Rabbanit Miriam Levinger, the wife of the late Rabbi Moshe Levinger, has passed away at the age of 83. She passed away on the night of Yom Kippur, after being hospitalized in serious condition in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, and was brought to rest today at the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. Due to the current coronavirus regulations in place, only close family members participated in the funeral.
One of her 11 children, Ephraim, eulogized his mother: “You were always so emotional at the tens of thousands of Jews who came to Hebron on the week when we read the Torah portion of Chayei Sarah [which relates how Avraham Avinu purchased the Tomb of the Patriarchs]. You always said, ‘It’s a dream – your father and I dreamed of this happening.’ You were a mother to each and every individual, and to the nation as a whole,” he added. “You always told me that every single day you thanked God for having merited to raise a generation of upstanding Jews. And I had the merit of being your firstborn son.”
The dean of the Nir hesder yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, also paid tribute to Rabbanit Levinger, saying: “Miriam was a fighter. You had to fight for your own Jewish education 80 years ago in the Diaspora when it was hard to find a Jewish school and you had to learn in a gentile school, but you never gave up on your Jewish faith or your attachment to holiness, to Torah, and to the commandments.”
Another of the Rabbanit’s sons, Malachi Levinger, a former head of the Kiryat Arba local council, also eulogized his mother: “You were a beacon of faith who taught an entire generation the meaning of true humility and self-abnegation, as well as what it means to really love the Land of Israel. You were a symbol of self-sacrifice and a pioneering spirit and with your own hands you brought about the redemption of the City of our Patriarchs. There is no doubt that your deeds will be recorded for all eternity in the annals of the history of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel.”
Rabbi Moshe and Rabbanit Miriam Levinger merited to raise 11 children, and their descendants number in the dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 2019, the Rabbanit was accorded the Jerusalem Prize for her “decades of self-sacrifice in working to promote Jewish settlement in the city of Hebron.”