Babette Kaplan was laid to rest in the cemetery of Ramat Hasharon on August 2. The many emotional obituaries given, paid tribute to but a small aspect of who she was. Indeed none could have expressed in words her essence and what she achieved in her lifetime.

Babette was born in South Africa, lived in Johannesburg, studied drama in Cape Town and made aliyah in 1963.

 She was a loving mother to Nicky, Andy and Boaz, an attentive grandmother, a caring sister to Zoey and Natali and the family matriarch of her large family, keeping in touch with those in Israel and abroad.

A devoted and creative teacher, she taught English through drama at Beit Berl College. She studied for her Doctorate in Greece and later became an internationally recognized counselor in a Co-Counseling group, and one of its leaders in Israel. She inspired those she worked with to achievements they would never have reached without her.  She was a committed and concerned resident of the town where she lived, rightfully honored as 'Yakir Ramat Hasharon' (Worthy Resident).

Babette also championed the rights of women through the Council of Women, protested social injustices at demonstrations and constantly sought to right wrongs wherever she observed them. She volunteered in ESRA and in the local community with a ready hand to help whoever was in need.  And through all these activities Babette garnered acquaintance with a rainbow of people, somehow managing to keep in contact with them.

She had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, always with a book at hand, always taking notes at lectures and seminars and workshops.

And she was the epitome of everything anyone could want from a friend.  She was a gracious hostess with entrenched traditions of Chanukah tea parties and Saturday morning breakfasts. She always remembered our birthdays. She always distributed small tokens of love before every festival and after every trip abroad.

A measure of a life well lived is the void we leave behind when we die. Babette has left an abyss.  

The writer was a long-time, close friend of the deceased, Babette Kaplan.