Ayala Zacks-Abramov

Ayala Zacks-Abramov was born in 1912 in Jerusalem

Ayala Zacks-Abramov was born Ayala Ben-Tovim in Jerusalem in 1912. Her father, Shmuel Ben-Tovim, was a businessman who owned pharmacies in Jerusalem and Egypt. Her mother was Rashe, née Berman.

She studied in London and Paris. In Paris she met Morris Fleg and married him in 1938. He was killed while serving in the French army, and in 1940 she joined the French Resistance.

In 1947 she married Samuel Zacks, a Canadian economist and art collector. Together they collected 19th and 20th century art by artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, and by Israeli artists such as Reuven Rubin and Joseph Zaritsky. Zacks died in 1970.

She returned to Israel in 1976 and married Zalman Abramov, a lawyer and Knesset member, who died in 1997. She supported the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Israel Museum, and both have halls named after her. In 1992 she donated her Tel Aviv house to the Open University.

In her will she divided her art collection between the two museums. She died in 2011.