Reuma Weizman, wife of Israel's seventh president Ezer Weizman, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 99, according to a statement from the President's Residence. Reuma Weizmann will be buried alongside her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law, and her daughter-in-law's parents at the cemetery in Or Akiva. President Isaac Herzog and his wife Michal expressed their condolences to the family. The President's Residence requested that the public and media allow the family to grieve privately during this time. Reuma was born in London on August 18, 1925, to her parents, Zvi and Rachel Schwartz. Her older sister, Ruth, later married Moshe Dayan. A year after Reuma's birth, her family moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood. At the age of nine, Reuma moved to Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek for her education. After leaving Mishmar HaEmek, Reuma underwent agricultural training at Kibbutz Nir David and completed a teaching course at the Kibbutzim Seminar in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Seeking work, she joined a children’s home in Blankenese, a suburb of Hamburg, operated by the Jewish Agency and the Red Cross, where she worked for two years with children who were refugees from World War II. After the War of Independence, Reuma returned to Israel. She met her future husband, Ezer Weizman, in 1949, and they married in 1950 in the courtyard of her sister and brother-in-law, Ruth and Moshe Dayan. In 1951, Ezer was accepted for training in the British Royal Air Force, and the couple moved to England, where their eldest son, Shaul, was born. Their daughter, Michal, was born four years later. Shaul was severely injured during the War of Attrition at the Suez Canal front when an Egyptian sniper shot him in the head. In 1991, Shaul and his wife were killed in a car accident. During her husband’s tenure as President, between 1993 and 2000, Reuma opened the President’s Residence to organizations hosting summer camps for children with cancer. During the large waves of immigration, she visited caravan sites across Israel, ensuring the welfare of immigrants, particularly those from Ethiopia. Reuma worked to open the President’s Residence to exhibitions by numerous Israeli artists, many of whose works were gifted by the President, at her encouragement, to distinguished foreign guests. She initiated the “Good Deed Award,” aimed at “highlighting altruistic acts by citizens performed for the good of the public without reward, within a volunteer framework, serving as an example and inspiration to us all.”
