Michal Moda'i

Michal Moda'i was born in 1931 in Jerusalem

Michal Herison was born in Jerusalem in 1931 to Osher Samuel Zelman and Zipporah Herison, a Zionist and religious family with deep roots in the city. Her father ran a haberdashery shop in Mea Shearim. She was a relative of Yoel Moshe Salomon.

She studied at the Evelina de Rothschild School and trained as a kindergarten teacher at David Yellin College. She then worked as a teacher in the Zichron Yaakov transit camp.

She won Miss Jerusalem and then Miss Israel, and changed her surname to Har'el at the request of David Ben-Gurion. She toured abroad giving talks and raising funds, including for the United Jewish Appeal in the United States. In London she met Yitzhak Moda'i, then a military attache, and they married in 1953 and had 3 children.

She joined WIZO in Herzliya in 1968 and was elected chair of WIZO Israel in 1979. In 1983 she started opening WIZO shelters for battered women. She became World WIZO president in 1996 and later its honorary president.

She chaired the Council of Women's Organizations and sat on the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors. Her daughter Harela was killed in a road accident, and an annual Army Radio prize honors her. Moda'i died in 2012 and is buried beside her husband in Nahalat Yitzhak.