My first cousin once removed Reumah Rekhav died yesterday in Israel at the age of 94. She was a most fascinating, wonderful woman
who lived an extraordinary life.
I will share
some of my memories including what I’ve been told over the past decades.
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Gertrud Marx
was born May 11, 1919 the younger daughter of Hermann Marx and his wife. She was named after her paternal grandmother
who had died several years earlier.
As a young
child she happily played with my father who was 10 ½ months older than
her. At the 80th Birthday
gathering of their paternal grandfather in 1923, they are clearly two of the
youngest in the group picture. Around
this time they determined that they would marry each other when they grew up. They loved to dress up together.
In 1933,
upon arriving in Haifa on a ship from Europe, she left older sister Kitty, who had met her there, with a young man on
the back of his scooter roaring away (somewhat shocking her sister I believe).
Later on she
changed her name and was “Reumah” thereafter.
My father was very happy to be reunited with her on our family trip to
Israel in the spring of 1963. Reumah
had eventually become the secretary of a high level leader (perhaps the president) of Bank Leumi.
Unlike most
of our other relatives, Reumah never married.
Unlike most of our other relatives, Reumah was a vegetarian.
I was told
that she brought transcendental meditation to Israel. She certainly was a non-conformist in many
ways. It was a joy to stay as her guest at her Tel
Aviv apartment. While much of the food
that she prepared for us wasn’t familiar to me, it certainly was excellent and
very healthy.
Around 35
years ago she visited us in Madison, Wisconsin on her way to some training at
the Maharishi University (in Fairfield, Iowa).
My mother, wife, she and I had a delightful day including seeing the
geese at the Horicon Marsh. When eating
in a restaurant my mother felt compelled to tell her that she might not want to
eat the pie because it probably had lard in its crust.
Sometime
proximate to then, my wife and I, while visiting her in Israel, went on an
Israeli bus tour with another relative to see some beautiful flowers in a
rural, hilly area. She helped translate
some of what the guide said so that we could understand.
In her later
years she shared much of her life with Aharon who is also a most interesting
person. Until her health interfered
around age 90, they went together to peace demonstrations and other political actions
around Tel Aviv. If one Googles her
name now, one primarily brings up her role as a signatory for peace and justice
efforts in Israel.
Reumah was
an upbeat, warm, sharing, caring person!
I will always remember her feeling a sense of peaceful strength and the
energy of her warm heart.
(Reumah - on left with Mimi - on our Bus Tour)
