Ruth Dayan

Ruth Schwartz was born in Haifa in 1917 to Rachel and Zvi Schwartz, immigrants from Russia. When she was two, her family moved to England so her parents could further their education. They returned after six years and settled in Jerusalem, where the family moved in prominent British and Arab circles. Her younger sister, Reuma, later married Ezer Weizman.[5][4]

Dayan studied at the Hebrew Gymnasia in Jerusalem and was active in the Machanot Olim youth movement. At 17, she moved to Nahalal to study agriculture and practical farming at the Agricultural Girls School.[6][7] Accounts place her first encounter with Moshe Dayan either at the school or at a youth gathering in September 1934, a few weeks before she enrolled. She later recalled falling in love with him at first sight.[5][8]

Ruth and Moshe Dayan married in Nahalal in 1935. Bedouin and Jewish community leaders attended the wedding; a later profile also describes it as a sulha, a traditional dispute resolution involving local Bedouin tribes and Moshe.[9][8] The couple had three children: Yael, born in 1939; Udi, born in 1942; and Assi, born in 1945. The family moved to Tel Aviv in 1945.[6][8]

In 1939, when Yael was eight months old, Moshe was arrested by the British after weapons were found during Haganah training. On the way to Acre Prison, he attached a note to the collar of the family dog. In translation, it read: “Ruth. We were arrested and taken to Acre. The charge seems very light to me. I hope it will end well.” He returned to Nahalal in February 1941.[8]

Dayan’s work with immigrants began with agricultural instruction and absorption efforts on behalf of the Jewish Agency. She was sent to immigrant communities to teach basic farming, introduce local food products, and help newcomers adjust to life in Israel. In settlements in the Judean hills, however, water shortages and mice that ate vegetable seedlings made farming impractical. Dayan shifted her approach, focusing instead on residents’ existing skills and knowledge as a way to improve their livelihoods. She described her initial task as “to teach them how to live in this country.”[1]

During visits to absorption camps in the early 1950s, Dayan recognized that many immigrants had craft skills that could provide income. At Kfar Uria, she met Bulgarian immigrants and saw traditional embroidery patterns made by local women. She proposed that they embroider for pay, with the aim of making handicraft a livelihood rather than preserving tradition only for its own sake. Her wider approach drew on skills including Yemeni jewelry-making and Bulgarian and local Arab embroidery.[1][10]

Dayan sought government support for vocational training and employment. Golda Meir, then Minister of Labor, established a women’s-work department in the ministry and asked Dayan to manage it; reference accounts also identify Dayan as head of the Crafts Department in 1953–54.[1][11] The work developed into the government-sponsored company Maskit, which aimed to create home-based employment, particularly in new immigrant settlements, supply materials, and market finished products in Israel and abroad.[1][2]

The initiative was first called Eshet Hayil (“Woman of Valor”). Government secretary Ze’ev Sharef suggested the name Maskit, drawn from Proverbs 25:11. Its early products included carpets, embroidery, jewelry, and straw work, often reflecting the countries of origin of the immigrant artisans. The company’s purpose was to turn craft skills into employment and marketable goods, rather than to treat them solely as cultural artifacts.[1]

Reference accounts identify Dayan as Maskit’s founder and managing director. The enterprise combined immigrants’ traditional skills with contemporary clothing and design while seeking to give artisans a direct source of income.[2][11]

Fashion designer Fini Leitersdorf joined Maskit in 1955 and became its chief designer, shaping its style. Dayan later said, “Without Fini, there would have been no Maskit.” A separate biographical account spells the designer’s name Finy and says she designed clothing and accessories for Maskit for 15 years; the two also worked on an exhibition of Maskit designs at the Dizengoff Museum, now the Tel Aviv Museum.[1][3]

In 1955, Maskit established a weaving factory in Migdal HaEmek and held training courses for workers. The factory was managed by George Kashi, an expert weaver born in Iraq, with help from his son Albert. By 1961, Maskit’s factories employed about 1,000 people, and the enterprise had become known in Israel and internationally for its distinctive materials and designs.[1]

