Laura Ben-David

Laura Ben-David (née Ginsberg; February 6, 1969 – July 17, 2025) The family later moved to Monsey, New York, when she was three, and she attended the Yeshiva of Spring Valley and Bruriah High School before graduating from Bat Torah Academy and studying at Touro College. She later lived in Florida, where she worked as a registered nurse at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital. Before her career in photography and media, she also worked as a preschool teacher, youth worker, and makeup artist. By 2021 she was living in Tekoa, in Gush Etzion, before later moving to Jerusalem. She began writing about her immigration experience shortly after arriving, and her essays on Israeli and Jewish life were later published widely; she was a regular blogger for The Times of Israel and, from 2021 to 2023, a recurring opinion contributor to The Forward, writing on topics including terrorist attacks in Israel, Jewish-Arab coexistence initiatives, and an incident in which a bar mitzvah she was hired to photograph at the Kotel was disrupted by Haredi protesters. She was also a recurring panelist on The Quad, a weekly video program produced by JNS, where she and Chochmat Nashim co-founder Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll discussed current events affecting Israel and the Jewish world. Her account of the move initially took the form of emails to friends and family, which circulated increasingly widely and were eventually developed into Moving Up: An Aliyah Journal, published in December 2006 (some later sources give 2007) by Mazo Publishers, with a foreword by Nefesh B'Nefesh executive director Rabbi Yehoshua Fass.

From 2014 onward, she worked independently as a freelance event and fine-art photographer, writer, public speaker, and marketing consultant through her own business, Laura Ben-David/LBD Creative.

Photography and the Jewish Life Photo Bank Ben-David's photography ranged from Israeli landscapes, including the Old City of Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion hills, and the Hula Valley, to event, portrait, and documentary work. The initiative grew out of a 2019 discussion among Orthodox women in marketing and communications, and received coverage in outlets including the Jerusalem Post, Jewish News Syndicate, Religion News Service, and The Jewish Press. These outlets described it as a response to a longstanding practice of removing women from Orthodox media for reasons of religious modesty, citing earlier incidents such as the 2011 photo-editing of Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel out of a Situation Room photograph by a Hasidic newspaper. Ben-David's photographs illustrated much of this coverage, credited throughout as the Photo Bank's principal photographer. As part of the project, Ben-David traveled to photograph Jewish women in London, Paris, New York, and Jerusalem. She documented the stories of agunot, women unable to obtain a religious divorce, including London-based activist Leah Hochhauser, and photographed public demonstrations on their behalf. Keren David, managing editor of The Jewish Chronicle, said the Photo Bank filled what she described as a longstanding gap in Jewish media's visual representation of women. She described herself as an Israel advocate and Zionist, and was active in commentary on Israeli and Jewish current events through her blogging and social media presence. In the months before her death, she spoke about approaching her illness with a determination to keep living fully and with purpose. Her death was reported by The Times of Israel, JNS, The Jewish Chronicle, and other outlets, which described her as a prominent voice within the Anglo-Israeli immigrant community.

Following her death, the Jewish Life Photo Bank was renamed the Laura Ben David Jewish Life Photo Bank in her honor.

Works Moving Up: An Aliyah Journal (Mazo Publishers, 2007),