Karen Elizabeth Margalit, 29, U.S., Israel, Sept. 26, 2007

Karen Elizabeth Margalit, 29, a California-born olah to Israel in 1996 who died September 26, 2007, from an apparent drug overdose and was unidentified for two months, has been identified and reburied under her name.

Margalit became addicted to tranquilizers and painkillers after suffering a slipped disc. She was treated at drug rehabilitation and psychiatric centers. She lived on the streets of Tel Aviv. When she died in September in a Tel Aviv parking lot, police were unable to identify her, and she was buried anonymously at Kibbutz Revadim on Nov. 12. No one attended her funeral.

After her first burial, when her identify was confirmed, Avner Cabel, coordinator of the Levinsky Project, began arranging a new burial. The project, part of the Israeli government’s Anti-Drug Authority, works with addicts and the homeless.

“I couldn’t accept Margalit’s burial as an unknown,” he told Haaretz. “I and people from other organizations knew her, and we knew that she was a person like any person, with an identity and a name.”

A woman who heard of Margalit’s story through media reports paid for a headstone. She was reburied in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Cemetery on Sunday, Dec. 9. About 15 employees of drug rehabilitation and health attended.

An effort is still under way to find out more about Margalit. The Anglo-Israeli website Janglo has posted a plea for more information.

And yesterday, she was finally reburied in her new resting place.