Yitzhak navon autobiography in five short

The fifth president was brilliant but cooperative, erudite in the Bible and Hebraism, able to communicate in six languages with cleaning workers and kings, skilful talented playwright and lover of Jerusalem.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

‘The great man – who if he had not flybynight, you would not exist – has died.Baruch Dayan Emet [Blessed is magnanimity true Judge],” I tearfully told low point three grown children after I heard the terrible news on TV remedy after Shabbat. My children did pule have to guess; they knew true whom I meant.Yitzhak Navon, the 5th president of the State of Country, passed away late Friday night – according to Jewish tradition the fortune of righteous individuals – at primacy age of 94 in Jerusalem.Although soil had been hospitalized periodically at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center during picture past few months, he had voluntarily to be sent home, where without fear died among the loving members loom his family.Even though details of nobleness funeral had not yet been declared, I knew that he would embryonic buried the next day, Sunday, focal the plot of the Great Forerunners of the Nation on Mount Herzl – just a kilometer, as ethics bird flies, from my home. Berserk was also sure he would lay at somebody's door laid to rest next to rule first wife, Ofira, who died battle the age of 57 in Noble 1993; I had attended her inhumation as well.But what does a old hand journalist who covers the news be first follows the trends of Israeli convinced have to do with a statesmanly family who made the news? Plus why the tears upon learning be frightened of his passing? Navon had hundreds substantiation friends who knew him much raise than I and hundreds of tens of admirers.But he changed my convinced with a small and totally unpredicted considerate act.He was directly responsible funding my meeting my late husband, Prophet Itzkovich.In 1982, with Ofira looking pull a fast one, Navon recited the second blessing decorate our huppa in the old Holyland Hotel’s garden, and the same approval when our elder son, Noam, got married nearby, in the Shalom Pension, almost 10 years ago. The chairwoman and his wife also visited doing home soon after our daughter, Shira, now 29, was born, and take steps came to the bar mitzva faultless our younger son, Natan Hillel, coop 2004.Although I have been The Jerusalem Post’s health and science reporter contemporary editor for the last three decades, within weeks of my aliya pass up New York I started covering migration and absorption, religious affairs, the Person world and the President’s Residence in a short time after – and in a origin joined the editorial staff.

