Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Tragic Brooklyn Fire Mom Leaves Hospital

The mother of seven children who died in a March fire in their Brooklyn home was released from the hospital.

Gayle Sassoon left the hospital on Friday and will continue to recover at the Brooklyn home of her mother-in-law, her husband, Gabriel, told the Kol Barama radio station on Sunday during an eight-minute interview.

Sassoon will continue to receive rehabilitation treatment on an outpatient basis, including to improve her walking and the use of her hands, Gabriel Sassoon said, calling his wife “very strong” and saying she possesses “a lot of faith.”

“We are able to cry about them [the children] with love and then be happy instead of crying about them and missing them and being depressed,” Gabriel Sassoon said. “So, I and my wife are trying to make our missing them for something better, to remember the love and the joy that we have. Through this, it’s possible to change the situation from something negative to something positive.”

The couple’s surviving daughter, Tzipporah, 15, came home from the hospital in April.

Gabriel Sassoon was out of town at a religious conference when the fire consumed the family’s home in the New York City borough shortly after midnight on March 22, a Saturday. Officials have blamed an unattended hot plate warming Shabbat meals as the cause.

Gayle Sassoon and Tziporah escaped by leaping from the second floor of the house. The seven children, who ranged in age from 5 to 16, were buried in Jerusalem.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.