The story of one of those designs became part of Maskit’s history. Before he was called up for the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Albert Kashi gave Dayan a sample of fabric he had designed from Lurex and wool and asked her to ensure it was produced. During the family’s mourning period, his father George brought the sample to the workshop and began weaving it. Maskit named the cloth “Sinai fabric,” and Leitersdorf designed a hooded robe from it with white fur. Dayan later told the story at Maskit’s first fashion show for the Bonds organization in the United States, recalling that 2,000 people attended and that the hall was so quiet “you could hear a pin drop.”[1]

Maskit’s work included production in multiple communities and settings. At its height, one account reports, it had 10 shops in Israel and one in New York and provided income to more than 2,000 families.[5] Another describes 400 workers from 30 communities, with weaving in Migdal HaEmek, sewing and embroidery in Ginatton, and button production in Ashkelon.[10] A separate profile says the fashion house created more than 2,000 jobs for new immigrants.[9] These reports use different measures of the enterprise’s reach—employees, families receiving income, and jobs created—rather than a single workforce figure.

Maskit’s designs brought together crafts from immigrant communities and contemporary fashion. The Times of Israel describes the company as known for intricate ethnic embroidery and says its products combined contemporary styles with work by immigrant and Bedouin, Druze, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian women. It became known for a desert cloak and Bedouin-style tunics and was described as one of Israel’s early popular exports.[12] Dayan’s stated ideal was not a national costume but “Israeli clothing”: garments made from local materials and from the knowledge and skills of people living in the country.[1]

Dayan emphasized the makers as well as the finished objects. She said Maskit showed “the person behind the product,” reflecting its relationships with craftspeople and their families and the human element of artistic work. This focus connected the company’s commercial and design goals to Dayan’s broader belief that people’s skills could support both livelihood and social integration.[1]

Dayan’s work extended beyond Maskit. She was active on behalf of new immigrants, women, and Bedouin communities and participated in projects intended to help disadvantaged women earn income from traditional embroidery and jewelry.[3] After leaving Maskit, she continued to travel to Palestinian villages and Negev Bedouin towns to support arts-and-crafts workshops. One account describes her method as organizing women’s skills and returning earnings directly to them, a model used in Israel and abroad.[4]

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, coexistence between Israelis and Arabs became one of Maskit’s sources of inspiration. Dayan traveled to villages to find Palestinian embroiderers and sought to include Palestinians in the work. She recalled that Maskit supplied designs and wool to workers in Gaza, who made carpets previously designed in Sde Boker, and that hundreds of women worked in Beit Jala, Bethlehem, and Gaza. Dayan said she wanted staff who had little contact with Arabs, or disliked them, to learn to relate through shared work and visits to families.[1]

This account presents the Palestinian craft work as part of Dayan’s effort to build personal and economic connections through Maskit. The National Library of Israel article records her description of the program and its aims; it does not, by itself, resolve the broader political context in which those activities took place.[1]

Dayan helped found Variety Israel in the 1960s, an organization supporting children with special needs.[4] She cofounded the Jewish-Arab social group Brit Bnei Shem, also called Ibnaa Sam, and was active in organizations concerned with Jewish-Arab relations.[3] A later profile also reports that she served on the council of Yesh Din and on the board of the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development.[9]

Her public advocacy included speaking and fundraising abroad. A 1970 American Jewish Archives document lists Dayan among speakers scheduled for overseas engagements from February 15 to March 16 and records her participation in multiple campaign events. It describes a presentation by her about “the needs” as “very well received.”[13]

Dayan also took part in electoral politics. Calcalist reports that she was seventh on Uri Avnery’s Shai list in the election to the Ninth Knesset and later joined Ratz and Meretz, generally in positions the article characterizes as not realistically electable.[10] Ynet reports that she appeared on left-wing lists from 1977 onward and was placed 108th on the Labor-Gesher-Meretz list for the election to the 23rd Knesset.[7]

Her connections with Palestinian individuals and communities were described in later interviews and biographies. The Jewish Virtual Library recounts Dayan’s long friendship with Palestinian poet Raymonda Tawil and says that the two planted a peace forest in Neve Shalom in 1978.[3] A 2016 interview reports Dayan’s recollection that her home was open to Palestinians and that Yasser Arafat had lunch there; she also described Tawil, the mother of Suha Arafat, as a close friend. These details are Dayan’s reported recollections.[8]

