Reuma Weizman, wife to Israel’s seventh president, dies at age 99

Israel has lost a remarkable woman. Reuma Weizman, who witnessed some of Israel’s defining moments and spent decades serving children in need, has died at the age of 99.

Daughter of Jewish refugees to Mandatory Palestine, Weizman was born in the UK in 1925 while her father was temporarily studying in London. They returned to the Land when she was a child, and at the age of 9 they sent her to a boarding school on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley. 

Later in life, she was hitching a ride to Tel Aviv when she was picked up by the nephew of Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first prime minister. Reuma didn’t know at the time that Chaim’s nephew, Ezer Weizman, would later become her husband, never mind the president of Israel. That day as she traveled with him on the road to Tel Aviv she was on the way to becoming a future president’s wife.

Ezer Weizman was a pilot who served in the Royal Air Force of Great Britain, and later became one of the pioneers of Israel’s Air Force: a key factor in Israel’s survival of the Six-Day War in 1967. He rose through the ranks and ended up in Israel’s political echelons, eventually becoming president and making Reuma Israel’s First Lady. 

Ezer and Reuma were married in 1950 by then Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog whose grandson, Isaac, is Israel’s current president. Remarkably, Reuma’s sister Ruth also married a man of great significance, Moshe Dayan. Ruth passed away four years ago at the age of 103, and Ezer died in 2005 at 85 years old. 

Even with these star studded surroundings, Reuma Weizman became a woman of great significance in her own right. With her British citizenship, she spent time in the UK during the 1940s, studying education and working as a journalist. According to the Times of Israel, she was sent by a Jewish newspaper to cover the Nuremberg trials, one of the many historical events she has been witness to over her lifetime.

In 1947 Weizman was sent by the Jewish Agency to work in an orphanage for child Holocaust survivors in Hamburg, Germany at the age of 22. She worked to secure passage to Israel for the Jewish orphans, telling Yad Vashem that when limitations on immigration tightened, she had to be creative in order to get as many to safety as possible.

“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,” she said.

Weizman’s passion for youth at risk continued throughout her life. YNet News reveals that in the 1960s Weizman began volunteering with MICHA, an organization that supports children with hearing impairments, and that she continued to be involved with their work for decades.

Later in the 1980s, she joined an international organization that established villages for homeless children in Arad and Migdal HaEmek, S.O.S. Children’s Village Association for homeless youth. She also served as a board member of the Youth Cultural Center in Or Akiva. 

As First Lady from 1993-2000 she has not only hosted the usual visiting dignitaries but she has also opened the President’s Residence to organizations assisting children and those with special needs, as well as welcoming many children into their home. She hosted groups of Jewish, Arab, and Druze women and has earned a reputation for championing women’s issues and supporting adult literacy, the Times of Israel reports.

She was active in public service alongside her husband, and would regularly visit wounded soldiers, bereaved families, the unemployed and residents of Israel’s conflict zones, as well as international heads of state and places like Buckingham Palace, according to YNet.

In her role as First Lady she was present at historic events such as the signing of Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan at Camp David, the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, and the funeral of Jordan’s King Hussein. 

Ezer and Reuma Weizma had two children, Shaul and Michal. Reuma spent many years caring for Shaul who was wounded in battle, and later died at the age of 40, leaving their daughter Michal. Now Reuma will be buried alongside her husband and son in Or Akiva.