My dearest Gail,
I first met Gail in 1976; we were both young; Gail was 23\4, I think, and I, five years older. We lived in apartments opposite each other on Ben Baba, in the fairly new housing project of San Simeon, in west Jerusalem. We soon discovered that we were both voracious readers which immediately glued our relationship and would lead to a life time of adventures; 50 years!
While Gail continued to live in Avi’s flat, (while he travelled worked in the US), I later moved to another apartment down the hill, married, and moved to Safed
We kind of lost touch for a couple of years after I married and moved to Safed (for the first of 2 years, we had neither phone nor car…Gail and Avi married and continued to live in their apartment in San Simeon, developing and keeping a growing community of friends in that vibrant neighbourhood.
When we moved back to Jerusalem in 1981, we found ourselves in an apartment close to San Simeon, Micha was born that summer , and one day and out on a walk on the path between San Simeon and Hezkiahu HaMelech, we rediscovered each other!, and so, from that time on…..walks and talks and Friday night dinners at each other’s’ places just across the way.
Then Aiya was born in 1984 and Talia 5 months later, Dana and Yonathan 2 and 7 years later… And we continued our growing friendship…Gail loved kids! and, until she had her own, used to borrow others’ to take the kids to movies she wanted to see… that was a great excuse… borrow a kid, see a movie, eat popcorn… return the kid to relieved, rested parents, return home happy.
Gail would also take them for walks tell them stories; feed them their favourite meals (esp maki cheese and corn flake schnitzel, and meatballs… forever the best place for a kids to find himself at lunch time after school…
When it snowed in Jerusalem, we dressed the kids warmly to go out to teach them how to make angels in the snow as well as snowmen… I must have a picture somewhere!
Gail was my kids “other Mom” from the “time they could talk and very often she would scoop them up and take them home and feed them while David and I continued to work later. Oh yes, and then she was their trusted dental hygienist while she worked in Yehudit Tennenbaum’s children’s dental clinic. To this day they owe their well-tended mostly cavity free mouths to Gail and Yehudit!
We eventually moved down the road to a rented place on nearby Tchernichovsky, where we continued growing our families. The night I gave birth to Aiya, Gail came over to stay with Micha (then 3), I’m not sure who fell asleep first….probably Gail; Gail always liked going to sleep early,; she’d roll the shutters down around 6:30 making it quite dark inside, and announce that it was bedtime!… I think it worked for a while with her kids, until they caught on. Never caught on with mine…they’d just come home.
Independence Day we would picnic in the nature of our back apartment back yard,(we avoided the traffic jams of the out of city nature parks), Avi would be off being sound man for the TV main channel and would join us for the end….especially cut up watermelon… I’m not sure he ever got any meat from the bbq.
We went off to LA for three+years… keeping in touch by mail… remember those days? Neither of us were great letter writers….it was spare to say the least… but we managed to keep up our conversation.
When we were ready to finally return from L.A. , first buying what had been our rental apartment on Tchernichovsky, when, if it had not been for Gail… I do not think we could have managed… we were all frustrated by the (real estate) lawyer not handling the transaction efficiently… and Gail totally fed up with the non-speed, and, Power of Attorney I had send her, in hand marched in to the lawyer’s office, gathered up our file and proceeded to process the transaction, going and doing and signing whatever was needed. And she got it done!, ? in record time. We still owe her for that one…
When we arrived back from L.A. renovations needed to be done on the apartment and the furniture was yet to be taken out of storage, our lift had not yet arrived and so we lived in Gail and Avi’s (already bigger) apartment. Another time when we renovated again in order to create a room for Micha in our tiny 60 metre apartment, Micha came down with the flu and needed Gail’s chicken soup and mothering while he recovered from that.
And we had dreams… since Gail was such a great cook and loved it!, and I like baking… we dreamed up a restaurant where we’d have a different set menu for each day; Gail would cook her best mood food and I would bake the desserts… well it was a dream…
When Yonathan was born, they had a lovely brit at the restaurant at the Khan. When the deed had been done, with Yonathan still mourning his loss, and Gail flustered by the general event, we just disappeared from it all, whisked away home, leaving it all behind…we were more celebratory at Yonathan’s Bar Mitzvah party at Mevakshe Derech and Beit Shmuel 13 years later. We didn’t disappear… we danced!
Over the years we’ve grown and the kids have spread their wings and moved on with their lives. Gail grew into becoming a master quilter and created gorgeous pieces of art, bed quilts, and many very practical articles that are still very useful, (and even more cherished and near and dear to me now). Whenever there was a “simcha”… well there was a quilt for that too. And whenever there was a holiday event, Gail cooked up the most majestic of meals, particularly for Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, the table always filled with her magic tasty dishes… and if the delicious meal went on for too long… then exhausted Gail would quietly nod away… (I have pics of that too).
Purim was particularly special, Gail’s favourite holiday, I think… her costumes were always the most outstanding!, but beyond that truly brought out the kid joy in her….so she and Avi, every year while the kids were growing up, and wherever they were living (San Simeon, or Ramot), would roll up the living room rug, move the furniture out, and have a full fledged party for all the kids (and their parents too) complete with clown and or magician and a carvel ice cream cake from the only place in town!! Marvellous memories… must look for pics… there are many…
During the Gulf war (’90, ’91) with the kids at home from school, and using our plastic sealed rooms, Yonathan had to be put in his little baby “tent” which both he and Gail hated, Gail also had Micha and AIya with her along with Talia, Dana and Yonathan of course, as I worked regular day hours… (Russian new immigrants needed our attention);
I think the kids were quite fine with that… TV cartoons, and their favourite Gail meals! A regular day camp at Gail and Avi’s
Later that year, pre Pesach, I was still very busy creating a Pesach seder for the new immigrant Russian seniors, and worked right up to an hour prior to seder time… went home to shower and change, and over to Gail and Avi’s; seder table was set and ready and the food prepared for us all!, I don’t remember whether I even made our traditional (Mom’s) chocolate chopped nut cake. Gail had done it all!!!
Later, when the kids had grown and left for other parts, we still went to Mevakshe Derech to hear Line Bleicher Z”L read her part of the Purim “megillah”. And of course we dressed for the occasion! Gail loved being a part of the celebrations and Line’s costumed cheer leader in the audience of Line’s Megillah reading.
And so it went… until now
After a few days of thinking where I want to go with this, I realized, that I want to/could write volumes and reams and more; it was a life time, a full adulthood of many many wonderful, dramatic, traumatic warm, cuddly scenes of our lives… but one thing stands out and above all else; Gail was a giver, a carer, she was there when needed, (even if you didn’t know, she knew, when to be where with what was needed, and very very often it was a bowl of (chicken) soup from her huge heart and soul to whomever needed it at the time. She gifted the kids at Chanukah and birthdays, she made us quilts that adorn our homes, she brought back memory scarves from places she had visited (and for me “bakers’ chocolate” for our Pesach nut cakes), she loved us, she loved our kids. She was and continues to be in our hearts as best “other mother” and my bestie one could ever ever have;
Miss you sweetie
Dec, 2025
