A few months ago, Labelle Perlman was reading the newspaper and an obituary caught her eye. The opening phrase used to describe the deceased was “a lifelong Democrat.”
“I want my obituary to read that way,” she told her daughter Alice Perlman of Sebastopol. “She was so mad at the Bushies,” her daughter said.
Perlman, a lifelong Democrat, died March 30 in Walnut Creek. She was 88.
Perlman, known as “Lee,” was born Labelle Grinblat on June 19, 1916, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Her parents were immigrants, her mother from Belarus and her father from Ukraine. They were not religious, but were strong Labor Zionists. Perlman’s father had a farm, but the family moved to Los Angeles when she was a young girl. There, she attended Yiddish school.
She went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. She married Isadore Perlman in 1938.
During World War II, the couple moved first to Chicago, as Perlman’s husband, a scientist, was assigned to work on the Manhattan Project. After a later stint in Oak Ridge, Tenn., they returned to California so he could take a position teaching chemistry at U.C. Berkeley.
They moved to Lafayette in 1950, where Perlman was part of the original group of women who, at a League of Jewish Women meeting, became charter members of Temple Isaiah of Lafayette.
They first formed a Hebrew school, which met on Sundays at Lafayette Town Hall, “an old rickety barn with a hayloft,” Perlman told the Jewish Bulletin in 2002, on the occasion of the congregation’s 50th anniversary. “We were all young couples with children, after the war, looking for a way to affiliate and to give our children a Jewish education. The whole community really worked hard to get that going.”
Perlman was active with the Diablo Valley chapter of Hadassah, Women’s American ORT and Na’amat Women.
She also was the owner and co-founder of the Lafayette Book Store.
When Perlman’s husband was offered the opportunity to open his own lab in Jerusalem, working with scientific applications in archaeology, they moved to Israel.
“They thought it would be a more satisfying life, so they picked up and got there in 1972, just in time for the Yom Kippur War,” said daughter Alice Perlman.
They stayed in Israel 15 years, with Perlman becoming a docent at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. When Isadore Perlman was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, they returned to the Bay Area.
Perlman was a very supportive mother, said daughter Alice. She also never lost her unwavering love for Israel.
A major donor to Hadassah, she had been planning on joining a Hadassah mission to Israel last month, to dedicate its new Center for Emergency Medicine.
She became too ill to go, but insisted that her daughters go without her, so two of them did.
Perlman was predeceased by her husband in 1991. In addition to her daughter Alice, Perlman is survived by daughter Judy of Santa Fe, N.M., daughter Paula of Austin, Texas, and one grandchild.
Donations can be made to Diablo Valley Hadassah, c/o Central Pacific Coast Region, 1400 Coleman Ave., Ste. F-15, Santa Clara, CA 95050; Jewish Community Free Clinic, 708 Gravenstein Highway North, No. 63, Sebastopol, CA 95472; or Women’s American ORT, 2107 Van Ness Ave., Ste. 308, S.F., CA 94109.