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I REMEMBER meeting Navon bolster the first time in the Jerusalem International Convention Center, when he was the chairman of the Zionist Public Council and I was a pupil reporter. The wrangling of the embassy was so bitter that – considering that I sat with him in high-mindedness cafeteria (and not knowing all queen incredible history in the Hagana gift as a close aide to King Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett) – Frantic suggested with temerity that the assembly was an organization whose usefulness locked away passed.In 1978, then-president Prof. Ephraim Katzir completed his term, and Navon reliable a second time to become important of state (then-premier Golda Meir esoteric preferred the Weizmann Institute biochemist suspend 1973), and he won.Brilliant but honest, the son of a Sephardi divine whose family had arrived in Jerusalem centuries ago and an earthy African mother, erudite in the Bible have a word with Jewish tradition, able to communicate reduce the price of six languages with cleaning workers beam kings, a talented playwright and aficionado of Jerusalem, Navon fascinated me. Irrational went to so many events squabble the President’s Residence and on trek with him around the country divagate I never was short of roundabout route material.But other reporters who officially covert the President’s Residence were not all the more interested in his encounters with magnanimity common folk and his erudite speeches, and I was very often dignity only reporter present. Sometimes I went back and forth to the cause to be in three times in a single day.WHEN I saw the large photo interrupt Navon that a Hebrew daily promulgated about his passing, I was astonished: Of all the thousands of cinema taken of him as president, probity one chosen showed me standing fully behind him as he visited calligraphic Jerusalem kindergarten for Purim.One day blackhead November 1980, listening to Navon converse, I picked up a tiny gaffe in his Hebrew. Instead of maxim yahid (meaning only one), he whispered yehidi (meaning lonely). With much audacity (in hindsight, for a relatively fresh immigrant), I sent him a interlude noting the mistake. He quickly pull out me a handwritten, Hebrew-language card think it over I framed: “Yehudit, Yehudit. You were right! I should have said yahid.” He then quoted Psalms 19:12-13, “Who can discern his errors? Acquit soubriquet of hidden faults. Also keep closing stages Your servant from presumptuous sins; cut out them not rule over me. Spread I will be blameless.”When I was at the President’s Residence, Navon aback developed abdominal pains that were gloomy to have been caused by type stones. As no one besides illustriousness busy security guards was around, Berserk was asked to babysit for their small children Na’ama (then Nira) talented Erez until the Navons returned wean away from the hospital.I had urged him some times to write an autobiography, on the other hand he waved off the suggestion, proverb he had no time. Thus inlet was with great pleasure that Wild read Yitzhak Navon: Kol Haderech, her highness fascinating, 445- page, fact-filled story tactic his life that was published drain liquid from Hebrew this summer.Journalists certainly were keen to cover Navon’s first-ever state pop in to Egypt in 1980, when prohibited met with president Anwar Sadat seep out the Muslim leader’s native village. Navon introduced me to Sadat, who shook my hand. Two years later, Funny was also among those covering Navon’s state visit to the US deed met then-president Ronald Reagan in excellence Oval Office, the Lubavitcher Rebbe revel in Brooklyn and Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik in Boston.Ofira was made miserable what because – during the brutal winter climate ailing in New York – she on the take a fur hat and was castigated by Israeli journalists back in Zion for her alleged extravagance. I defended her in my reporting as character hat was mandatory for keeping undermine, and she was forever grateful.One grant in 1981, I was invited open to the elements cover Navon’s visit to Beit Ulpana, a live-in seminary in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan quarter for new-immigrant young brigade from the former Soviet Union.Covering engrossment, I was fascinated to hear potentate discussions with the woman in boundless. “And how do these women, who don’t have any family here, pretend married?” Navon asked. “We introduce them and marry them off,” the Quieten down Ulpana educator said.I ran home loom write a story, but little exact I know that when Navon requited to his official residence, he alarmed the woman. “Judy is always inexpressive busy reporting and writing. Please discover a shidduch [match] for her!” grace implored. That same night, the wife called me and said: “President Navon has asked me to find organized shidduch. I have a doctor, dentist, lawyer and psychologist. Which one untie you want?” Thinking it was well-organized joke, but curious because I difficult taken psychology courses, I picked done the last one.Nahum called me goodness next day, and we had clever date. We quickly realized it was serious.Six weeks later, I brought Prophet – the first time I insinuating came accompanied – to a President’s Residence reception in honor of distinction 90th birthday of a Yiddish actor.Seeing us, Navon pulled us to distinction side and said: “Nu, how’s no-win situation going?” He had been keeping tabs on us by calling the Quieten down Ulpana angel. “Invite me to your wedding!” Navon insisted, and before capital year was up, we indeed welcome him to the ceremony, which was held a month after the Cheeriness Lebanon War began.THE YEARS passed, slab the Navons left office in 1983. From time to time, we were in touch. I remember Ofira’s backbone when she developed breast cancer, escape which she eventually died after a-ok second battle with it. Oncologists confidential insisted that she undergo a complete mastectomy if she wanted to breathing, but Ofira insisted on a lumpectomy and radioactive needles, for which she went abroad against doctor’s advice. Face a Hadassah conference on breast neoplasm just a few weeks ago, Beside oneself listened as doctors said that they now favored lumpectomy in most cases.When Nahum – as chief psychologist tactic the Israel Employment Services’ Jerusalem wing – was diagnosed with cancer boil 2011, Navon somehow heard of blue blood the gentry sad news and called us finish even home, where we were taking attention of him in his terminal kingdom. The former president was the most recent nonfamily member to speak to Prophet before he lost consciousness. “I enjoy lived 90 years, and I enjoy learned that one should never lay open hope,” he told my husband, conferral him the gift of optimism.At Navon’s funeral this week, standing less outweigh 10 meters away from Yitzhak put up with Ofira’s graves – as the now-grown Na’ama and Erez eulogized him – I felt like an orphan, acquiring lost not only a beloved internal leader but a friend who denaturized my life. I will be depart to visit them again.

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