Noah Hershkovitz
Noah Hershkovitz was born in 1955 in the Yad Eliyahu neighborhood in Tel Aviv, the third son of Yosef and Fortune who made aliyah to Israel from Poland and Egypt. Noah came after his older siblings, Rachel and Zion, and after him came Yisrael, the youngest brother who died last year. In high school, Noah chose a course of study in biology, and spent his spare time in the Noar Oved VeLomed movement, in which, after it was joined by the “Barak” contingent of the airborne Nahal unit, a connection was formed between him and the kibbutz movement and values. Noah fought in the Yom Kippur war and the Lebanon war. Those experiences left a strong impression upon his soul, but he did not have the resources to share his burden with others.
After his marriage to Ma’ayana, Noah worked in the cowshed and in the carton factory in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. When the family moved to Be’eri, he continued his work in the cowshed as well as in the printing house. When he was forty, he studied civil engineering, and after completing his studies, he worked as a civil engineer in the A.B. Planning company in Sderot which specialized in building reinforced rooms. Noah especially paid heed to the subject of safety, and safety mishaps would disturb him greatly. He believed that everything that had been designed, whether a building or a machine or a tool, should be durable, reliable, and safe. In fact, those were his characteristics: fairness, loyalty and responsibility. Anyone who asked something of him knew that Noah – “Nachka” – would do it for him precisely and with all his heart.
Noah had golden hands. His main hobby was carpentry, and whole generations of kibbutz children enjoyed the sets that he built, the games, the toys, the doll houses and the variety of crazy inventions for which he collected spare parts, machine parts and other items that he utilized in the workshop next to his home.He loved to ride bicycles and covered large distances with friends from the riding club or during solitary hours that he needed in the fields and in the forest which enclose Be’eri.
Noah and Ma’ayana met in 1975 in Kibbutz Kalia. Noah came with his group of friends and met Ma’ayana who joined the kibbutz for a year of service. Both were young, beautiful, chatterboxes, and full of life, and the fire of love burned between them from their first meeting – a nighttime swim on an off-limits beach at the Dead Sea. Several months later, Ma’ayana was drafted into the Communications Corps and was stationed in Jerusalem. Despite the distance, they continued to nurture their relationship, which was formalized at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha in August 1978 following a nighttime telephone conversation in which Ma’ayana notified Noah that she had fulfilled her military service and that they were going to get married.
Noah and Ma’ayana loved the kibbutz idea, and when they moved to Kibbutz Be’eri in 1986, they felt that they had found their home and called it a special piece of the Garden of Eden. The aspect of their relationship which supported them through the ups and downs of life over the years was their great love. In addition, they shared values and common areas of interest: their love of sports which led them to swim and ride together, love of art and culture, the world of classical music and Land of Israel songs, and the love of handicrafts in which they would combine their skills in the areas of carpentry and art, and almost always for someone else – the children, the grandchildren, nursery schools and the kibbutz school.
In their warm home in Be’eri, in the “border patrol” neighborhood in which Tamir, their third child, was born, a tribe of friends of their age formed. In the common grassy areas in the heart of the neighborhood, children ran around freely and barefoot and felt at home in each of the houses in the neighborhood. Noah and Ma’ayana shared household tasks, and the friends who came in would partake of Noah’s orange cake or Ma’ayana’s wonderful cheesecake.
But more than anything, Noah and Ma’ayana’s lives were dedicated to their children, Ella, Amit, and Tamir, and to their seven loving grandchildren: Amir, Daniel, Oz, Lavie, Ma’ayan, Raz, and Naomi. Noah would play with them and Ma’ayana would spend hours doing creative activities, telling stories and swimming with them in the kibbutz pool. Noah always emphasized to the children the value of a united family, and Ma’ayana was the strong woman who lived life fully and inspired them to flourish and grow.
Noah and Ma’ayana were secular people who lived a life full of faith. Their faith was expressed in the respect that they felt for all people and their ability to respect and see the divine light in everyone.
