I want to tell you about my friend, Laura.

7 years ago, when I first got off the plane here in Israel, she was one of the first people to welcome me.

She was gorgeous and outgoing, her smile was contagious, and she left of trail of positive energy in every corner of the room she entered.

She was as excited about my projects as she was about her own; and invested as generously as if it was her own. She just wanted to be a good friend- wanted to help out a fellow olah- believed in my work and wanted to be a part of it.

Brand new to this land, I was tasked to write a book that would entirely be based on who I could meet, who I knew. And I knew almost no one having just landed. Laura opened her WhatsApp and sent me contact after contact, making introductions and connections- she made the Layers book come alive.

She was my first interview for the book, and her story sits in the first chapter. I came to visit her in Neve Daniel, and we mined her past together, made meaning of painful stuff, and wrote a story. All the while we connected on a deep level that blossomed into a close friendship.

While we talked about the past, I got a front row seat to the rest of her life as it unfolded; divorce, kids raising, grandkids, Covid, dating, work, and building a whole new life for herself- first in Tekoa where she would send me landscapes of stunning hilltops and horses outside her window, and then to Jerusalem where I got many stunning pictures of all the new (and ancient) sights and skylines. We traded photographs and pieces of writing for many years.

And then Ray came into her world; and even I felt like I was in high school again. In the best way: their love for each other was so magnetic, and gosh Laura was so incredibly happy. Their wedding in the beautiful Jerusalem hills was out of a fairytale.

Raphael, you made her so happy.

She was always so hopeful, so full of love, so effervescent and sweet and funny. She was game for anything- and I, who was living for a long time from a place of fear, would watch in awe as she tried new things, jump for a new adventure. I’ll never forget the videos of her rollerblading with her kids and even learning how to ride a unicycle, taking it day by day.

Laura loved to travel and be with her people; and taking pictures of it all. Over the last few months I had the privilege of going through a large portion of her catalogue of images; thousands upon thousands. The things she saw and captured! Nature all over the world- birds in the sky, frogs on lily pads, snow capped trees in Jerusalem, long shadows on the hills of the Gush. She photographed Jewish women in New York, in Paris, in London - her beloved friends and family in all these places. Her daughter’s beautiful smile in front of the menorah, the bnei menashe weddings, the sun hanging low and pink in the sky.

Each one, a masterpiece that told a story.

Saw the world the way that she did.

Through the prism of love.

I’ve been telling our friends for several months as we’ve been dealing with the reality of losing her: people don’t usually live and die the way Laura did.

But you only die surrounded by this kind of love if you earn it while you’re alive.

Laura loved her people. She loved her family. The Jewish people. The land of Israel.

The other day I said that Laura lived 17 different lifetimes in one short lifetime here on earth.

She experienced so much. She saw so much.

She loved so much.

And she was everything to so many people.

A rock.

An inspiration.

A cheerleader.

A connector.

An artist.

A thinker.

A friend.

A sister.

A daughter.

A wife.

A mother.

A grandmother.

Losing her is totally surreal.

I just left her shiva. I can’t make much sense of this loss.

To me, she is the epitome of what it means to really live.

I will look up to her as long as I live.