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Nechama Rivlin Was Us

(Times of Israel) Noah Efron - The late Nechama Rivlin, wife of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, had no airs, she was not fancy, she was direct. A childhood friend said that when she would invite the old gang, women who were friends on the moshav almost 70 years earlier, to the President's Residence, she served them cake she'd stayed up late the night before baking herself. There was a decency to most everything we saw her say and do. A radio interviewer once asked her if people make comments about the portable oxygen tank that she needed to breathe. Oh yes, all the time, she said. They ask questions like, where did you get it? How much does it cost? Is it a good one? They ask these questions because they have a parent who has trouble breathing, or a husband or a child. So I tell them what store I bought it at, and ask them to say hi for me to the man that runs it. Nechama Rivlin somehow embodied who we are. She's those kids clamoring to get the army to let them spend a year before they enlist, so they can live in a run-down apartment in a run-down town, teaching math or art to kids whose parents can't buy them books. She's Maria Nahmias from the torch-lighting ceremony, who, after surviving the Holocaust raised 53 Jewish and Arab foster kids. She's Dudi, my mail carrier, who phoned me in D.C. because he knew I was abroad and worried a package I got would be returned; is there a neighbor he could bring it to? She's the person who notices that you're confused at the bus stop and says, let me help you. Nechama Rivlin touched us so much because she did not think that being decent is somehow special. We loved her for that, for who she was. And we loved her, too, because she showed us what we are, at our best. The writer teaches history and philosophy of science at Bar-Ilan University and has served on the City Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
2019-06-07 00:00:00
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