Bella Alexander

Bella Alexander- an intellectual who loved learning, loved kids and loved convening a salon of thinkers and young friends drawn to her to debate the great issues of our time – died March 18th at the age of 96.

Bella fought for life – leaving her family to say, with a chuckle that she would have loved, that as she held onto each moment in the last weeks of her life, the angel of death must have been nursing a black eye before being able to collect her.

That ferocity mixed with humor was typical of Bella. She was intensely political and independent - a feminist who loved joining her children, friends, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and fellow students on marches in Washington to fight for freedoms. Once a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, she read voraciously, always on top of as many sources of information and perspectives as she could gather. But she always landed eventually on a point of view all her own and loved to debate it nuance for nuance with all comers – before eventually declaring “No, it’s just NOT that way.” Her independence was core to her identity: after her divorce from husband, Reese Palley, she decided not to return to her maiden name, Bella Rubenstein, but instead to select her own name, Bella Alexander and adopt it legally.

Her love of beauty was true to her name. Bella would arrange a perfect – often Japanese – arrangement of flowers every Shabbat. She collected vases of the critical shapes and colors to complement each of her favorite blooms – which ranged from fragrant freesia and lilac to almost every other kind of flower – except tulips, which became a great family joke when it became clear that she thanked folks for tulips each birthday – belatedly disclosing that she absolutely abhorred them but didn’t want to make anyone sad.

That love of beauty extended too to her love of cooking for people. Her table with its white lace tablecloth was always filled with dish after dish, crafted in the manner of her mother or sister or cousin, lightened with lemon and sweetened to make everyone feel the love. And more comfortable with the younger generation than her own, she always filled that table with visitors and friends of friends’ friends.

Bella wanted to introduce her children to the pleasures of great music too, taking them from their home in Margate on the south Jersey shore to NYC to go to the Algonquin Hotel where she introduced them to elegant deserts…taking them to hear nearly every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta…and attending one of Arthur Rubinstein’s last concerts where he played Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto - experiences that they recall vividly to this day.

She loved to delight the children and grandchildren with all manner of freedoms from limits – “Of course you can mix these little restaurant containers of cream from my coffee with two sugar packets and drink them while we wait for the waitress to bring dinner” (now her great-grandkids call these confections ‘Bellas’). “Sure, you can finger paint all over my floor and walls! And you don’t have to clean it up!” “Yes, you want the green Lifesaver, way down in the roll? Sure just unroll them and take the one you want.” And “Of course I can put MORE honey into your sopapilla, honey” We just spilled red wine all over the best tablecloth? “Good Shabbos. Don’t worry about that…pass the Waldorf salad.”

She brought everything together – the love of beauty, children, politics and more – when – long before anatomically correct dolls were a ‘thing’ –she lovingly designed and hand-sewed whole families of them for her grandchildren, delighting in the difficulty of making their tiny private parts come out just right.

Bella loved exploration and adventure while protesting that she did not. She worked building radios during WWII. She returned to her native Absecon Island and she raised her children in Margate, then moved to Philadelphia to get a degree in religion at Temple University. Bella made Aliyah moving to Israel i Natanya, and later returned and went briefly to Brazil before settling for a time in Magnolia, Mass. on a craggy point over the ocean. She moved to Cambridge, Mass next, enjoying the educational delights of that area before moving to Albuquerque and discovering that green chili went well in more of her dishes than she’d ever imagined it would.

Pre-deceased by sisters, Clara Rubinstein Kron and Bernice Rubinstein Gordon, she is survived by children, Diane and Toby Palley of Albuquerque, Stephanie Daniels of Jersey City, and Gilbert Palley of Fort Defiance, Az; grandchildren, Gabriel Palley, Alexis Palley Langsfeld, and Josh Palley; and eight great-grandchildren, Joseph, Penelope and Sebastian, Olivia, Elliot, Etta, Lucy, and Sam.

The funeral will be Thursday March 22, 2018, 2:00 p.m. at FRENCH - University followed by burial at Fairview Memorial Park. Shiva at home of Lynn McKeever and Deborah Brin, Thursday March 22, 2018 6:00 pm. The family suggests donations in lieu of flowers be sent to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.