She was authentic before it came back into fashion, a free spirit in a state institution.
She had a laugh and R's were also rolling.
She understood her power and her place in public broadcasting, and did not care about them.
Mihara Imber, one of the recognizable voices on the radio, decided to end on her own terms.
Just like she lived her life.
If this had not been very burdensome for her two daughters, Moore and Shelley, she might have given me a smile when I offered a paraphrase of Mark Twain: "The rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated."
When she published a farewell post on her Facebook account, she was not dead yet.
Just started a process.
And the media?
The media was quick to bury.
Imber has always made headlines.
Its managers at Kol Israel - as she told Yoav Ginai and me a few days before she fell asleep under the auspices of palliative sedation - did not always know how to eat her.
She did things a little differently.
Mirava (for me she is Mirava) treated the radio like a home, and that means she dared to say on public broadcasting even words that the press is used to censoring.
Because why not actually?
"Tu Bab", she told us in the last interview (almost), "Amnon Par sits with a sexologist, with a sex counselor, and they talk about love and making love, and he asks me at the end of the news how I celebrate Tu Bab, and I told him 'I'm waiting for Shai (her husband - AG) to return from the hospital, so that we can ****.
What did I say different from them???"
A moment like this signals to us that there is a woman of flesh and blood behind the respectable voice and careful wording.
This is not a mouthful.
Mirava wanted in her life, which are not separate from her radio persona, to say things on her behalf, without mincing words.
It turned me on.
I remember when I first met Mihara the woman, and not just as an enthusiastic listener.
At the request of Odia Koren and Nathan Dettner, I called to arrange an interview for a program entitled "My First Time", unrelated to Parr's Tu Bab program. Mimara was asked to gather a story about some kind of first time. While other interviewees told about the first times of writing or sports, and even about The first war, Mirava told about such a small moment, which is actually so big:
Mihara told about the first time she created between her teeth from the remains of a balloon that exploded another small balloon for her little daughter.
A stranger won't understand this, but I remember my mother with a similar balloon that you could scrape between your teeth and make a doubtfully funny, doubtfully annoying sound.
Great toy for a few pennies.
This is the story I liked the most in the show.
Since then, I made sure to invite her to grace the IDF's radio broadcasts. Sometimes, not regularly, when it suited her and us. She listened to the military station anyway, and I have proof of this, mostly in the WhatsApp messages she sent to correct, warn or enlighten. We wanted her voice to continue to be heard.
In her passing, Mihara Imber leaves us a double legacy: firstly, thanks to her we got to know a little more about the "law of the patient who tends to die", but in my eyes her professional legacy is more important.
A narrator and broadcaster who knew from the gut - the personal is the universal.
And we will always believe whoever speaks to us at eye level.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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