Newspaper Page Text
Premier housewife
Aliza is calm at heart of the storm
by William Wolff
Jewish Chronicle
The policeman at the iron gate
checked my pass, turned the key of
the front door, walked across the
hall and called out “Aliza.” From
the kitchen rushed the trim figure
of Mrs. Aliza Begin, wife of the
most controversial premier Israel
has had in its 30 years' history.
She takes me to a little table and
over a vase of wallflowers talks to
me of her life as the calm center at
the heart of the storm that rages
round Menachem Begin. Without
a bow or apology to Women’s Lib
she describes her role as a
supportive one. “In life every man
needs support. No one is strong
enough to be alone,” she says.
Aliza Begin learned that lesson
within a year of marriage. She was
only 20 when one morning she
walked through the front door to
see him off. A car was waiting
outside from the Russian secret
police. The two men who came to
escort him were from the same
exclusive terror club.
As they were about to maneuver
Begin into the car for the start of a
trip from which millions have
never returned, Aliza said to him,
“Don’t worry. Everything will be
all right.”
“I am a born optimist,” she says.
It is an optimism born neither of
good fortune nor of good health. “I
just have a positive disposition.
With that you can fight both. And
you don’t wallow in self pity. You
are rather detached from private
suffering.”
Her stoic outlook was tested as
severely four years later when
Menachem, released by the
Russians, arrived in a Palestine
ruled by the British and went
underground with a price on his
head.
“Of course that was a strain,”
she says, “but at least we were
together. That made it so much
easier. I don’t know that I would
have been able to stand it if we had
been far apart.”
The indelible mark those years
have left on her character is seen in
one of her deepest—and saddest—
attitudes.
“I don’t plan ahead,” she says. “I
still think it is best not to do so. I
like to enjoy every day as it comes.
It is horrible when you plan ahead
and then it does not come true.”
As well as owing her philosophy
of life to those early years as a
prison widow and underground
wife, two of her children, Leah and
Chassiah, also date back to that
harrowing time underground.
“Illegal,” she sums them up, “but
not illegitimate.”
After the underground years,
came the opposition years.
Menachem Begin fought nine
elections and lost eight. So how
much support has he needed from
her throughout their 39
storm-tossed years of marriage?
“My husband is a very equable
man,” she says. “He is never
depressed.” She also describes him
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Aliza Begin: “In life, every man needs support.”
as a “gentleman.” And with that
she refuses to say any more on the
subject of Israel’s premier.
Except for a year at university
while her husband was in a Soviet
prison, Aliza Begin, 58 this year,
has always been at home.
“I have never worked outside,”
she says. “I think the so-called
Liberation Movement for women
does everything to make the role of
the housewife much less attractive
than it actually is. Much more
emphasis should be put on the fact
that being a housewife and raising
a generation is a profession in
itself. It requires much more ability
than going to an office to be a so-
called career-woman.”
“Women should be well
educated and have a profession—
they can always exercise it in the
latter part of their lives. But there
are some years when a woman
should be at home because nobody
can replace her there.'
Immediately she softens the
dogmatism of her statements. “On
the other hand you do have this
problem of women who just do not
suit the role of housewife, it just is
not enough for them. And there is
nothing wrong with placing the
children in professional care. But
on the whole we do not make the
role of housewife sufficiently
attractive.”
Today her role as one of the
world’s premier housewives,
meeting everyone from Jimmy and
Rosalynn Carter to James and
Audrey Callaghan, is not only
attractive but enviable.
Her recipe for being the perfect
hostess to them: “Don’t try too
hard, just let the guests enjoy it.
And that applies whether you have
500 or 1,000, or merely a score. If
you like people, it again makes
things so much easier.”
Aliza does like people. “1 am
interested in every aspect of life,”
she says. “I am always learning.”
And one of the lessons she has
learned—apart from fluent and
idiomatic English and French—
never to diet.
“Dieters are cheaters,” she
insists. “I stick to the old wives’
recipe to eat well and be well. How
do I control my weight? By
spending energy.”
That inexhaustible energy is
spent on much more than dinner
parties for Very Important and
Very Stuffy People.
Aliza Begin is realistic enough to
know that while she has no power,
the premier’s wife can wield a great
deal of influence. A friendly phone
call from her to an official, in or
out of government, can get results
which a social welfare officer
would regard as a miracle. At her
meetings she has only one rule—
discussion yes, speeches no.
To pack it all in, she gets up at
6:30 in the morning and does not
go to bed before midnight. The late
evening she reserves for her
principle hobby—voracious
reading, anything from English
women’s weeklies, through
American works on sociology, to
children’s books.
Determinedly, she does not
allow unhappiness into her life.
She insists: “I am content with my
lot. It is my happy disposition.
Otherwise,” she adds, “it would
have been very hard for me these
past 40 years."
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