Obituaries
Ruth Michaels
1924-2017
Ruth was born in Vienna, Austria, on August 22, 1924. Her family was part of the Viennese Jewish community, an educated, cultured, politically active community that produced some of the great Jewish intellectual and political figures of the 19th and early 20th century, and was also a center for the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish state in Israel.
Ruth’s father, Rudolf, was a lawyer who loved education and, without much family support, was able to pursue university and a law degree. Rudolf was raised speaking German, but as an adult he began to study Yiddish. Ruth grew up hearing her parents speaking both German and Yiddish in the home, and she too became fluent in both languages. There were often guests and visitors associated with Zionist politics and the Yiddish Theater who he represented in his law practice staying at Ruth’s home. She went with her father to political rallies, perhaps contributing to her lifelong interest in political causes and political activism.
Ruth’s mother, Rosa was born in Vilna, a city in Poland, speaking Yiddish as her first language. Despite being an only child, Ruth and her mother spent summers in Vilna where her extended family lived in a compound of homes around a single courtyard, and she got to play with her cousins and enjoy the closeness of an extended family who shared each other’s lives and knew each other’s business.
As the Nazis came to power in Germany, life became increasingly hard. Ruth’s father Rudolf saw what was coming and was able to make plans for his family to leave. The Jewish community in America was sponsoring families of Jewish community leaders in Europe and Ruth’s family was sponsored by a professor in Chicago who was part of the Yiddish Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO.) Still, there were great dangers, as the Nazis were already rounding up Jewish men in Ruth’s neighborhood. Ruth tells a story of how on one occasion her family’s safety was secured because the family was under quarantine due to Ruth contracting Scarlet Fever while the Jewish men in the neighborhood were being rounded up by the Nazis. Tragically, Ruth’s entire Vilna extended family perished in the Holocaust. Her experience of the Holocaust stayed with her through her life and impacted her desire to protest and stand up to injustice. In recent years she attended the Holocaust Survivors Group at Jewish Family Services. She and two other Holocaust group members traveled to the Holocaust Museum’s 10th year anniversary as
representatives of the group. Their experience was the subject of a documentary film called “Bashert: Reflections on the Holocaust.” She also sang in a Yiddish choir at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center.
After arriving in the U.S. at age 14, Ruth’s family settled in New York, living in the Washington Heights, where they shared an apartment with Ruth’s uncle and aunt, also refugees. Her teenage friends in New York were a group of other German and Austrian Jewish immigrants who belonged to Habonim, the youth movement of the Labor Zionist Organization. Ruth’s mother had been sick at the time the family immigrated. Soon after arriving in the U.S. she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she died when Ruth was 16.
Ruth entered the New York public high school not speaking any English. She told a story of not realizing until the end of the school year that the teacher was writing the daily homework assignments on the blackboard. Because she knew European history and learned quickly, she was skipped two grades and graduated high school at age 16.
As a teenager, Ruth dreamed of becoming a pioneer settler of Israel. She claimed to have decided to study botany because she thought it was the closest thing to studying farming. Ruth continued her education after City College in New York, getting her Masters Degree at MIT in Boston.
In 1949 the State of Israel was declared and after, Israel won its War of Independence. In 1950, now pregnant, Ruth and Alfred went to Israel, possibly to settle there. They lived on a Kibbutz, an agricultural, collective community with socialist ideals. Her son, Yoram (later Gerald/Jerry), was born in April, 1950.
In 1952 the family came back to New York to an apartment in Kew Gardens in Queens. Ronnie was born in 1953. In 1956, with help from Ruth’s father, Ruth and Alfred bought a home in New City, New York, one of the earliest New York suburbs. Ruth was very close to her father, Rudolf, who visited each weekend, taking a bus from the Washington Heights to be with her and his grandchildren. Through their involvement in Jewish organizations, like the American Jewish Congress, they participated in some of the activities of the civil rights movement. As a family, Al, Ruth, Jerry and Ronnie acted as a test case at a swimming lake to prove that an African American family was being illegally denied entry.
Ruth went back to work and then to continue her education and earn her Ph.D from Columbia University when her younger son was 8 years old. In 1962 Al took a job in Detroit working for Histadrut, the Israeli labor union, and the family followed in 1963. Ruth was hired at a research laboratory at Wayne State University where she made some close international friends. Ruth and Al were very active in the Labor Zionist Movement in Detroit and their children participated in the Zionist youth organization, Habonim.
In 1968, Al and Ruth adopted Sandy, who was born and lived in Korea for her first 11 years before joining the family. Sandy learned English and became a student at the Friends School of Detroit.
Ruth and Al divorced in 1977, and Ruth lived in Ann Arbor for a few years, near the University of Michigan where both her sons attended. Sandy and Ruth also lived together in Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor, Ruth met Craig Wilder, who had been a minister and army chaplain. She also began spending a few months each year in Berkeley, California, and eventually moved there full time in around 1987. She and Craig married in California. As a result of dealing with Craig’s mental health issues, Ruth also became active in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other grass roots mental health organizations.
After Craig’s death in 1989, Ruth remained very active with feminist organizations, progressive political organizations, and Wiccan spiritual organizations. She had a large circle of friends. In 1988 Ruth’s son Jerry and his family moved to the Bay Area and settled just a 15 minute drive away. Ruth played a large
part in all of her grandchildren’s lives, visiting Rafi in Ronnie’s home in Boston and David in Sandy’s home in Las Vegas. Ruth traveled to Guatemala for several years and sponsored a child there who she stayed in touch with as she became a young woman. Ruth came out as a lesbian and had several long term relationships with women, including her last relationship with Julie Craig. She wrote many of her life stories through her participation in the Mother Tongue Feminist Theater Collective. She stood with Women in Black at their weekly protests of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. She lived on Virginia Street near campus in North Berkeley for about 20 years and then for about 10 years she lived at Strawberry Creek Lodge a self-run senior resident community where she was active in committees and wrote articles for the newsletter on health and politics. Ruth created community and chosen family throughout her life, from an Israeli student she took in to her home in Detroit to her housekeeper in Berkeley, both of whom became lifelong friends. She celebrated her major birthdays with her children, grandchildren, and friends. In her last years living independently, she received care and companionship in her home from Karen Flowers, and she spent her last year at the Reutlinger Community in Danville.
Ruth remained the matriarch of her family until her death.
She is survived by her sons Jerry and Ronnie, their wives Carrie and Kathy, her daughter Sandra, her grandchildren Claire, Julia, David, and Rafi, and her great grandchild Daan.
