Judi Hirsch was known for leaving lengthy outgoing messages on her answering machine, lecturing her callers about how to make the world a better place.
“She drove us nuts — she was preaching to the choir, and she had the kind of answering machine where you couldn’t press the pound key to skip it” said Jae Scharlin of Berkeley, one of her best friends, who considered her a non-biological sister.
Hirsch, a long-time peace activist and teacher in the Oakland Unified School District, died on Wednesday, May 25 of lung cancer. She was 62.
Judith Hirsch was born on November 19, 1942 in Long, Island, New York. After graduating Queens College, she obtained a master’s degree at New York University and became a teacher in New York. When the teachers went on strike, she got involved in labor issues.
Hirsch had been a Zionist in her youth, and moved to Israel in 1970, where she lived for 9 years. She quickly learned Hebrew and over time began to educate herself about the Palestinians. For a time she worked collecting articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the foreign press. She also got married for several years, but the marriage did not last.
In 1980, she moved to the Bay Area. She studied with Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist. She obtained her PhD in education from the University of San Francisco.
When she returned to the United States as a dual American-Israeli citizen, she threw herself into peace activism, becoming a regular in the Jewish Left.
She also was a member of the Green Party, and coordinated the Labor Chorus, though she couldn’t carry a tune herself.
“She didn’t miss a Women In Black demonstration,” said Scharlin, who first met Hirsch about 20 years ago through this work. Hirsch was first involved with the International Jewish Peace Union, and the Middle East committee of New Jewish Agenda, which later disbanded. She continued in this work at Kehilla Community Synagogue, where she was very active.
In 1988, she visited Israel, and came across a joint exhibition of posters called “Down with the Occupation” by Israeli and Palestinian artists. She arranged to bring the poster exhibit to the Bay Area, and sold the posters herself.
An artist herself, she told the then-Jewish Bulletin, “It was moving in two ways — who did it and what it was. To my knowledge, it was the first exhibit jointly organized by Palestinian and Israeli artists.”
She was a Judaica artist — her stained glass windows and a giant menorah were on display at her childhood synagogue, the Elmont Jewish Center in Long Island. Hirsch also made ketubot, illustrated Jewish wedding contracts.
While Hirsch had no children of her own, those who knew her said she mentored hundreds of youth, those who the system had all but given up on.
“She saved lost souls,” said Ellie Shapiro, director of the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival, who knew Hirsch for 30 years. “She had a heart as big as her mouth was fast.”
She lived simply — her friends claim she always knew the best thrift and consignment stores — and left her own money to provide scholarships enabling underprivileged Oakland high school students to attend college.
In 2003, she spearheaded a campaign to get the city of Oakland to establish a sister-city relationship with the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzia along with Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the Jewish-Arab village in Israel. The campaign ultimately failed, with Mayor Jerry Brown declaring that the city of Oakland did not need a foreign policy.
In March 2005, the final concert of the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival was anonymously underwritten for Hirsch, by someone who knew her through the Middle East Peace community, as a “dedicated teacher, peace activist, artist and indomitable spirit.”
Hirsch is survived by her partner of 14 years, Oren Simpson of Oakland, whom she married last year; mother Molly Hirsch Rosen of Long Island, N.Y.; brother Ed Hirsch of Berkeley; and a niece, cousin and nephews.
Donations can be made to Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont, CA 94610.
A celebration of Hirsch’s life will occur sometime in June.