Ephraim Margolin

1926 - 2024

Ephraim Margolin
10/16/1926 - 03/10/2024
It is with great sadness that we inform the community of the passing of Ephraim Margolin. Ephraim passed away peacefully at his home on March 10th (30 Adar I 5784). He was 97 years old.
Ephraim grew up in Poland and escaped the escalating antisemitism preceding the Holocaust by moving with his mother to British Mandate Palestine in 1936. His father, a highly-regarded philosopher and writer, was captured and spent 6 years in a Russian Gulag.
Ephraim fought against the British in British Mandate Palestine during the 1940's, including with the youth wing Beitar and as personal secretary to Irgun leader Menachem Begin. He was on Kfar Vitkin Beach when the Altalena landed in June 1948 and Ben Gurion's troops fired on, and killed, several Irgun members, a defining moment in his life as well as the life of the new State of Israel. The lessons from his early years inspired him to devote his life to defending constitutionalism, liberty and justice for all.
Ephraim graduated from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1949 and then Yale Law School in 1952. It was while he was pursuing post-graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, having won Yale's prestigious bicentennial fellowship, that he met opera singer Gilda Lasko. After a romantic courtship, Ephraim proposed on New Year's Eve of 1953. The couple returned to Israel, where he entered a law practice and clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court in 1956.
Ephraim moved to San Francisco in 1957 where he practiced Constitutional and Criminal Law for 63 years, served as an attorney for the State of Israel, chaired the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, and taught seminars at the University of California law schools in Berkeley and San Francisco.
About one-third of his cases he took on a pro bono basis, for no pay, because the clients needed representation and/or because the novel legal issues were fascinating.
He was a founding father of the CACJ (California Attorneys for Criminal Justice), was a President of the NACDL (National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers), and an active member of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) for decades. He presided over the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers and many other national and state organizations. He delivered 52 consecutive Yom Kippur talks at his synagogue, Beth Sholom, a tradition initiated by Rabbi Saul White and embraced by 12 different rabbis over half a century, which is unprecedented in San Francisco Jewish life.
While Ephraim was deeply committed to his work, his clients, and the organizations that he led and/or launched, he was also devoted to his family and took great pride in his children and grandchildren.
Ephraim Margolin's legacy as a fierce defender of civil rights, a brilliant legal mind, and a loving and dedicated family man will live on through his countless contributions to the law, the multitude of lives he touched, and the indelible mark he left on the world.
Ephraim Margolin is survived by his two sons, Alex Margolin and Evan Margolin, their spouses, and his two grandchildren. His beloved wife, of 60 years, Gilda Margolin, predeceased him.
Funeral arrangements and Shiva are being held privately by the Margolin Family.
Please send your memories or anything you would like to share to ephraim_margolin@yahoo.com.
Zichrono l'vracha - may his memory be for a blessing.