I was 3 years old in 1957 when I left Poland for a new life in Israel with my devastated mother. Her parents and three siblings were murdered in the Holocaust. She had no relatives and no job. While she learned Hebrew at an ulpan, I lived in a Haifa orphanage with other traumatized children.

Our basement apartment was near the Leo Baeck elementary school, which I attended. I was the only child of a divorced mother in my class. My Polish name, Lilia Zelzer, broadcast that I wasn’t a sabra, that I wasn’t “salt of the earth,” melach ha’aretz. Being called by insulting names and struggling to hide my humiliation, I tried rebranding myself, hoping to convince the other children that there’s much more to me than my life circumstances.

Our teachers were committed to instilling into us Leo Baeck’s progressive Jewish values. (Rabbi Baeck, a 20th-century German scholar and theologian, was a leader of liberal Judaism. After World War II, he chaired the World Union for Progressive Judaism.)

To speed up immigrant students’ absorption, teachers Hebraized our names. They renamed me Lilith.

I remember my kind fourth-grade teacher telling me: “Lilith doesn’t do you justice. So we’ll drop the ‘th.’ From now on, you’ll be Lili.” Many years later, after reading a Primo Levi story, I discovered the legend of the infamous, tempestuous Lilith, the rebellious wife of Ashmedai. I’ll always be grateful to my wise teacher for renaming me after a lovely, fragrant flower instead.

Squeaky-voiced boys chased us, trying to snap the latex straps of our first bra.

My amazing, struggling mother, my sole provider, worked long hours as a bookkeeper at Tnuva, Israel’s largest dairy producer. She also freelanced for Israel’s Polish newspaper — her true love. I was a latch-key child. With no adult supervision, I was free to do as I pleased.

I spent most days at a magical place — our school’s play yard. I remember running around with the neighborhood kids, jumping rope and sharing secrets with other girls, while squeaky-voiced boys climbed trees or chased us, trying to snap the latex straps of our first bras. The school yard was our safe haven, an informal community center where afterschool unsupervised socializing took place.

I fondly recall Friday night folk dancing as well as our Tzofim (Scouts) gatherings, where I was inculcated with the country’s cultural values of camaraderie, compassion and defense of the motherland. It was in the Scouts that I acquired most of my social etiquette and experimented with problem-solving and negotiation techniques — skills so valuable to my later profession as a social worker.

At school assemblies, I was exposed to Jewish and national holidays, both festive and somber. One event launched my lifelong love for Bible studies — a bat mitzvah ceremony for all of us girls who turned 12 that school year. This uplifting progressive public ceremony honored our transition into womanhood, and was very unusual — bat mitzvahs were not common in Israel at the time.

After graduating Leo Baeck High School, I did my compulsory IDF service before getting my degree at Haifa University and later the University of Minnesota. My husband and I live in the East Bay and also in Tel Aviv, where our two American-born daughters have made their homes. My 95-year-old mother, the author of four Holocaust memoirs, still lives in my beloved Haifa. My closest friends and soul mates are still my Leo Baeck classmates.

70 years of Israeli statehood! Israel Independence Day kicks off the evening of April 18. To mark the occasion, J. asked dozens of Bay Area Jews to reflect on seven decades of the Jewish state. New ones will be posted daily here.