Alight

Gittel — her very name meant goodness. Rebbetzin Gittel Kaplan was a woman of wisdom and love and humor and graciousness. A woman with a commitment to bringing Torah into the world, to helping Klal Yisrael, who expanded herself to include not just her children, not only her friends, but everyone, everywhere.

Avigail Sharer, Targum Press coworker

I met Gittel at the right time in my life. I was a young mother, in Eretz Yisrael without family. Twenty years ago, we young marrieds were at a crossroad. We had been brought up in an old world, but had stepped into a new one. How to navigate the divide? How to build a bridge, take chubby hands in our own, and lead them over to the other side? And how to do so with clarity and confidence, without angst or guilt? Without dropping hands or losing our selves?

Gittel sat behind her computer.

“I knew the woman,” she said, typing, formatting, figuring out proofreading marks, “who used to make the cholent for the yeshivah.”

I imagined a huge, battered pot sitting on the gas stove in her small kitchen.