The woman who recently received a certificate of appreciation on Teacher’s Day at ORT Motzkin high school has been living in Israel for only seven years.

Gabrielle Soffer arrived in Tel Aviv on her own in 2019. She had a degree in the visual arts and psychology from New York’s Hunter College and had worked in the real estate field for nine years.

Aiming to improve her language skills before seeking employment, she registered for a residential Hebrew ulpan at Tel Aviv University, where she shared lodgings with women from Russia, Brazil, and Hungary. But not for long.

Two nights after the start of the program, she and her roommates visited a neighborhood bar. There she met Asaf Cohen, the man who would soon become her husband and father of their two boys, now two and five.

“I didn’t think it was very serious, of course, at the time. You never think that when you meet somebody at a bar. But he actually ended up being a really standout guy who helped me with every facet of my life when I was so early into my experience here. I felt uncomfortable signing documents, like at the bank, without knowing Hebrew well. And he invested in my well-being from the start,” she says.

“I often joke with my husband that we never would have gotten so serious so quickly if I hadn’t been living with three women from Europe and Latin America. It felt silly to be back in a dorm room at that point in my life. I wasn’t in my 20s anymore, and neither were they. It was very strange trying to adapt to that.”

Gabrielle grew up in Tenafly, a New Jersey borough with many Israeli expat residents and a large Jewish community center. She and her parents and sister traveled to Israel several times to visit close relatives in the Sharon.

Fond memories of those trips came back to her when, during her college years, she began to feel marginalized and unsafe as an American Jew for the first time.

“What I found at Hunter was a big anti-Israel base that would congregate every time there was the tiniest operation in Gaza. They would rally for Gaza and Palestinian rights and completely misinterpret Israel’s actions. They’d describe Israel’s regime in outrageous terms like ‘Nazi.’

“At the time, I was in a relationship with an Israeli man. And it was a really big turning point for me. I felt threatened and scared to be a Jew in New York, having to mask my identity or be careful with it.

Further incidents of that sort made it even clearer to me that there was so much antisemitism hiding beneath the surface. In conversations with spouses of my best friends, I’d hear remarks like, ‘Those dirty Jews in Wall Street.’ It really, really hurt – but it also filled me with a sense of strengthening of my identity.”

She finished Hunter in 2010 and took a real estate sales job, eventually obtaining her license. However, by 2019 she was feeling that her career and her personal life weren’t going anywhere. It was at this point that she took another trip to Israel with her family and spent time with friends of friends in Tel Aviv. She fell in love with the city and decided to move there.

Her cousins had told her that English teachers were needed in Israel, but she didn’t pursue that option right away because she wasn’t sure she could live on a teacher’s salary. Then Asaf’s mother told her about a free teacher certification course at Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv, and encouraged her to try it.

“I really liked the idea of doing something that’s more meaningful than sales, and I felt safer financially because Asaf was working, too. And I ended up loving it. Teaching came naturally to me. I felt that I could use my creative brain and my love of literature and, of course, my English, for the good of others.”

In August 2020, the newlyweds moved to be near Asaf’s parents in Kiryat Motzkin, less than a year before Asaf’s father died. Their home is down the street from ORT Motzkin, which is part of the Israel Sci-Tech Schools network. When Gabrielle saw an ad on Telegram for an English teaching position at the high school, she applied and was accepted.

After her first successful year teaching high-level students, the school’s English coordinator asked her to develop an accelerated course.

“I was excited to spend the summer creating a beautiful course that uses literature to teach vocabulary, grammar, and speaking skills. I also bring in some visual art elements, like posters for presentations, as well as one-pagers.

“When we implemented it in the fall, the students loved it, and I just kept on building it. It’s a class where they can be active and creative and express themselves.”

Gabrielle has become close with her 10th-12th graders, many of whom come from Russian-speaking homes. They often come to her to talk – in English – outside of class.

“They feel comfortable sharing really deep things with me. And I don’t take that responsibility lightly. I’m happy to be the ear for them.”

The past two and a half years have been challenging for both teachers and students, she admits, especially in the North and especially when classes must be held over Zoom. And it’s also challenging to be the mother of two preschoolers in an area with frequent sirens during wartime.

“I’m trying not to watch the news as much,” Gabrielle says. “And I’ve turned off different WhatsApp broadcast notifications because it doesn’t help me to read all of that. I’m just trying to persevere right now for the sake of my children.”

And yet, she appreciates the immediacy of life in Israel as opposed to America. “There is a directness – in how people speak, in how communities function, in how urgency and warmth exist side by side – that took some adjusting to but that I have come to love.” ■

Gabrielle Soffer Cohen, 41
From Tenafly, New Jersey,
to Tel Aviv, 2019;
to Kiryat Motzkin, 2020