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Reuma Weizman, the widow of Israel’s seventh president, Ezer Weizman, died Tuesday overnight at the age of 99, the President’s Residence announced.
Weizman will be laid to rest in the city of Or Akiva, alongside her husband, their son Shaul, her daughter-in-law and her daughter-in-law’s parents.
President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog expressed condolences to the Weizman family. The President’s Residence also requested that the public and media respect the family's privacy during their time of mourning.
Born in London in 1925, Reuma Weizman was the daughter of Rachel and Zvi Schwartz, who were among the founders of the Mapai political party and the law faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A year after her birth, the family immigrated to British Mandated Palestine and settled in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood.
At the age of 9, she was sent to be educated at Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek. Her parents, both active in public service and focused on supporting the family, believed the kibbutz educational framework would benefit their daughter.
Weizman later received agricultural training at Kibbutz Nir David and completed a teaching course at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts. She then worked for two years at a children’s home near Hamburg, operated by the Jewish Agency and the Red Cross, helping care for children displaced by World War II.
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After Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, she returned home and served in the Women’s Corps as a clerk in the Government Press Office.
She met Ezer Weizman on the coastal road near Herzliya while waiting for a ride to Tel Aviv. Weizman, who would later become Israel's president, picked her up at the urging of a friend in the car, Motti Hod, who would later serve as commander of the Israeli Air Force. The couple married in June 1950 at the home of Reuma’s sister, Ruth, and her husband, military leader and politician Moshe Dayan.
As First Lady from 1993 to 2000, Weizman was active in public service, regularly visiting wounded soldiers, bereaved families, the unemployed and residents of Israel’s conflict zones. In the 1960s, she volunteered with MICHA, an organization supporting children with hearing impairments, and remained involved for decades. In the 1980s, she joined an international organization that established villages for homeless children in Arad and Migdal HaEmek.
The couple had two children, Shaul and Michal. Shaul was seriously wounded while serving as a paratrooper during the 1970 War of Attrition along the Suez Canal. He died in a car crash in 1991 on the same highway where his parents had first met.
Ezer Weizman died in 2005. One year later, just a day before a memorial ceremony marking the anniversary of his death, Reuma Weizman was hospitalized at Rabin Medical Center.