Annice Grinberg 1938-2018

 With the recent passing of Annice Grinberg z"l (see her brief biography in ESRA Magazine No. 180), the board of ESRA Rehovot has lost its most devoted and beloved member. Annice personified ESRA Rehovot. For as long as I can remember (and I have been a member of the board for some 20 years), Annice was a remarkable combination of chairperson and secretary. In carrying out these often onerous duties, she was absolutely indefatigable. For most of that time, ESRA activities in Rehovot were confined to monthly informative and informal lectures, held in the evenings in private homes, which gave them a certain characteristic charm. We had a coterie of faithful attendees, and so these meetings provided generous support to several local charitable organizations.

The primary responsibility for keeping this going rested on Annice's shoulders. As a board, we had vociferous monthly meetings to discuss the charities we supported, to decide on whom next to invite to lecture, and to determine who would do the inviting. But it was Annice who made sure the invitation had been extended, and who then requested and obtained a short CV from the speaker and a brief summary of the talk. Furthermore, it was Annice who, with her skills as a mathematician and computer programmer, designed and produced the attractive flyers to advertise the lectures, and emailed them out to a fairly extensive group of people. And as the date of the lecture approached, she worried about the venue, making sure that whoever had offered to host the lecture was really in a position to do so.

On the night of the lecture, she and her devoted husband Ira would come trotting in with the large screen and "barco", as the digital projector is called, which they otherwise permanently stored for the board. She was concerned that there should be a proper introduction to the lecturer, and if no appropriate person were there to do it, she stepped into the breach and introduced the lecturer herself. And the same was true of the vote of thanks at the end. Sometimes she roped Ira into doing this, taking advantage of his sense of humor, although he was not officially a board member. She even worried about a gift for the lecturer, and invariably had one on hand.

Board meetings without Annice will be lonely affairs. The fact that she was mortally ill hardly affected her activities for a long time. In the accompanying photograph, which was taken at the party for my 90^th birthday, most (but not all) of our Board members appear. Annice is on the very right, looking radiantly beautiful with the smile she always wore. This was less than a year ago. There is simply no one of her caliber among us now. She leaves a great gap and will be sorely missed.

May her dear memory be for a blessing.