Aura Herzog, the mother of Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and the wife of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog, died on Jan. 10, 2022, two weeks after her 97th birthday.

I thought it would be interesting to provide some details of her and her husband’s life, as their stories span the history of modern Israel.

Aura’s grandfather Yechiel Michal Steinberg was one of the four families that were founders of Motza. Motza is a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that was founded in 1854 and was the first Jewish farm founded outside the walls of the Old City in the modern era. It is believed to be located near the site of a village of the same name mentioned at Josh. 18:26.

Her parents, who lived in Jaffa, were expelled by the Turks during the First World War. They went from Jaffa to Egypt. Her father worked there as an engineer.

She was born in Ismailia, Egypt, in 1924 as Aura Ambache (אמבש). That last name is an acronym for “ani maamin be-emunah shleimah.” She was one of four siblings. One of her sisters, Suzy, was married to Israel’s legendary foreign minister Abba Eban. Suzy passed away in 2011.

Aura was educated in French schools in Ismailia and Cairo, and completed her BA degree in mathematics and physics in South Africa.

In October 1946, she decided to live in the Land of Israel. She joined the Haganah, and was also among the Jewish Agency’s first class of future diplomats.

In 1947, she married Chaim Herzog. Chaim was born in Ireland and was the son of Ireland’s chief rabbi, Yitzchak Halevy Herzog, who became the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel from 1937 to 1959, succeeding Rabbi A. I. Kook.

In March 1948, while Aura was working at the Jewish Agency, she was seriously injured when the building was attacked and a bomb exploded.

During the War of Independence, she served as an intelligence officer in the army.

A decade later, she was appointed to head the public committee that organized Israel’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

She was involved with the founding of the Bible Quiz held annually on Israel Independence Day. This quiz started in 1958, on the 10th anniversary of the State.

In 1969, she founded the Council for a Beautiful Israel, which she chaired for 38 years before moving into the role of its international president. This was arguably the first major organization in the Jewish state dedicated to promoting environmental awareness and aesthetics. She encouraged industrialists to plant gardens around their factories and apartment dwellers to cultivate window boxes and to surround their balconies with potted plants.

She also held various public positions, including being chairperson of the public committee for the celebration of Israel’s jubilee anniversary, and a member of the advisory board of Israel’s national lottery Mifal Hapayis, which builds schools, community centers, sports arenas and cultural centers in Israel.

Aware of the many cultural differences between the different immigrant groups to Israel, she wrote a book in Hebrew on hospitality and etiquette, published in 1971.

Her son Michael is presently Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Aside from Isaac, she is survived by two other children as well.

Chaim Herzog was born in 1918 and served in the British army in World War II, and was head of intelligence in a region of northern Germany. He immigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1935 and served in the Haganah from 1936-39. In Israel’s War of Independence, he was an officer in the battle for Latrun. He headed Israel Military Intelligence from 1948-50 and again from 1959-62. He was military attaché in Washington from 1950-54, the commanding officer of the Jerusalem district, 1954-57, and chief of staff, southern command 1957-59. He retired from the IDF in 1962 with the rank of major-general. After leaving the military, he first went into business and then practiced law. In 1975 he was appointed Israel’s permanent representative to the U.N., serving until 1978. Among the things he is most remembered for is his symbolic ripping up of the U.N.’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution during his speech against it. He served as president of Israel from 1983-1993. He passed away in 1997.

A 2013 book by Sebag Montefiore, “Speeches That Changed the World,” includes Herzog’s U.N. speech. That U.N. resolution had been promoted by the Soviet and Arab blocs as part of a diplomatic campaign to isolate Israel. The resolution was adopted on Nov. 10, 1975, by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions).

Here is an excerpt from Herzog’s speech:

“It is sobering to consider to what level this body has been dragged down if we are obliged today to contemplate an attack on Zionism. For this attack constitutes not only an anti-Israeli attack of the foulest type, but also an assault in the United Nations on Judaism—one of the oldest established religions in the world, a religion which has given the world the human values of the Bible, and from which two other great religions, Christianity and Islam, sprang. Is it not tragic to consider that we here at this meeting in the year 1975 are contemplating what is a scurrilous attack on a great and established religion which has given to the world the Bible with its Ten Commandments, the great prophets of old, Moses, Isaiah, Amos; the great thinkers of history, Maimonides, Spinoza, Marx, Einstein; many of the masters of the arts, and as high a percentage of the Nobel Prize-winners in the world, in the sciences, in the arts and in the humanities as has been achieved by any people on earth?…

“I come here to denounce the two great evils which menace society in general and a society of nations in particular. These two evils are hatred and ignorance. These two evils are the motivating force behind the proponents of this resolution and their supporters. These two evils characterize those who would drag this world organization, the ideals of which were first conceived by the prophets of Israel, to the depths to which it has been dragged today.”

On the subject of diplomats and world leaders:

—I read the following in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago (before the invasion): In 2007, Angela Merkel was scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin. Her ambassador suggested to the Russian ambassador that no dogs be present at the meeting, as Ms. Merkel had been bitten by a dog and apparently feared them. The Journal story continued: “Mr. Putin, to what should have been no one’s surprise, showed up with a large black dog.”

—A famous statement of Golda Meir: “If the Arabs put down their guns, there would be no more fighting. If the Israelis put down theirs, there would be no more Israel.”

—Abba Eban once said: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. His younger brother Seth met Isaac Herzog when Isaac was at Ramaz High School about 40 years ago and they became good friends during those years.