In October 2021, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar visited Israel ahead of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relation between India and Israel. A trip to Israel is incomplete withoutvisiting some of the ancient locations and archaeological and natural wonders like the Sea of Galilee. For the important Indian visitor, the Israeli Foreign Ministry chose veteran tour guide Roley Horowitz.
During Mr. Jaishankar’s visit to the Tower of David, which is also known as the Citadel, his tour guide did not just introduce him to the latest conservation practices that are followed meticulously in Israel but also its past. Ms. Roley’s presentation covered the entire timespan from the Jewish antiquity of the area to the Mamluk and the subsequent period.
To Ms. Roley, this presentation came naturally as she has done for many others like Bollywood actor Sonam Kapoor and her mother Sunita, NCP leader Sharad Pawar, the late External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Ms. Roley’s most famous visitor was, however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited Israel in 2005. During that visit, she surprised him by revealing that her original name is actually Savitri Mehta. “After that, throughout his stay, Mr. Modi addressed me as Savitriben,” said Ms. Roley, who narrated to her guest how she became Savitri Ruth Mehta Horowitz.
Ms. Roley introduced Israel to Mr. Modi with the ease and scholarly expertise with which she had guided CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, when he attended a Conference of the Communist Party of Israel in Nazareth or the former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Preaching gospel of Jesus
The journey of Ms. Savitri from Kolkata’s Alipore to Israel began way back in the early 1960s when, at the age of 12, Savitri, daughter of the Military Attache in Indian Embassy in Tokyo rebelled against her parents Brigadier C.S. Mehta and her mother Sunita Roy.Ms. Savitriarrived from her Japanese lessons and declaredthat she would embrace Christianity . The announcement drew resistance from her Brahmin mother and Sikh father. But she persisted and within three years, she convinced her parents to embrace Christianity. Upon return to Kolkata, then Calcutta, she would often be seen near a church in Bow Bazar preaching gospel of Jesus with a megaphone. While the call of Jesus Christ would draw her to Israel two decades later, her first love, however, was Air India.
Ms. Roley joined Air India as an air hostess in 1972 and travelled to London, Tokyo, Dubai, Hong Kong and New York. “Those days, we travelled in Boeing 707 and the 747. We were posted to a particular station for three months and would serve in Air India flights for a certain sector,” she stated, remembering her days when the ultimate global destination was Lebanese capital Beirut, which is also known as the Paris of the Middle East. She next moved to London where, along with future novelist Mala Sen, organised a protest against the airline’s top officials over terminationof services of several employees in the London office of the airline. After a three-year stay in Houston, the globetrotter reached Israel, where she felt finally at home.
For nearly a decade thereafter, Ms. Roley was among the handful of Indians who called Israel their home. She began as a volunteer in a Christian organisation but after studying in depth about ancient Christianity, she chose to become Jewish in 1989. The Jewish faith does not encourage religious conversion and that is why Ms. Roley had to study with Orthodox rabbis for two years and was accepted into the faith after interviews through the Orthodox Rabbinical Court. In Israel, Ms. Roley found her new profession as a tour guide, who had the licence from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Months before Israel and India were to establish ties on January 29, 1992, Ms. Roley married Michael Arthur Horowitz, a barrister who was noted for fighting war crimes. Soon after the establishment of India-Israel ties, she and academic Shalva Weil and Indian conductor Zubin Mehta set up an organisation to foster India-Israel relations.
Big list
Over the years, Ms. Roley worked as the Licensed Israeli Guide and made friends all over the world. Her list would expand toinclude the likes of Prime Ministers like Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu and even current President Isaac Herzog.
Over the past three decades, Ms. Roley has evolved from being a Licensed Israeli Guide to an expert on the region. Her tour presentations reflect Israel’s complicated history that she imbibed by walking all over the country -- from the Golan Heights to the holy churches, from the Jewish sites to the Palestinian villages of Israel. “History is not black and white,” she said hinting at Israel-Palestinian issues.
Ms. Roley, who currently divides her time between Israel and her Indian house in Goa, says the most important thing for her is to be “instrumental” in sharing her knowledge about the complex region that hosts Israel. “Israelis celebrate diversity, failure and tend to always be dissatisfied making them constantly trying to be better, try harder,” she observed. And she thinks it would be a “great publicity moment” if Air India would rehire some of the “seniors”!
