In a letter she wrote to her grandchildren in 1999 and read to them before her death, Sylvia Bernstein said, “I hope you will all be people of action. Doing beats not doing every time.”
Bernstein herself, who died of cancer Sept. 9 at age 86, followed her own advice. She was a person of action, most of it within the Milwaukee Jewish community.
A vita that she created and that is on file in the archives at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee listed some of her activities.
She was particularly active in NA’AMAT USA, formerly Pioneer Women, an organization that creates and supports many project to help women, children, and families in Israel.
Bernstein had been president of the Milwaukee Council, a member of the national board, co-chair of its national public relations committee, and the Milwaukee Council’s representative to other organizations in the city.
The current Milwaukee Council president, Eileen Tuchman, had worked with Bernstein for some decades in the organization. In a recent telephone interview, Tuchman said that Bernstein particularly brought her journalism skills to the organization.
“She was always on the board, always gave to us through her talent for words and idea, and thought of necessary wording of articles and headlines,” Tuchman said.
Moreover, said Tuchman, “Whatever [Bernstein] did, from beginning to end it was thorough. There was nothing she ever left hanging.”
Bernstein was also deeply involved in the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. She had served as member of its board and of the Women’s Division board; chaired its Presidents Conference; co-chaired a campaign culminating event.
In 1989, she was the coordinator for an MJF mission to Israel, which this writer covered for The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. The approximately 170 participants gave her a heartfelt standing ovation at the end; and she herself told this reporter that participants had been “thanking her all week.”
She also served on the advisory board of the Milwaukee Jewish Council in the early 1980s; and was a long-time and active chair of the editorial subcommittee of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle committee.
‘Atmosphere of giving’
In an interview with The Chronicle in 2004 (May 27 issue) on the occasion of her receiving of the Jewish Community Foundation’s William and Fannie Kesselman Senior Volunteer Service Award, Bernstein said that she “grew up in an atmosphere of giving.”
She was the youngest of three children born to Sarah and Jake Rakita, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Both her parents were active in the community around Congregation Beth Jehudah and Rabbi Jacob Twerski, the father of current senior rabbi Rabbi Michel Twerski.
By her own admission, Sylvia was “the family rebel” of the three children. Nevertheless, according to her daughter Yael (David) Amir of Jerusalem, she “had values that came from her mother’s devotion and the way her father conducted himself.”
Bernstein was apparently particularly close to her father, according to her letter. “From him came my love of honesty, my sense of pride and honor, my belief in justice and fairness, my love of country, and my appreciation of unconditional love,” she wrote.
Her daughter added that while a liberal is “easier to say than to be,” Bernstein “to her credit, was really a liberal” who had “friends of all religions, colors, and nationalities.”
Some years after attending Washington High School, she took a course in creative writing that helped lead to her journalism career. She served as reporter for The Chronicle (1960-63), the Milwaukee Sentinel (1963-67), and the Milwaukee Journal (1967-69).
She followed that with public relations and freelance work until she retired in the early 1980s. “But I always considered myself a Jewish journalist,” she told The Chronicle in 2004.
She married three times, with the first two marriages ending in divorce. From her first marriages, she had two children, Lauren (Ellen Whitnack) Cagen of Memphis, Tenn., who died in 2007; and Yael Amir. Her third marriage to Sidney Bernstein lasted more than three decades until his death in 2008.
In addition to her daughter and daughter-in-law, she is survived by four grandchildren.
The funeral took place on Sept. 12 at Congregation Beth Israel, with Rabbi Jacob Herber officiating. Burial was in Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery.
The family would appreciate memorial contributions to NA’AMAT USA, the Jewish Home and Care Center, or other charities.
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