I knew Dina as a woman, both charming and ordinary. It is difficult for me sometimes that the saints write. If Dina was so holy I would certainly not be her friend. I was a friend of such an ordinary Dina.
I first met her when they came to our house when we lived in Elon Moreh (for a third meal). Eli talked to Arie on the side and I was sitting with Dina in another room, but I heard Eli tell Arie "I do not know what to do, my wife is constantly listening to basketball games on the radio and all sorts of things like that ..."
Eli was so smart that I think he said it on purpose so I could hear and befriend her. He was just a genius. Once we both really played basketball in some team and Dina was taller and she scored more, but I was more agile and she said to me "Zipporah, how dare you ..." There was something nice between us.
On Purim we were always together and Dina's children's costumes were always the most amazing they could be. So invested. They made and sewed them on their own and Dina was happy with her children and adored them, but was also angry with them and criticized them.
I really want to keep my normal Dina who was like any of us, that what interested her was her children and her parents and everything that happens around and the friendships and how she looks over and over again. like all of us.
Dina was a winning combination of a woman and at the same time such an exalted man who dealt with the people of Israel and the redemption of Israel and the Torah of Israel and the commandments.
One mitzvah, was truly wonderful to me, the hospitality and friendship that Dina had. So many types of guests came to them: old people, young, small, medium, strange, lonely, happy, normal ... everything. So diverse .. from Russia, from America, from all kinds .. I once asked her "how can you stand it?" So she said to me "I enjoy it". She just enjoyed it. This mitzvah was fused in it, it was within it.
Friendship with Dina, unlike friendship with someone who has a similar problem or who has a solution to a problem, with Dina it was not like that. There was something very special about her, she knew how to pause those answers, she knew how to stay with the problem and she knew how to allow the other, I think unconsciously, she knew how to allow the other to be with the coping. She also had no solutions.
I think that's the secret of friendship with you. I do not know, it was not worded. Basically most of the friendship is just being just together and drinking coffee and allowing this time and it was really wonderful.
Dina did not like very successful people. She could not stand it, it bothered her. She could not get close to someone who knows too many answers, to someone who is so into some field. She loved the little lack of solutions.
Dina once did some work in her studies with a kaleidoscope that rotates and sees lots of colors changing. Lots of options and every moment something different and impossible to know. It was Dina. She had loads and loads of imagination. It could be that all societies were part of this infinite imaginary world. She told me "I sit and imagine and imagine." She really sank into it. This imagination was also a challenge for her, how to organize it and how it works out and what all the possibilities are.
The hours she had the most fun of were the late hours of the night. Dina always celebrated at night. She waited for everyone to sleep and then she could be with herself. With all the books she loved to read (detective books).
We used to be together in a music seminar and a lot of women sat there and sang together and Dina had notes full of voices. Usually Dina was a ballet, although she liked the soprano a bit, but did not go, Dina so much enjoyed singing there from the notes, it is also such an intellectual challenge and when she took over she was happy. Dina said to me, "Zipporah, it's just like the song of the angels." She was just happy. I feel like Dina is flowing in my mind like the melody of purity.
