Gila Katsav

Gila Katsav was born in 1948 in Tel Aviv

Gila Katsav was born in 1948 at Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv. Her parents, Ben-Zion and Rachel Pardani, came from the Betar movement in Poland and Ukraine and were Ger Hasidim. One of her grandfathers was among the founders of Bnei Brak.

After finishing high school, she was released from IDF service for religious reasons. She met Moshe Katsav in 1967 and married him in 1969. The couple has four sons and a daughter.

She worked at Bank Leumi for about 30 years. She also volunteered with Yad Sarah and the Council for the Sheltered Child, helping children in need and victims of domestic violence.

When her husband became president in 2000, she left the bank and Kiryat Malakhi and moved to the President's Residence in Jerusalem. In May 2005 she took U.S. First Lady Laura Bush to Yad Vashem and the Western Wall. In 2006 she received the Jerusalem Prize of Arutz Sheva.

During the investigation of sexual offense allegations against her husband, she publicly supported him and said he was innocent. He resigned in 2007 as part of a plea deal and was convicted of rape and obstruction of justice in 2010. She accompanied him on his release from Ma'asiyahu Prison in December 2015.