The funeral of the social activist and former fashion woman, Ruth Dayan, took place today (Sunday) in Moshav Nahalal, where she met her husband, Moshe Dayan. Among the speakers at the funeral were her granddaughter, Lior Dayan and her niece, Michal Yoffe-Weizmann.
Ruth Dayan is brought to rest Lior Dayan, Ruth’s granddaughter: “When I was younger I lived with my grandmother. One day she told me ‘there are children from the Palestinian Authority who have never seen the sea and I must help them’. That evening she arranged for them to move and the next day buses arrived from the authority with the children.”
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Former Maariv screenwriter and journalist Lior Dayan praised her: “One day when she was reading articles and seeing news, I noticed that my grandmother had called many people. I asked her – what’s the matter? She explained to me that there were children in the Palestinian Authority who had never seen the sea. She arranged for them to move and the next day 11-year-old children arrived by bus. After a while, I personally had a child, and when people who do not have a child ask me what is the difference between a person who chooses not to have children and a person with children, I ask them – say, you once went to show Does anyone have the sea? Get to know the sea? And in that sense, Grandma knew the sea to so many children who could not know the sea. She was the parent of so many children“.
In addition, a wreath on behalf of the widow of Yasser Arafat, the former chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Suha Arafat and her daughter Zehava, was placed on the grave of someone who worked hard to bring Israelis-Jews and Palestinians closer together.
Ruth Dayan (Photo: Arik Sultan)Social activist Ruth Dayan passed away on the night between Friday and Thursday at the age of 103. Dayan was the first wife of Chief of Staff and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, founder of the fashion and textile company “Maskit” and the charity “Variety Israel”. Dayan’s funeral will take place on Sunday at 12 noon. : 00 in Moshav Nahalal.
Dayan was born in Haifa as Ruth Schwartz, the eldest of two daughters to Zvi Schwartz, a lawyer born in Novoslice, and Rachel nee Klimkar, an educator born in Kishinev, both members of the Second Aliyah. Her younger sister is Rauma, who later married former President Ezer Weizmann. At the age of seventeen she moved to Nahalal and attended the girls’ agricultural school. In Nahalal she met Moshe Dayan, and in 1935 the two married. From their marriage were born the politician Yael Dayan, the sculptor Udi Dayan and the film director and screenwriter Asi Dayan.
In 1954, with the encouragement and support of the Minister of Labor, Golda Meir, and the Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Teddy Kollek, the project became a government clothing and embroidery company called “Maskit”, with Dayan serving as its CEO. The company provided employment for hundreds of workers, mainly new immigrants, from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Dimona in the south. The company’s clothing and fabric incorporated examples of different ethnicities and populations, including Libyans, Persians, Yemenis, as well as Druze, Bedouin and Palestinians.
Ruth Dayan and her family (Photo: Courtesy of Ruth Dayan)For decades she has founded and been active in many organizations for new immigrants, the sick and coexistence between Arabs and Jews. In 1994, she received an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev for her efforts to bring hearts together between Jews and Arabs. In 1952, she received the Yigal Alon Prize from the “Palmach Generation Association”. In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa.