Adrienne Neta
Adrienne Anne Neta was born in California, to Ellen and Alfred Lamperd, in 1957. Her father worked as an engineer for the U.S. Navy, and the family lived in Southern California. As a child, Adrienne focused on music, playing the violin. She graduated early from high school and went on to study music and play the flute at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. After college, she played for the San Luis Obispo Symphony.
In 1978, Adrienne met Yisrael, a member of Kibbutz Be’eri who was traveling around the U.S. after his army service, at the home of a mutual friend. After his travels, Yisrael went back to the kibbutz. Adrienne arrived some time later for a “quick visit” that lasted from 1980 until today. At the kibbutz, she took on the burdens of a Zionist, Hebrew, and Israeli identity.
Adrienne was an extremely hard worker who enriched every area she worked in: at the dairy farm, she learned the workers’ calls and sang them to the cows in her decisive intonation (“Coooome! Come-come-come!”), and she especially loved her time working with the newborn calves. In the children’s center, she taught a class together with Yaakov Barkai and was profoundly affected by his humanism. During the same period, she taught music to the kindergarten children.
In 1983, Adrienne and Yisrael’s first son, Nahar, was born, followed by Carmel (Carmi) two years later, and Dror in 1986. Their youngest daughter, Ayana, was born in 1993. Adrienne was a loving mother who was closely involved in her children’s lives and enveloped them with warmth. She always insisted that the family sit down for dinner together at home. She raised her children to pursue peace and love their fellow humans.
In the early 1990s, while raising her family, she began studying nursing in Beersheva, with her typical diligence and dedication. When she finished her studies, she worked as a nurse, first at the Be’eri clinic, and later in the clinic on Kibbutz Alumim. She loved working in the community and saw each patient as a whole person and a whole world. In 1997, she studied midwifery, and when she graduated, she began working as a midwife at Soroka Hospital in Beersheva. She would travel there morning, noon and night, and volunteered countless times to cover holiday and shabbat shifts. In the delivery room, she was known as a midwife with a unique approach that included techniques she’d perfected over the years, from sitting on the mother’s bed during labor, to skillfully massaging pressure points. Adrienne stood out as a midwife who treated the thousands of mothers and babies she assisted with respect and kindness, regardless of background, religion or language. In 2015, she joined an Israeli delegation to Nepal, after the country’s devastating earthquake. She reported that her encounter with residents of remote villages and the opportunity to care for them deepened and enriched her own life.
In 2022, after many years of maternity room shifts, Adrienne retired. Without stopping to rest, she became a full-time grandmother, spending days and nights driving, babysitting and chaperoning her grandchildren. She volunteered once or twice a week at the Rimon Farm near Kibbutz Lahav, where she helped rehabilitate boys and girls who had struggled in conventional schools, and she cared for them lovingly. She loved the healing work performed on the farm through organic farming, which was one of her main hobbies.
On the black morning of October 7, 2023, she was taken from her home and murdered. A mother, grandmother, friend, and giver of life to the world, Adrienne’s heritage will grow from the land and echo through the thousands of people she helped birth.
May her memory be a blessing.
