On Friday, exactly two weeks from now, about 120 of Yitzhak Noy's friends were scheduled to attend a surprise party in honor of his 80th birthday.
The event was planned to take place at his wife Nurit's sister's home in Moshav Netaim, where Yitzhak and Nurit also live, so that Shnui himself would not discover the surprise ahead of time and might torpedo her.
Since some of the guests, his friends for decades, have many talents in poetry, writing and reading - it was supposed to be a multicultural encounter.
Radio Days, Boston University, Family, Friends.
But on Friday two weeks ago it became clear that there would no longer be a celebration.
On the same day, the interview I conducted with Noy, the Doctor of History, who has been at the helm of the broadcast on Kol Yisrael and "Here" for 57 years, was published here, and it is mesmerizing - just like that - tens of thousands listen to
In our age, where we ask every morning who is a journalist and what is the criterion for being a media person - Noy's presence in the studio when he presented his programs live, always live, was an encounter with a virtuoso.
Master class.
Throughout these two weeks I repeat many, many times, our two meetings at his home in Moshav.
One is longer and the other is shorter, for completeness.
I wanted there to be a third meeting as well, because I felt it was a disappearing world.
These were hours of walking between periods, events and people.
We talked about Ukraine and Russia, about Israel, Jews, Arabs and prime ministers, about demographic gaps, ecology, biology and anthropology.
His hand in every hand and every hand in him.
I also asked him how he felt towards the age of 80, and he replied in two words: "I'm tired."
The interview with him was supposed to come out now, in the Pesach issue, but the hand of fate preceded him slightly.
On the evening of Friday two weeks ago, the day the article was published, Noy sat down with his wife and son to watch news and catch up before leaving for Jerusalem in the morning, as he has been doing for 20 years, to broadcast his show.
• • •
As always, this time too it was a live broadcast, so that its listeners would get the freshest and most up-to-date stories.
Already when he went to bed he did not feel well, and when he woke up in the morning he told Nurit that he was afraid to drive alone to Jerusalem.
Nurit said there was no problem, she would drive, and when they got to the corporation studio - he went up the stairs and she accompanied him.
She's never done that before.
He navigated two hours of broadcast as usual, talked about Menachem Begin.
Nurit will say that she later heard the broadcast again and did not recognize anything that hinted at a problem.
When they returned home, Isaac told her he could not feel his feet.
She thought that maybe the polio epidemic we were talking about again had affected him.
He got into his bed and rested, but when he woke up and told her he could not feel his legs, she ordered an ambulance that took him to Assaf the doctor.
It took the professor a while to figure out who it was.
Noy appears in the drawings as Yitzhak Neustadt and never asks for discounts because of who he is, but when the professor recognized his voice - the token fell.
The professor did not have to say too much, and after the tests Isaac did not need interpretation.
He understood himself.
In the second message to the members invited to the celebration, Nurit wrote that a cancerous growth in the brain had been diagnosed, and therefore the celebration would be canceled.
She added that the interview with him, published here, would be a finishing chord to his work - and thus will be remembered.
Cancellation of the invitation to the 80th birthday party,
Smart and sensitive people know how to recognize the moment when their lives are turned upside down.
When they left in the ambulance for the hospital, Yitzhak said to Nurit "this is my last trip", and she already felt the inner turmoil, the loneliness that hurried to take a place in their full, long life together.
His editors on the radio, Hedva Almog and Vigal Botton, say that there is no one like him.
They are right - because apart from Yitzhak, there is no person in this genre who has all the qualities that allowed him to be a super-temporal star, even in an age where forces are working to find a substitute for knowledge and education and to sanctify Pike News.
The studio and his house in the moshav were his fortresses.
Especially his study, which was crowded with his world - books and music.
In Netaim, where he was born 80 years ago, and after his aunt, who was a doctor, persuaded his mother to hide her belly as much as possible to outwit his father who thought another child in the family would be a burden - there was happy poverty of one who grew into a country difficulty.
It is not at all certain that Isaac will be able to sit again on the terrace overlooking and enveloping the never-ending garden and fruit trees.
Pet the dog and cats that walked among them until they dwindled, whether because of extreme age or illness, or because of a fatal viper bite.
He wrote almost 20 books.
Two weeks ago, on the day the interview was published, I found in my mailbox his penultimate book, "Husky," which deals with a dog abandoned by its owner in a seat near the airport.
A kind of indictment against human beings.
The dog is man's best friend, but not the other way around.
More has been written, and his new book "One of the Girls" is already out.
In the days he wrote and broadcast for children's and youth programs, he was asked by the mythological program director, Miriam Herman, to write a book on the charged subject of incest.
Years repressed her offer, but recently completed the story, which takes place in a family from the upper elite.
Loaded topic.
Cover of Noy's new book "One of the Girls",
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Getting off the stage of virtuosos is a matter of nature.
I was at the Hall of Culture at Zubin Mehta's last concert and kept my fingers crossed for Sir Alex Ferguson when he was rushed to hospital with a significant stroke, from which he did recover, but his Manchester United is not at all the same Manchester, to this day.
Dr. Yitzhak Noy, because of what and who he is - will not allow nature to fool and fool him. He is smart enough to finish as he pleases. In his journey, and more than that - for being the last to document, if only a little, the person who knows almost everything about the world.
Aviadp65@gmail.com
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