Dear Annelideans and other friends of Nechama.
Yesterday I sent Mati and Ronit, Nechama's son and
daughter-in-law, my personal condolences with Nechama's for me not
unexpected demise. I ended that mail with "Amongst my colleagues, Nechama
ranked as a friend. I will share a couple of reminiscences with the
polychaete community later, and send you that as well."
My first -at the time still infrequent- contacts with
Nechama must go back to the early 70-ties when Por's publication about
Lessepsian migration in Syst.Zool. caught my attention, and Nechama started
to publish on that item too. I forgot the exact year, but she had not
settled down in Jerusalem yet. We mainly exchanged reprints, and an
occasional piece of information. My first brush with the "peoples person"
she was occurred during the 1st Int. Pol.Conf. in Sydney. Soon after that
came the first of a couple of visits to the Netherlands, during which she
generally was based at least some part in our home. Amongst others we
shared a passion for politics, she to the far left, we (my wife and me) to
the right of the middle (we have a lot of political parties in the
Netherlands, even more than in Israel). But of course we often talked shop,
more and more serpulids. She once came to Amsterdam with an outline of a
manuscript on some extremely small worms she had from Red Sea and Cyprus,
which she believed to be new to science and wanted to give the Arabic name
Hadiya. However, I had the feeling having seen a description (and drawing)
of an operculum very similar, if not the same, in papers by Bush and
Straughan, and advised her to have a good look at those papers. A year
later I was sent a manuscript for review by a well-known journal. It was
the same manuscript, finished but without the in my eye essential
modifications, she dearly wanted to make the statement included in Hadiya.
I phoned the editor and told him that I hardly could remain anonymous,
since I only could give the same comments as a year before. He asked me to
review the paper anyhow, so I bought a different daisy wheel for the
printer (she new mine from in the meantime frequent letters), asked my
colleague to write some remarks in the margin of the text, and sent off an
anonymous review. After a couple of months Nechama sent me a letter asking
my advice on two reviews she had received, one by Helmut Zibrowius and one
a very long set of comments by an anonymous reviewer, almost as long as the
original manuscript. In only could confess that I had been that anonymous
source, and she immediately asked me to come in as second author. Once
interested, she could be very tenacious, and in this case even went to the
USA again to find new material in Bush's collections. Mind you, the tubes
are hair thin and the dry opercula slightly over 0.1 mm wide! The rest you
can read in the 1989 publication.
In 1990 Nechama invited me in her home for a 6 week period
in Israel, 3 weeks of fieldwork to sample the ongoing Lessepsian migration,
three weeks of labwork. It proved to be a small world. When we had dinner
with a friend of her, I recognized the church on a painting as the one I
was married in; her friend had lived in the town where I went to grammar
school. In the bus to the University, I was recognized by a former Utrecht
student. She had arranged a diving buddy for me. I did not immediately
recognize the face, but when she introduced me to my prospective buddy
Pisanty, she was even more surprised than I when we realised that we had
enjoyed each others cooking in 1968, when we both were doing reseach in
the Zoological Station in Den Helder (nowadays NIOZ), the Netherlands.
Diving off Haifa, we were taken out of the water by the police or navy, it
was the time when Palestinians attacked the beaches with rubber boats.
Nechama and I had long and sometimes heated discussions over material,
interpretations, emerging texts, whatever. On a later occasion, when she
again was visiting us, I heard her admit to my wife that she sometimes
contradicted me just for the sake of the argument. That time, by the way,
we again found out that it is a Small World: visiting a mill-museum in
Holland we stumbled across one of her political friends from Jerusalem! The
result of those discussions was published in 1992.
I mentioned her capacity for tenaciousness. My preferred
animals are big and showy, or with nice and very different opercula thought
to be clearcut species, such as the X-mas tree worms (although . . . ) and
*Hydroides*. She nevertheless lured me into small to very small worms three
times, with *Rhodopsis*, the mistakes made in juvenile *Hydroides*, and the
taxonomical mess of *Salmacina*. Admittedly, we have not solved the last
problematical taxon, we need DNA for that, but found at least some useful
characters, which I thought impossible. Her Magnum Opus (with some help
from my side) of course was the paper Serpulidae (Annelida: Polychaeta)
from the Suez Canal--From a Lessepsian Migration Perspective (a Monograph),
in which a lot of work came together.
The last years, especially after she had been diagnosed
with cancer, we spoke (and sometimes saw) each other almost every two weeks
on Skype (or phone). Nechama always was very reticent to talk about
herself, notwithstanding the fact that she was perfectly aware that both my
wife and I know cancer first hand, and as a straightforward Dutchman I can
ask very direct questions. She always enquired about our health, and that
of the children/grandchildren, and indeed kept us informed on the (family)
situation in Israel. Last summer she decided not to go to the 11th
International Polychaete Conference in Sydney, sent me the PP slides of her
intended talk, but nevertheless told me she hoped to go to the next
conference in three years time. Typical for her state of mind. When a
couple of weeks ago she was not on Skype any longer, nor answering mails, I
knew that her situation was bad. Some 10 days ago I last heard her voice
over the phone, weak as the way she felt.
I will miss her.
Harry A. ten Hove
2014-03-24 20:00 GMT+01:00 Angel de León <deleongonzalez from gmail.com>:
> I am very saddened by the death of Nechama, I have very good memories of
> her in various meetings, it was really very friendly, she introduced
> herself with me I think she saw me very far gone all, in the late 80's
> introduced me Kristian Fauchald, Tom Perkins and Harry ten Hove, I am very
> grateful to her.
>> Angel de León
>>> 2014-03-23 14:59 GMT-06:00 Nechama Ben-Eliahu <nbenelia from gmail.com>:
>>> I am sorry to bring the bad news
>>>> My mother has past away painlessly and peacefully tonight at 10 Pm while
>> holding my hand
>>>> my email is mati.beneliahu from gmail.com>> my cellphone is +972 (0)54 6798784
>> My home number is +972 0779258145
>>>> Please look for a message in the news papers
>>>> mati
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Post: Annelida from net.bio.net>> Help/archive: http://www.bio.net/biomail/listinfo/annelida>> Resources: http://www.annelida.net>>>>
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