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Rivka
Guber was born in 1902 to a family of Jewish
farmers who for generations had lived in the
village of Vilaszashatanovo Witbesc in the
Charuson county in the Ukraine. From early
childhood she was accustomed to hard work in the
fields and the cow shed. Nevertheless, she
completed elementary school in the village, and
since she showed a promising spark of ability,
she was sent to continue her studies at the
school in the county's central district of
Watrinoslav. There she finished high school and
two years of university. She experienced the
terror of the Bolshevik revolution when her
father, along with all the adults of the
village, was recruited into the war and the
village was controlled in turn by the various
forces which were fighting each other.
In 1921 she married Mordechai Guber, a yeshiva
graduate and a Hebrew teacher who later became
an agricultural instructor in Israel and headed
the regional councils of Be'er Tuvia and
Lachish. In 1925 they settled in Rehovot where
Rivka worked as a teacher. They later left
Rehovot in order to help establish Moshav Kfar
Bilu.
During World War II Rivka left her husband and
her small children to join the British Army. In
1939 the Guber family was among the founders of
Kfar Warburg a moshav in the south. It was while
living there that, in the War of Independence,
she lost her two children, Ephraim and Zvi, in
whose memory the moshav "Kfar Achim" was named.
During those years, Rivka served as an educator
and principal at the Achim School in Kiryat
Malachi. She dedicated all her energy to
immigrant absorption and to the education of
olim (new immigrants) living in the Kastina
ma'abara or transit camp. During those gray
days, the children took refuge in her home.
In 1956 the Guber family donated their house and
flourishing farm to the Magen Fund, and moved
with their daughter, Chaya, to a remote area of
the Lachish region where they helped establish a
string of moshavim and the city of Qiryat Gat.
After the couple retired they lived for two
years in Kfar Achim; however due to Mordechai's
poor health, they moved to a senior citizen's
home in Tel-Aviv.
Even towards the end of her life Rivka continued
to help those in need. She traveled everywhere,
even as far as Dahab near the southern tip of
Sinai where a former pupil from the Kastina
transit camp had established the settlement of
Di Zahav.
Rivka wrote many books including The Brother, To
the Torches of Lachish, The Tradition to
Bequeath, Only a Path, and These Are the Legends
of Kfar Achim, which were distributed throughout
the world and were translated into many
languages, including Japanese. In 1979 she was
part of the official Israeli entourage
accompanying then Prime Minister Menachem Begin
to the United States to sign the Camp David
Peace Treaty.
In the year 1981 she met her tragic death. Such
was the bitter end to "The Mother of Sons", a
title bestowed upon her by her admirer, David
Ben Gurion.
Biography taken from the Israel Postal Authority
and written by Ygal Almagor (Ruimy) of Di Zahav.
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