or acquaintance to one of the luncheons and makes a point of introducing that person to each of the women at the table. Sometimes there can be as many as 20, but each of the guests she brings is given inclusive treatment.
This is due to another of Davidovich’s character traits. She is aware of many of the positive attributes of her guests, and when she introduces them she elevates them to being the best, the kindest, the most well known, the most intelligent… The superlatives flow to the point of exaggeration and can even be embarrassing in the nature of the compliments which she pours forth. Anyone who needs an ego-rub would do well to have Davidovich as a friend.
After Rabbi Kaduri died in 2006 at the age of 104, Davidovich found a new religious mentor in Rabbanit Bruria Zvuluni, sister of the famed wonder rabbi Yaakov Israel Ifargan – generally known as the Rentgen (X-ray) for his uncanny ability to diagnose people’s illnesses just by looking at them. He is also an adviser to political figures and prominent businesspeople.
This gift for the supernatural appears to be part of the DNA of the Ifargan family, who have it in varying degrees. It’s not reserved for the male members of the family alone. Rabbanit Zvuluni also has it, though she doesn’t diagnose illness. But she is a spiritual counselor to politicians and executives in Israel and abroad, and Davidovich often brings her to events and waxes enthusiastically about Zvuluni’s advice and modest personality.
Woman of the people
Of all the places that Davidovich likes to dine, the Waldorf holds a certain nostalgia for her. In its previous incarnation, the building housed the Commerce and Industry Ministry, where her husband used to work in senior positions before he opened his own venture capital investment office, and she used to visit him frequently at the ministry.
These days, whenever she enters the lobby, she is immediately given the red carpet treatment by the manager, chef, kashrut supervisor, and wait staff. She treats all of them with equal affection and never forgets to heap praise on them. It’s not just at the Waldorf where she gets the welcome accorded to a rock star – it’s at nearly every luxury hotel in Jerusalem, as well as neighborhood restaurants.
Everyone seems to know her, and she knows them, and gives them a dose of her feel-good flattery, which is actually quite sincere. She’s an Israeli version of Pollyanna, seeing only the good in other people and never looking for the bad.
She’s also strongly family-oriented.
The Davidovich family is rather close-knit, and though not all of them live in Jerusalem, they come together often in one another’s homes or in restaurants.
They also like to entertain. Many years ago, they used to have regular sing-along evenings in their home, where guests – including Yitzhak and Leah Rabin – sat on the floor and joined in singing the most beloved of Israel’s songs.
If Davidovich was not a photojournalist, she would make an excellent taxi driver. She has an amazing gift for weaving in and out of traffic, and when other cars are stuck in congested areas, she manages to get out and pass the car that’s at the front of the line – without violating any traffic regulations.
AS A PHOTOGRAPHER, she has a gift for making friends with her subjects, such as the Clintons and Madonna. More recently, she got chummy with President Joe Biden’s Jerusalem-born Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein.
Davidovich flashes that ever-present cheerful smile which lights up her eyes, and her subjects are immediately won over.
As proof that she knows them, she always makes a point of having herself photographed with them – seldom at the end of a line in a group photo but always in the middle.
Anyone looking for proof just has to access her Facebook pages, where they can see her photographed with presidents, prime ministers, mayors, diplomats, musicians, actors, and many other celebrities and dignitaries.
Having lived in Jerusalem all her life, Davidovich is often asked what she thinks of the changing face of the city. She acknowledges that it’s not what it used to be but is full of praise for Mayor Moshe Lion, whom she regards as a personal friend.
When she was a young woman, the legendary Teddy Kollek was regarded as the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod. Davidovich recently bumped into Kollek’s daughter Osnat and asked her what she thought of Lion: “He’s like my father,” she said.
The photojournalist pointed out that under Lion, the city is cleaner and has progressed in many spheres, albeit not in the paving of the streets. She said that Lion has brought investors to Jerusalem, has created more jobs and hi-tech, and has turned the capital into a flourishing metropolis. Over the past year, Jerusalem has welcomed literally thousands of displaced people while simultaneously providing facilities and services for children and the aged, she said.
Kollek focused on culture, she said, while Lion is focusing on business, real estate, and hi-tech. Regardless of the focus, Jerusalem is always her city, and its people are always beloved to her.