Gila Sara Kessler was brought up in Eli, a community village North of Jerusalem, and attended the Pardess elementary school in Ramat Eshkol, Jerusalem, where her acrobatic skills were first noted. She continued her education at the Orde Wingate School for Sport outside Netanya as a residential student, maintaining contact through the years with her close friends, but the distance and the absence of a traditional environment led to her decision to leave gymnastics.

Gila's spirit of adventure and yearning to know the world took her to England and the USA, where she spent a year perfecting her English and supported herself working in the Turkish restaurant "Sahara" (New York), where she also learned to speak Turkish. She returned to Israel to enter National Service with the Jewish Agency Education Department's Contact Center and was in the process of applying to serve for a second year as an emissary in the Swedish Jewish community.

Gila Sara Kessler was murdered when a homicide bomber attacked a large group of waiting passengers at a bus stop under the bridge at French Hill, in northern Jerusalem, yesterday evening, Wednesday 19th June. She was almost 20 years old.

The eldest child in the Kessler family, she leaves behind a brother, two sisters and her parents.