Obituary: Ada Feinberg-Sereni

She and her comrades were scared, she would admit, but above all they were determined – and convinced that they were doing something important.

The daughter of Enrico Moshe Sereni, a prominent Italian scientist who had had been an officer in the Italian army during the First World War, and Dvora Aylon, an Israeli scientist and educator who had moved to Italy to study, Ada was born in Rome.

The Sereni family had been well established in the country for generations and was held in high regard within the Jewish community. The most prominent member was her uncle Enzo, an intellectual and ardent Zionist who moved to Israel and was one of the founders of kibbutz Givat Brenner. Throughout his life he believed in non-violence and reaching out to the neighbouring Arab communities. During the Second World War he was one of the Jewish paratroopers dropped by the Allies into Central Italy to assist local Jews and the Resistance but was captured by the Germans and sent to Dachau where he was murdered.

Ada’s father, Enrico was also active in the antifascist movement and a ground-breaking scientist but died suddenly when she was ten months-old. When she was four her mother Dvora and Ada moved to what at the time was British Mandatory Palestine and would become Israel. Many young people were ready to fight and die to help establish the new Jewish state and although just 17, Ada was keen to play a part in the struggle.

When the war was over, the determination that had helped her during the battles that forged Israel stood Ada in good stead: life was hard for the early Israeli settlers who didn’t really have a choice over where to make their home but went where they were told to go.

And so it was for Ada. She was sent to an isolated hillock near the Lebanese border. There was nothing, not even a road but, she recalled, “We were told – ‘this is the border of the state and you have to stay here’. So we stayed. We felt that we were on a mission to defend the country’s border.” That desolate place would become kibbutz Yir’on and Ada’s home for 75 years.

The first few years were particularly tough – the kibbutz was poor and isolated – and many people left but Ada didn’t. Gradually, things improved, houses were built, schools opened and children were born. Agriculture and later on tourism – thanks also to a beautiful nearby lake – helped Yi’ron to flourish. Ada married Israel (Izzy) Feinberg and they had three children together.

After working as a teacher and educator at the regional Anna Frank school for a few years, in 1969 she was elected to the Knesset representing the Ma’arach, the Labour coalition. Together with a fellow MP, she introduced a bill to allow civil marriage in the country but, although it was debated, it didn’t pass.

At the end of the term Ada returned to her beloved kibbutz and immersed herself in the kibbutz education movement.

Ada’s belief that Israel would survive remained unshakeable even when the country’s future appeared to be at stake like during the 1973 Yom Kippur war: “I knew that… we would recover and win. We have a state and we will not lose it.”

But what happened on October 7th shook that certainty and the decision to evacuate the settlements along the northern border – including Yir’on – was something she struggled to come to terms with. Her overwhelming feeling was anger but also enormous pain and sadness for all the people, many of them friends, who had lost their lives in the massacre: “Good friends from Be’eri and Nahal Oz were murdered, and kibbutzim were destroyed. How could they let this happen?” she cried, echoing the thoughts of many Israelis. “Every war and military operation in the past was difficult but we came through. We never left and never even thought of leaving. This is the worst war ever.”

She had harsh words for the government for having “forgotten the Galilee” and spoke angrily of “an attitude of contempt for the kibbutzim in the period before the war.”

She felt that “an attempt had been made to erase from consciousness and dwarf our life’s work, which has become worthless to the Israeli government.”

Recalling a time, many years previously when an IDF major general came to Kibbutz Baram to give a lecture, she vividly remembered him talking about possible future scenarios that would involve evacuating the Galilee. At the time Ada had told him plainly and decisively that she would not be evacuated. But now for the first time in her 94 years she was.

After a few months she asked to return to Yir’on: “I want to go home,” she told Israeli news site Walla. “I’ve been shot before, I’m not afraid. Can they shoot at us from [the Arab village] Maroun al-Ras? Yes, but we can also shoot at them.” Her optimism appeared to have returned and she felt positive about the future of kibbutz Yir’on, which she had helped build from scratch all those years ago.

Indeed she did return and the last five months of her life were spent in the house she had helped to build 76 years ago. She went back home to her beloved Yir’on and sat on the balcony drinking her espresso, as she had done for so many years.

Ada’s husband Izzy and a daughter, Orly, predeceased her. She is survived by two of her children.

Ada Feinberg-Sereni. Born April 22, 1930. Died November 4, 2025