NATAL's Chairperson and Co-Founder, Judith Yovel Recanati

In 1998 Mrs. Yovel Recanati co-founded NATAL: Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, and is involved in the center on a daily basis as a chairperson and volunteer.

Mrs. Yovel Recanati is the Founder and Chairman of the Gandyr Foundation,  Family foundation she established with her husband and three daughters  in 2004 for the purpose of strengthening Israeli society. The Gandyr Foundation places special emphasis on supporting civil society organizations that champion social causes and national values of the State of Israel. The Gandyr Foundation supports special projects for young people between the ages of 18-25 and helps youth movements in Israel. Judith serves as a board member of the The Yahel Foundation – the Recanati Family Foundation (since 1963) whose projects include the Recanati Science Museum in Haifa, providing scholarships to demobilized soldiers and new immigrants, establishing two business administration faculties, a medical research fund, a school for public health, cancer research and energy, building a seniors’ home and a synagogue among many others.

She is a registered art Psychotherapist, and received a Master’s degree in the Expressive Therapies from Lesley College at Boston. She also studied Psychotherapy at Bar-Ilan University and is a graduate of the Fay Ratner two-year program in Gestalt Studies at the School for Social Studies at the Tel Aviv University. Prior to that she graduated with a B.A from Tel Aviv University in Archaeology and is also a photographer

Before establishing NATAL, she conducted individual and group treatments through the arts, worked with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients at Beit Levinstein Hospital, the National Institute for the Rehabilitation of Head Injury Patients and the Neurological Rehabilitation Center, Sheba Medical Center

Ms. Yovel Recanati is married and the mother of three daughters. She is grandmother to three grandsons.