President Rivlin on Amos Oz: What would you say about our situation?

Israeli author Amos Oz passed away a year ago.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
President Rivlin at Amos Oz memorial event - 7 February 2020 (photo credit: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
President Rivlin at Amos Oz memorial event - 7 February 2020
(photo credit: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
Just over a year has passed since the death of Amos Oz, one of Israel's greatest writers and a political activist. Oz passed away on December 28, 2019, at the age of 79, after battling cancer.
An event in memory of Oz was held on Friday, February 7, at Beit Lessin Theater in Tel Aviv. President Reuven Rivlin, who was a personal friend of Oz since childhood, was among the many who attended the event to honor the author.
“Dear Amos, this last year, the first without you, has been crammed full of Israeli politics. I won’t deny it, in light of one or another event, I have found myself on more than one occasion wondering what you would say. How you would look at the situation, at us, what look your sea-blue eyes would have taken. Would you have judged us with the kindly gaze of a calm sea, or with the storm they knew to express, waves crashing on the coast. And both of them, calm and stormy, came from the same sea, from the same bottomless spring of your love for us, for this country, this place and its people," said Rivlin.
"The wisdom of your eyes, your crystal-clear words that could move mountains within us, are so very much missing,” he added.
“Our dear Amos, it’s already a year that you are not with us, but the lines that you produced, that came out of you, remain with us and within us, strung through our lives in the chain of generations of Israelis, past, present and future. They will remain with us forever. Your love will remain for Nili, for Fania, for Galia, for Daniel and for the grandchildren. And you will remain ours, all of ours, forever. May your soul be bound in the bond of life,” Rivlin concluded.
Amos Oz was one of Israel's most widely-read and beloved writers. He received several literary prizes and awards for his work, including the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Goethe Prize and the French Legion d'Honneur. Internationally acclaimed, Oz wrote over 40 books and his work has been translated in over 40 languages.
One of his most well-known novels remains the best-selling A Tale of Love and Darkness, which was translated into English in 2004 and adapted into a movie in 2015 by Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman.
When Oz passed away last year, many sent their tributes from across Israel and around the world.
"Oz made endless contributions to the renewal of Hebrew literature, with which he deftly and emotionally expressed essential aspects of Israeli life,' said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time.


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