Maskit passed into private ownership in 1971. Dayan left its management in 1978, and the company later declined and closed in 1994. After leaving the enterprise, she promoted craft-based economic development projects in South America. A project in Guatemala, described by designer Tamara Yovel Jones, brought together a Yemeni jeweler, a master carpenter, a ceramicist, and Jones as designer to develop goods from local textile skills; the results were presented in a large fashion show. The account says Dayan initiated projects in four South American countries.[10]

Maskit was relaunched in 2013 through the initiative of designer Sharon Tal and entrepreneur Nir Tal, with Dayan’s cooperation. At 94, she supported the revival, and businessman Stef Wertheimer later joined as an investor.[10]

Dayan’s public activities also included writing and interviews about her life. She coauthored the 1973 book Or Did I Dream The Dream? The Story of Ruth Dayan with Helga Dudman, described as a bestseller. In 2010, she collaborated with biographer Anthony David on her life story.[3] She also said she wanted some of her correspondence with Moshe Dayan published because it showed “how this country was born”; the letters span 1934–1971, and one folder contained about 170 letters from him.[8]

Dayan received a range of public honors. These included the Presidential Medal of Distinction, an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Yigal Allon Award, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Solomon Bublick Award.[5][14] Other honors included an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa, the Rappaport Prize, and a Shenkar lifetime-achievement award. Ben-Gurion University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1994 for efforts to foster understanding between Jews and Arabs, and the University of Haifa awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2010.[10][15] She was also made an honorary citizen of Herzliya in 2010 and received the Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam community’s Partner of Peace Award on January 11, 2007.[3]

In 2019, at age 102, Dayan received a lifetime-achievement award from Variety Israel, the organization she had helped found. The award recognized a public life that included immigrant employment, social programs, and efforts to foster Jewish-Arab understanding.[10]

Dayan’s best-known institutional legacy is Maskit, through which immigrant craftspeople’s skills became sources of work and products for Israeli and overseas markets.[2][11] The company’s workshops and factories linked traditional embroidery, weaving, jewelry, and other crafts with contemporary design. Its reach was reflected in reports of substantial employment, production across multiple communities, and international sales and recognition.[10][5]

Her approach treated artisans’ skills as economic resources and valued the people behind the goods. Rather than separating craft from daily life, Dayan sought to provide materials, training, work, and routes to market. Her description of the purpose—helping people use their knowledge to live in the country—captures the connection between immigrant absorption and employment that shaped her work.[1]

Maskit also left a distinctive design legacy. The company’s clothes and household goods drew on local materials and the varied skills of communities in Israel, while Leitersdorf’s work helped shape the enterprise’s style. Dayan’s formulation, “Israeli clothing” made from local materials and local knowledge, expressed an ambition to create a recognizable design identity without resorting to a national costume.[1]

Dayan’s later social work extended the craft-based model beyond Maskit and Israel. She supported projects for immigrant, Bedouin, Palestinian, and other women and took part in organizations addressing children’s needs and Jewish-Arab relations.[3][4] Her long career connected economic opportunity with direct relationships among people and communities, and she continued to receive recognition for this work into her later years.[10]

Ruth Dayan died at home in northern Tel Aviv on February 5, 2021, aged 103. Her funeral was held in Nahalal, where she had studied and met Moshe Dayan. President Reuven Rivlin eulogized her as “a woman who became an Israeli legend in her own lifetime.”[15][7]

Approved accounts differ on Maskit’s formal founding date. One Jerusalem Post profile places its establishment in 1953, while another Jerusalem Post report gives 1954. The enterprise grew out of Dayan’s earlier immigrant-craft and government employment initiatives.[9][5]

Sources also differ on the year Ruth and Moshe Dayan divorced. The Jewish Virtual Library and a Jerusalem Post obituary give 1971, while Calcalist and Ynet report 1972.[5][3] The latter year also appears in Dayan’s own account as reported by Ynet.[10][8]

Dayan said that the immediate occasion for her decision to divorce was a disagreement over a planned visit to Palestinian women imprisoned in Nablus. She said she had not visited the prisoners that day but had instead delivered gifts to children in hospitals there.[8] A Jerusalem Post retrospective reports that she later characterized political differences, rather than Moshe Dayan’s infidelity, as the real cause of their separation. These explanations remain her reported recollections of the marriage’s end.[4]