Rising from shiva for Ally: The math teacher who never counted anyone out
As the traditional seven days of shiva came to an end, our family — our close mishpahah — rise from the low chairs. In the wake of a sudden and incomprehensible tragedy, the natural human instinct is to fixate on the event itself: the horrific car accident, the shock, the sheer, crushing unfairness of a young life – a loving wife and mother of four, daughter, and sister – cut short. But the circumstances of our niece Allison Rahmani’s death do not define her. As the period of most intense mourning transitions into the long road of living with her absence, the focus must shift entirely to who Ally was, the light she brought into the world, and the lessons she left behind.
I knew Ally from the time she was less than a year old, a sweet, radiant little girl at our wedding. Living across the ocean in Israel, our time together was sporadic, but whenever we saw her, her friendly, fun spirit, were unmistakable. When she studied in an Israel-based seminary, we came to know her vibrant energy more intimately. She had plenty of friends and was full of life, yet she was never consumed by conventional academic prestige or self-conscious ambition.
And so it was fitting that Ally found her true vocation in one of the most demanding corners of education: teaching elementary school mathematics and eventually guiding her school’s entire math program.
Math is so often a battleground in early childhood — a subject where anxiety, tears, and self-doubt take root early. Yet in listening this week to the countless stories from her colleagues, parents, and students, a remarkable and consistent portrait emerged. Ally was a math teacher who never counted anyone out. She did not reserve her warmth and praise for the naturally gifted who grasped concepts effortlessly, nor did she treat students who struggled as problems to be managed.
Ally understood her role as meeting every single child precisely where they stood. She sat with them in their frustration and personal challenges, offered infinite patience in their confusion, and celebrated them not merely when they reached the right answer, but for having the courage to keep trying. The grief now felt by so many who loved this math teacher is heartbreaking — but in a poignant way, their tears are the truest testament to the safe, empowering world she built for them inside her classroom.
The morning after her death, I was in synagogue and noticed a man holding a sign that felt uncanny in its timing: “Don’t wait for your child to do something commendable before you hug them.”
That simple charge captures the very core of Ally’s legacy. We live in a world obsessed with ranking, sorting, and applauding only obvious success. We are quick to box people in, to measure others by conventional metrics of achievement. Ally lived as an antidote to that instinct. She taught us that a person’s worth is unconditional, and that true mentorship means seeing potential long before it is proven.
In the face of devastating loss, words inevitably fall short. I have no special wisdom to ease our family’s pain — only boundless sorrow and enduring love. But as her family rises from shivah to face a world without Ally, we carry a profound responsibility to bring her ethos forward.
Cultivating our “inner Ally” means choosing never to write someone off. It means appreciating our students, our children, and every person we encounter for who they are — offering our warmth and belief before it has to be earned. That is the lesson she left in our care, and that is how her memory will continue to teach us.
