An Improbable Friendship

July 27, 2015
If it hadn’t actually occurred, the friendship between Ruth Dayan (born 1917), the first wife of Israeli politician Moshe Dayan, and Raymonda Tawil (born 1940), the mother-in-law of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, would seem not merely improbable but impossible. This joint biography from David (coauthor of Once Upon a Country) traces the women’s lives prior to 1970, the year of their meeting, and the collaboration that followed, one peppered with “standard quarrels” but forged by a mutual commitment to peace. In addition to noting the preeminence of politics in Dayan and Tawil’s lives, David opens up their personal lives: their childhoods, their children, their travails (Dayan’s divorce, Tawil’s house arrest), and their enterprises (Dayan’s Maskit, a craft and design collective employing immigrant women; Tawil’s news agency). David, who wrote the book at the women’s request, had access to Dayan’s many cassette tapes and letters and to Tawil’s diary, along with the many interviews he’s conducted with them since 2009. At times, the biography has an “as told by” tone; in other sections, a novelistic tone creeps in, obscuring the difference between recreated conversation and recorded interviews. Some readers may find the admiring tone overly lacking in objectivity and critical distance, but David has succeeded in creating a vivid portrait of two very feisty women. 20 b&w photos.