In today’s world, my grandmother would have emerged a leader, a force to be reckoned with. There is no doubt in my mind. But she was born in a land, at a time and into a family that did not understand, nor appreciate her formidable qualities. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, died in 1996. She was 96 years old.

In poverty-stricken Jerusalem, early this century, with no formal education, my grandmother mastered the art of reading and writing both in Hebrew and Yiddish, her mother tongue, and taught herself math. It served her well as she purposefully supervised her own household accounting, meager as it was (she knew the meaning of budget), as well as keeping meticulous records of charity money collected by neighborhood women and distributed by her to the poor and less fortunate. Only late in her life, when age slowed her down, her body no longer cooperating, and she was forced to ask for assistance in managing her many charitable activities. It was then that we discovered the extensiveness and magnitude of her work - all done quietly and discreetly. We found out about her fund-raising ability. About the poor families supplied with fresh challahs and wine every Friday morning; the widowed women who received supplements to their inadequate social security allotments; the sick and elderly who were visited and consoled with a warm cup of tea as their simple and destitute homes were cleaned; the yeshiva boys who ate dinners she helped prepare.

My courageous, gallant, and headstrong grandmother defied cancer, heart-ailments, high blood pressure, and countless other physical challenges. She lived through the Turkish regime, the British Mandate, and Jerusalem's vicious Mufti. She survived Arab pogroms, (unlike some of her cousins), and the numerous Arab-Israeli wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1981) that claimed casualties from within our family.

In 1967, the Six Day War erupted before she had an opportunity to call on her widowed and childless older brother (then in his seventies), whose health was failing. The wailing sirens and the booming loudspeakers, urging people to find shelter, did not detain her as she made the two-mile journey afoot, carrying a bag full of cooked goodies, to Méa-Shéarim, not 700 yards from the Jordanian border.

"Savta'lè" (grandma), soldiers called out from the top of armored-tanks, making their way toward the ancient walls of Jerusalem. "Go home," they cried, "it is dangerous." She smiled at them and wished a safe and sound journey. "May G-d be with you, and protect thee from evil," she uttered a familiar prayer. "Don't worry about me," she said. She had been through this before. She had get to her ailing brother.

My grandmother, a fifth generation Sabra (Israeli native), who outlived six siblings, lost her young husband in 1947 to hyper-tension, her two-year-old little girl to pneumonia, and her 14-year-old granddaughter, to PLO murderers. My grandmother, the uneducated, uncultivated, yet cultivated and graceful woman, with the therapeutic, healing hands. My grandmother who sang like an angel, and reasoned with the best of them. My grandmother, her poetic soul, her brave heart, her charitable ways.