Renaissance woman

Eva Black appears to be a jack of all trades and a master of each, considering the variety of fields she has worked in. Today, she is a life coach and emphasizes how ‘it is very important to be able to listen.’

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
Eva Black 370 (photo credit: gloria deutsch)
Eva Black 370
(photo credit: gloria deutsch)
Renaissance woman is what springs to mind when talking to Eve Black and hearing about the many different things she has done in her life.
Working today as a life coach, her first job back in her youth in California was as an X-ray technician, and she has since been an administrator, voluntary social worker and scuba diver – which led to her involvement in underwater excavations. From this she began her academic studies and ended up with a master’s in maritime archeology, and is in high demand for lectures all over the world, with a string of erudite publications bearing her name.
She made aliya from San Francisco in 1971 with her husband and two small children.
“I’m one of the few nutcases who left paradise,” Black jokes, acknowledging that West Coast immigrants are rare.
Israel in 1971 was even more of an unpolished diamond than it is today and for Black, the first shock was having the children come home from school at noon every day. But she soon got involved in community work through fund-raising for the San Francisco United Jewish Appeal, and later was busy with Project Renewal (prime minister Menachem Begin’s initiative for rehabilitation of distressed neighborhoods). “It put me in touch with a world I had never encountered,” she says.
To keep busy she also took various courses and gained a bachelor’s in performing arts administration and music, which enabled her to start volunteering with the Tel Aviv Campus Orchestra and later, work in a proper full-time job at the Herzliya Chamber Orchestra.
“I tripled subscriptions and added concerts,” Black recalls. “But after the huge Russian aliya, funding became a problem, and I left administration and turned to my other old love, scuba diving, which I’d learned to do in Eilat in the ’70s.” In 1979 she was offered a job running the Old Caesarea Diving Center.
“That was wonderful,” she recalls. “Working in a bikini, swimming and diving and getting paid for it.” She did that for the entire summer.
Over the next few years she worked at the underwater excavations at the ancient Herodian harbor, volunteering to dive for them. In 1985, a kibbutz member made an extraordinary discovery off the coast of Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. A merchant ship believed to be 2,400 years old was found embedded and hidden in the sands near the coast. This exciting find, known as the Ma’agan Michael Ship, is today displayed in the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa.
The diving led to Black beginning her studies in maritime civilizations at Haifa, and eventually she became secretary of the ship-salvaging expedition.
“I was appointed the site preservation expert and lectured all over the world,” she says. She also edited the main publication recounting the history of the discovery and contributed the epilogue, “Cultural Challenges of Ship Excavation,” which emphasized her interest in the theoretical and humanistic issues surrounding the whole area of ship excavation.
Years passed, her two children were grown and she was wondering what to do next. One day she saw an article in a newspaper staring her in the face. It said “Get unstuck.” “I had just come back from a visit to my brother and sister-in-law in California where I’d heard about coaching, and I felt I wanted to do something where I would be self-employed,” she says.
“It attracted me for an interesting reason,” she adds. “It enabled me to pull together all the things from my eclectic background under the heading of life coach.” It was 2003 and life coaching in Israel was just starting out. She decided to take a course and chose the Coaches Training Course of California.
“It’s one of the most respected courses in the world,” she says, “and I felt very at home with the open, accepting and creative mindset of the course.”
She qualified and began yet another career, one which proved eminently suitable for her talents.
“It’s very important to be able to listen,” she says. “With listening correctly you hear more than is being said.” She specializes in midlife problems, and feels she has been able to help many people stuck in dead-end jobs or at a loss with what to do after retirement.
“People don’t give enough importance to their dreams. I don’t do analysis, I don’t judge and I don’t do therapy,” she emphasizes. “I teach people to cope – whether it’s loss, or empty nest syndrome or just redesigning your life and day-to-day existence.” She also deals with problems of the “trailing spouse,” specifically diplomats’ spouses who find themselves with no real purpose in life.
Black has just moved to a new apartment in Kfar Saba after years in Ramat Aviv, mainly to be near her daughter, Romy, an interior designer. Her son Brian lives in the US and works as a photographer. His work adorns her gleaming new apartment.
She intends to carry on working and looks back on an event-filled and satisfying life so far.
“I’ve earned every gray hair on my head,” she says.