Madelyn Lefkowitz

1929 - 2022

Madelyn Lefkowitz of Charlottesville, Va., passed away at the age of 92, on Friday, June 24, 2022. Family and friends remember her as sincerely interested in other people’s lives, and always eager to be helpful. As she liked to say, “There’s always something to organize!� Whether setting up a weekly movie night for her senior living facility, starting an employee newsletter, or providing support to a family member in a tough situation, she was committed to Tikkun Olam, leaving her world a better place.

Born in Saint Louis, Mo., on July 31, 1929, Madelyn was the second of three daughters to parents, Abe and Mollie Moinester. She grew up within an extended family of first-generation immigrants from Belarus on her mother’s side, and Moinesti, Romania (via Palestine) on her father’s side. When she was nine, her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended Cleveland Heights High School. She received her B.S. from The Ohio State University in chemistry, a field much in demand during the post-World War II years. She worked for a year on muscular dystrophy research at Cleveland’s University Hospital, and then fulfilled her dream of traveling to Europe. Before returning to the U.S., she worked for a year on trachoma research at Government Hospital in Haifa, Israel. In 1955, she married Irving Lefkowitz (deceased 2015), professor at the Case Institute of Technology, later Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

Madelyn was an avid photographer, she had a keen eye for design and an instinctive sense of the right moment to click the shutter when photographing human subjects. Some of the black-and-white photographs she printed in her basement darkroom were exhibited in juried community art shows; others were published along with human-interest stories she wrote freelance for the Cleveland Jewish News, Sun Press, and Cleveland Plain Dealer. She also developed an idea for explaining Jewish holiday celebrations to children. She photographed and directed family members in her home and wrote the script for “High Holy Days for Kindergarten and Primary Grades� (1970), a filmstrip produced and distributed by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in New York, N.Y.

She returned to full-time employment as Public Information Coordinator at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ohio. She then moved to the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (now BP) Research Center where she became manager of publications. She later served as Editor of Case Alumnus, the magazine of the Case Alumni Association at the Case School of Engineering.

Combining her visual, writing, and editing skills, Madelyn became an early proponent of desktop publishing. She established a home-based business that catered to the needs of small businesses and helped individuals accomplish worthy projects. One such project was the publication of Alan S. Green’s (Founding Rabbi of Cleveland’s Temple Emanu El) collection of essays, If God Were King: Judaism speaks to social issues and our quest for faith (1988).

Madelyn Lefkowitz is survived by her sisters, Beverly Sherman of Gainesville, Fla., and Aliyah Strauss of Bat Yam, Israel; her daughter, Deborah Lefkowitz and son-in-law, Georg Michels, of Riverside, Calif.; her son, Daniel Lefkowitz and daughter-in-law, Jocelyn Marie Johnston, and grandchildren, Aaron and Andrea Lefkowitz, of Charlottesville, Va. She also leaves behind seven nieces and nephews and their families in the U.S. and Israel.

A burial service will be held at 12 p.m. EST on Wednesday, July 6, 2022, at Hebrew Cemetery, 736 1st Street SE, Charlottesville, VA 22902.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Congregation Beth Israel (CBI) in Charlottesville, Va., (https://www.cbicville.org/donate) or CBI’s Tsedakah Fund that supports local causes and direct human service delivery (https://www.cbicville.org/payment.php?donation_type_id=5848453).