Rina Bar-Lev Elieli
27 November 1943 – 20 August 2005
A Personal Reminiscence[1]
Laurence J. Gould, Ph.D.
Before beginning, a few words are in order. Writing about
someone you love is inevitably a deeply personal matter. Since Rina was, for
me, an unabashed object of love, you must retain some perspective about what I
say. This is my Rina - all of you who knew her, will have your own.
First, I would like to bow to the conventional by simply and briefly listing some of the highlights of Rina’s extraordinary career. There are many, many others.[2]
At the time of her death, Rina
was the President, a faculty member and Training Analyst at the Israeli
Psychoanalytic Society. She was, as well, a founder and the former Co-Director
of the Program in Organizational Development
and Consultation - A Systems Psychoanalytic Perspective at the Sigmund
Freud Center of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
For almost all of her career,
spanning 35 years, Rina worked first as a clinical psychologist, and
subsequently as a both a psychoanalyst and an organizational consultant. In the
latter role, she worked with various organizations in industry, health,
education, banking and art, both in Israel and internationally. One
particularly notable and very public engagement was her three year consultation
to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which resulted in a major
publication (1995) with the Museum’s Director, J. Weinberg. - The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
In addition to her organizational consultation work, her other applied work
included group relations training, coaching, and large-scale crisis
intervention projects (e.g., the effects of the Gulf War in Israel).
Rina was also on the faculty of
the Tel-Aviv Medical School’s Program of
Psychotherapy, and in addition to her own, very active clinical practice -
she was arguably the most sought after analyst in Israel - she taught,
conducted training analyses and supervised training cases at the Israeli
Psychoanalytic Institute.
I first met Rina at a conference
in Montreal, where she gave a paper on the closing of the Dorot Center for
Psychotherapy and Consultation, which she co-founded and directed for 12 years.
As I remember the experience I sat in the audience thinking that I had never
heard anyone give a professional paper that was, at the very same time, so
thoroughly personal and intellectually rigorous. It was stunning.
When she had finished I
approached her and blurted out, “you ought to get on the first plane back to
Israel. You will be envied to death.” I certainly did not intend to say this.
She smiled somewhat awkwardly, and as we began to talk we discovered several
mutual friends - colleagues who had studied in the States and then returned to
Israel. From that moment our relationship seemed to effortlessly take hold and
develop. And four months later Rina came to my home for what was the first of
many visits with myself and my family - and subsequently, we had many visits
with her family in Israel. Although we spent as much time together as geography
allowed, a few years later we were finally able to embark on two major
projects, which provided substantial opportunities to collaborate.
The first was our work - for about three years - at the Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, and the second was the founding and co-directing
of the Program in Organizational
Development and Consultation. Although
both of these projects were very successful (the Program continues), it was
largely Rina’s genius for managing the explosive, complex web of relationships they required - especially the work
at the Museum - which made them possible. At the Museum, as you easily can
imagine, the staff’s daily confrontation with Holocaust materials stimulated
intense painful anxieties which were always on the verge of exploding. It was
Rina’s extraordinary skill and presence which helped to contain these, so that
the work could proceed. To this day I think only Rina could have done this -
certainly not me.
At this juncture you may not
unreasonably imagine that I am lost in a haze of idealization. But what is so
startling, as least as I think about it, is that so many people, like myself,
who loved and deeply respected Rina, did not, in fact, idealize her in any
dynamic sense of that term. She always remained down to earth and fully engaged
in a way that did not foster idealization - only a deep and abiding sense of
her gifts and her pleasure in sharing them, not from on high but eye to eye,
where relationships are mutually nourishing.
What I have said thus far
applies even more so to her family. Rina was a very special mother, wife,
sister and grandmother. There is simply no one I’ve ever known who was so
available and generous, and those who spent the most time with her - her family
- are the legacy of Rina’s grace. It is not simply that each is, in their own
way, so special, but rather they are not replicas of Rina. That was her gift -
to foster the unique development of those with whom she had contact. And as
much to the point, together they - her husband Dani, her three children and
their spouses, and now seven grandchildren - are, without exception, a
wonderfully close, loving family. I’m sure this is the legacy that Rina would
most cherish.
At the first evening of the Shiva, I said to a close mutual friend “I
can hardly imagine the family without Rina.” She replied, “I can hardly imagine
a world without Rina.” For both of us this was a quite understandable feeling
in the moment, but with the return of
reflection that only time can bring, we can, of course, imagine such a world,
because to have known Rina is to know
with visceral certainty that there is a future worth imagining.
Weinberg, J. and Elieli, R. (1995). The Holocaust Museum
inWashington. New York: Rizzoli.
Elieli, R. (2000). A Journey
towards integration: a transitional phase in the organizational life of a
clinic. Organisational and Social
Dynamics, Vol. 1, No. 1, 21-41.
[1]
Previously published in Kav Ofek (no.6, 2005), the in-house publication of OFEK (Organization, Person, Group - The Israel
Association for the Study of Group and Organizational
Processes).
[2] Rina was an enthusiastic and valued supporter of O&SD, serving as an Associate Editor for three years, starting with the first issue in which she also published an article (2000).