Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and his wife, Ruth, ended today their 36-year marriage. The divorce was reportedly requested by Mrs. Dayan. Although it was no secret that the Dayans’ relationship had deteriorated, their decision to end the marriage came as a surprise.
Rumors about the impending divorce circulated last night in Knesset corridors and were finally confirmed by Mrs. Dayan, who reported she was sick in bed but would attend today’s divorce proceedings at the home of this city’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren.
Neither the 54-year-old Mrs. Dayan nor the 56-year-old Cabinet Minister would comment on the divorce. “It’s a private matter,” she said last night. This morning, the Defense Minister said “It’s my private affair and I am not prepared to make any statement about it.”
DIVORCE ENDORSED BY RABBINICAL COURT
The couple’s three children, all of whom are married, are said to have attempted to restored relations between the two. But when things did not work out as the children wished, they decided to let the parents decide their own lives. Both Assaf Dayan, the actor, and his brother Ehud, a farmer from Nahalal, said they knew what was going on, but they stressed they would not intervene.
Daughter Yael, the novelist, wrote that “it was difficult for the mother to get along with such an individual and well-fortified personality as” Dayan. Yael is in Paris where her husband is an Israeli attache.
None of the children were among the six people who attended the divorce proceedings this morning. The divorce agreement was endorsed by a three-man rabbinical court presided over by Rabbi Goren. Dayan will remain in his present home, it was learned, while his former wife, who is head of the handicrafts in Israel’s Ministry of Labor and founder and manager of the Maskit handicraft works and shops, will take an apartment elsewhere.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
