Gail Liebmann died on August 4. She was born in Manhattan in 1923 to Sarah (Weinstein) and Raphael Liebman, joining four siblings, all of whom were unprepared for but thrilled with her arrival. Her birth name was Abigail, which she shortened to Gail well before entering Seward Park High School, from which she graduated early and with high honors. As a teenager in Brooklyn, she became an active member of the Labor Zionist Youth Movement’s Hashomer Hatzair, cultivating friendships which were to last a lifetime, and would work as a volunteer on a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz in Israel many years later. When she was sixteen, she was introduced by a mutual friend to her future husband, Abe Liebmann, because, though spelled differently, they shared a last name. Their marriage would last until his death over sixty years later.
Mrs. Liebmann attended Hebrew Union College, from which she received her Hebrew Teacher’s license after completing classes at night while raising three children in West Orange, New Jersey, her home since 1952. She was a Hebrew teacher to thousands of children at The Jewish Center of West Orange B’nai Shalom, where she taught for over forty-two years (a school record). In the mid-1980’s, The Gail Liebmann Fund was established at B’nai Shalom by her family in her honor to recognize a Hebrew School student of distinction chosen by the school’s principal each year.
In 1989, Mrs. Liebmann earned the title “Master Teacher,” qualifying her to mentor colleagues in New Jersey’s Metro-west area. Upon her retirement in 1996, she was formally commended for her decades of service to the Jewish community at B’nai Shalom, with the Mayor of West Orange, Samuel Spina, proclaiming May 1, 1996 “Gail Liebmann Day,” and Rabbi Stanley Asekoff (now Rabbi Emeritas) stating that “what Gail has been able to do is convey to generations of youngsters the knowledge, excitement, and joy of the Jewish experience.”
Gail Liebmann was also on the faculty of Hebrew Union College, The Jewish Education Association’s Midrasha Institute of Jewish Studies, and B’nai Shalom’s Adult Education Program. For many years, she served as President of the Hebrew Teachers’ Association of Essex County.
Gail Liebmann was a past-president of B’nai Brith Women (now Jewish Women International), and was a life member of Hadassah. Her children, Robin Liebmann Wallack (Alan), Rory Liebmann (Kay), and Dr. Dana Liebmann, recognize their mother’s profound influence on their immediate and extended family, with all her children, her five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren continuing a legacy which values the importance of education, compassion for animals, singing, good literature, and, of course, the Jewish traditions passed on to her from her own parents so long ago.
Funeral services will be held, Tuesday August 7 at The Jewish Center, 435 Nassau Street, Princeton, with burial at Mount Lebanon Cemetery, Iselin, NJ.
The family respectfully requests memorial contributions to The Matthew J. Ryan Hospital for Small Animals at The University of Pennsylvania.
Arrangements by Orland’s Ewing Memorial Chapel,1534 Pennington Road, Ewing.
