It's hard to know where to start -- but perhaps Day One makes sense.
On the day that Steffi was born, our father Bernie wrote her a letter. So I'd like to start with a few lines from that, the first letter that Steffi ever received..
Dearest Stephanie,
How are you getting on? I hope that you are behaving yourself and not overeating, although you must have your regular meals same as grown-up folk.
How do you like the world? Funny place isn’t it. Although, mark you, you’ve only seen the inside of a hospital, but wait until you go to parties, and dances, and wear pretty clothes and things. You’ll really enjoy being up and about.
I’m looking forward to Sunday week when I’ll be able to take you out in your pram and show off with you (not that I am in the habit of showing off. But with you it’s different). I’m getting the garden ready for you to roam about in, although I have not touched it since the day before you decided to visit Dorking.
But wait until you visit Wallington. You won’t want to live anywhere else.
After I saw you yesterday I went for a ride on the back of uncle Charlie’s motorcycle. Auntie Edie and Cousin Judith were in the side car. We all went to Battersea to visit Grandma Noble, who was asking all about you.
You can of course imagine what I told her, although there was no need for me to exaggerate, because you are the nicest little baby that I have ever seen.
Even then - she’s one day old, and my father mentions her dancing.
Her interest in dancing started in her very early years - she attended the Italia Conti dance school, and our uncle, Lionel, working for Hulton’s Press thought she’d make a brilliant child star. He arranged a photoshoot and auditions at various studios. But Min, our mother, didn’t think that was an appropriate future for a young Jewish girl - so instead she sent her to a convent school where she was apparently quite assertive in fighting the good cause and showing the nuns exactly what young Jewish girls were made of.
I came along at the end of the war when Steffi was five, but she didn’t have much time to show any resentment. Our father died tragically young at 38 which threw us together, especially in the face of our mother’s silence - she just couldn’t talk about him - and oddly both of us had guilt feelings and no way of talking about them, so this was another thing that drew us together.
From the convent school, despite having all the qualifications to go to university, Steffi opted instead to train as a secretary. I could never understand that - she would have so suited University life. She worked as a secretary,at Newman Neame a publishing company, but her horizons were elsewhere.
In 1958 she joined Habonim, a socialist-zionist youth movement in the heady days when youth culture was just beginning to emerge, and kibbutz life seemed to offer a utopian lifestyle.
She quickly showed her skills, sensitivity and leadership, and became a madricha (a youth leader), rosh peleg (branch secretary) and madrichat noar (head of the youth training scheme at the Eder Farm in Sussex).
In 1959 our mother, Min, married Bill Robins, and we acquired an amazing new father, a new sister, Jane, and a brother, Ricky - and soon she had dragooned us all into Habonim and set the direction of our lives for years to come.
In September 1962 she broke the hearts of many Habonim boys when she married Steve Rose, and together in 1965 they went on Aliya to kibbutz Bet HaEmek.
On the kibbutz she worked in several departments, including working with the kibbutz architect, where she could apply the artistic and creative skills that had been so useful in the movement.
In 1965 her son Noach was born, not long after Jane and Iri’s first daughter, Margie (also at Bet HaEmek).
After she and Steve returned to England, Timna was born in 1969, and before long they established themselves at the centre of a thriving social network in Muswell Hill. Many people here will have very happy memories of that house, and of the subsequent houses where she lived, and where she was so immensely sociable.
After Steffi and Steve split up in 1976 they continued to work together in bringing up the two children - and the result was two amazing young people who inherited from both their parents, creativity, artistic flare, eloquence, sociability and grace.
For several years Steffi worked as PA to a Chinese Art and Handicrafts importer - and her houses and the homes of her friends and relatives are to this day scattered with oriental artefacts, from small bits and pieces through to large vases and statues of elephants (to say nothing of her incredible painted pebbles, known generally as Steffi stones). Her house was a wonder to behold, like an aladdin's cave.
For many years she coordinated the Kibbutz Representatives department that was set up in London to organise volunteers to kibbutz.
But perhaps her most important career was when she worked with Holocaust Survivors at the LJCC (London Jewish Cultural Centre) coordinating the Holocaust Education programme. She was the perfect person to support survivors as they went out to schools and colleges to tell their tragic stories and keep alive the determination that such things should not happen again.
But back to the dancing. It didn’t stop with pirouettes at Italia Conti. Once she joined Habonim and felt the beat of Israeli music she was bitten by the bug of Rikudei Am (Folk Dancing) - and this didn’t end when she left Israel - and through to her early eighties she was energetically (and I mean energetically) involved - in weekly groups, lessons, and workshops, in London, through the country, and abroad. Once, she went to a doctor with a problem with her legs, and when he asked her about her past-times he looked at her in amazement and said ‘Mrs Rose at your age most people are happy if they can climb upstairs to bed let alone prance around doing folk-dancing’. Incidentally age was always an interesting thing with Steffi. She looked so young. Many people have anecdotes of her getting a half-fare on buses into her twenties and even thirties.
Apart from rikudim, and art, Steffi enjoyed music, travel and she loved to read (I never left her house without a list of literary recommendations.)
In recent years she was central to a large social circle which brought together the many facets of her full life, and in the same way was a central pivot of the large extended Davidson-Noble-Robins and Rose families. This wide circle of friends and relatives was evident from the flood of emails, messages and tributs we’ve received over the past week. The message was always the same - we can’t believe it.
Her liveliness, vivascity, and humour made it hard to remember the number of health issues she faced. I won’t dwell on her health problems, but it's hard not to mention the famous Sybil Fawlty evening of her fiftieth biirthday - when on the eve of a huge party to which a vast crowd was invited, she developed very serious pneumonia and was bed-bound. Timna and Noah held the fort downstairs, while for the whole evening a stream of people filed past her bed to wish her happy birthday, and a weak wave of the hand appeared from beneath the sheets.
And mentioning birthdays - who hasn’t at some stage received one of her unique birthday cards. Something I’m sure we all treasure. So a final ancedote. It was my birthday last Friday, just a few days after she died. By the time Steffi went into hospital she was physically very frail and weak. But her spirit and determination were undimmed. When we arrived in the ward, there were two medics busying themselves around, while the bleepy machines bleeped. One medic was taking blood pressure and the other was arguing with her that she had to take more antibiotics. Seeing me, Steffi ignored them totally. She started tapping out on her phone, and signing (she was very breathless and she was finding it hard to speak) so she signed that she had to send me something. Eventually my phone pinged and the birthday card she had made the day before popped up on my screen. The more officious of the two medics looked at her and said, ‘He’s standing right here - why couldn't you just wish him happy birthday. She didn't get it!
There so much more I could say. She was an amazing sister, someone I could look up to and admire and love. The world may seem greyer but in fact it is more colourful, more vibrant, more surreal and more interesting because of Steffi.
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