Eyewitness to history and former first lady, Reuma Weizman dies age 99

Reuma Weizman, wife of Israel’s late seventh president, Ezer Weizman, died at age 99, it was announced Tuesday.

Weizman had a long history of public service, both before, during and after her husband’s time in office, although her public image lived largely in the shadow of that of her outspoken and acerbic spouse.

The former first lady spent decades involved in volunteer work with children in need. During her husband’s tenure as president, she hosted numerous visiting dignitaries and also accompanied him on multiple foreign trips. She also used her position to open up the President’s Residence to organizations assisting ailing children and those with special needs, championing women’s issues and supporting adult literacy.

Ezer Weizman died in 2005 at age 80. After a long career in both the military and politics, he was elected president in 1993 and then reelected in 1998, but resigned in 2000 amid a scandal over improperly received funds when he was a Knesset member.

Weizman was born Reuma Schwartz in London in 1925, to Zvi and Rachel, immigrants to Mandatory Palestine from Eastern Europe who were stationed in the United Kingdom for Zvi’s studies. When Weizman was a toddler, her family returned to Jerusalem, and later sent her to a boarding school in the Mishmar HaEmek kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley. Her sister, Ruth – who died in 2021 at age 103 – was the first wife of legendary defense minister Moshe Dayan and a prominent activist.

In 1946, Weizman traveled to London, enabled by her British passport, and began studying education. She told researchers from Hebrew University in 1993 that during her time there she was even briefly sent as a journalist to cover the Nuremberg Trials for a Jewish news outlet in London.

Then in 1947, the 22-year-old Weizman was sent on behalf of the Jewish Agency to work in an orphanage for child Holocaust survivors in the British-occupied zone of Germany.

In testimony to Yad Vashem in 1995, she recounted lying to authorities about the identity of some of the children in order to grant them passage to Israel, where the British were limiting immigration.

“We had to hide from the British that the children were not from the British zone,” she recalled. “The British government – which was at the time controlling Israel – had a monthly immigration quota, a very small one, just for children, just for orphans and just for those from the British zone… so we lied.”

In 1948 she returned to the nascent State of Israel and volunteered for the IDF, serving in the Government Press Office in Jerusalem. A year later she met Ezer Weizman – who was already head of the Israel Air Force’s operations department – and the two were married in 1950 by then Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, the grandfather of current Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

For the next 10 years they largely moved around various Air Forces bases in Israel, and their son Shaul and daughter Michal were born. In 1962 she began to volunteer at Beit Micha, which supports children with hearing loss, an organization she remained closely connected to for many decades.

She later became a board member of the Youth Cultural Center in Or Akiva and of the S.O.S. Children’s Village Association for homeless youth.

In 1970, the Weizmans’ son, Shaul, was seriously wounded after he was shot in the head by an Egyptian sniper near the Suez Canal during his IDF service. He required extensive medical treatment and care, and associates of the Weizman family claimed that the undisclosed funds Ezer received which ultimately led to his resignation were largely to fund such care.

Reuma Weizman dedicated much of her time following Shaul’s injury to his recovery. In 1991, just a year and a half after he got married, Shaul and his wife were killed in a car accident when he was 40.

Two years later, she moved with Ezer from their home in Caesarea to the President’s Residence in Jerusalem after he was elected. While first lady, she welcomed groups of Arab and Druze women, visited the sick and wounded, hosted dozens of foreign dignitaries and opened her home to children from across Israel.

She was also an eyewitness to many iconic moments in history. In 1994, she and Leah Rabin stood side by side with Jordan’s Queen Noor and then-US first lady Hillary Clinton as Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty.

Months earlier, the Weizmans – as well as Yasser and Suha Arafat – attended the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. In 1997, they were hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at a royal dinner in Buckingham Palace. Two years later, they attended the funeral of Jordan’s King Hussein.

Weizman is survived by her daughter, Michal, and several grandchildren.

She is to be buried in Or Akiva, alongside her husband and her son and daughter-in-law. In an unusual request, Weizman requested to be buried next to his son upon his death, instead of on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where presidents and prime ministers are customarily laid to rest.

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