Itongadol.- Tatiana (Tania) Edelstein, wife of Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, passed away at age 63 overnight Thursday. They were married for 33 years.
Edelstein died after a long battle with a serious illness, which the Knesset did not specify.
Her funeral will take place at 1 p.m. in the Gush Etzion cemetery.
Edelstein was a Hebrew teacher in the Soviet Union and encouraged aliya before moving to Israel herself in the 1980s.
In Israel, Edelstein worked as an engineer for the civil aviation authority.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post last year, the Knesset Speaker recounted how he and his wife became observant as underground Hebrew teachers in the USSR.
"People would would come from abroad and not eat in our house. At first, my wife and I started keeping a kosher house because we said people endangered their lives to bring us books and recordings of Hebrew lessons, so how can we not serve them food?” he said.
Edelstein also told of how, after he was arrested on trumped-up drug charges for being a Hebrew teacher, his wife would sneak matzot into prison by breaking them into small pieces and labeling them as crackers.