Sally Rifkin to be Among Honorees at Convention of Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations

April 26, 2022 Linda L. Esterson

Sally Rifkin taught students at Oheb Shalom and Baltimore Hebrew Religious Schools as well as several pre-schools. She opened the Aleph Bet Child Development Center in Owings Mills in 1990. (Photo by Steve Ruark)

At a grocery store, Sally Rifkin was stopped recently by a man in his 30s, with children in tow.

“Hi Miss Sally, do you remember me?”

A gracious smile suddenly sprung to Rifkin’s face, as it did each day of her 50 years working in education in the Baltimore area. Former students remember her calm, loving nature, beaming countenance and endless positivity.

She’s taught more than 1,200 local children, from the inner city to area synagogues and Baltimore County public schools, to her self-run Aleph Bet Child Development Center.

“It was a common occurrence that somebody, while at the checkout line, would tug at her and say, ‘Do you remember me?’ or ‘You really made an impression on me,’” says her son, Alan. “It was a regular event.”

For her decades of service to the community, Sally Rifkin will be among 23 women honored May 12 by the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations of Maryland at its 106th annual meeting.

The mother of Jmore Publisher Scott Rifkin, M.D., Sally Rifkin, 90, is a founding member and the honoree for the Kappa Guild Inc. The guild is a nonprofit committed to helping children, particularly those who are critically ill and with special needs. She served as the guild’s first president upon its founding in the early 1950s.

When her middle son was hospitalized for a month, Rifkin says she realized “there was nothing for children. No TVs, no toys.” That’s when she joined forces with nine Kappa Sigma Tau high school sorority sisters to raise funds for equipment and supplies for such beneficiaries as the University of Maryland Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Sinai Hospital’s Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital, Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital and Mercy Medical Center.

“If it weren’t for her and some other ladies, we wouldn’t be Kappa Guild,” says current president Sheila Mentz. “Sally’s forward thinking and ideas from the start of our organization have helped children for almost 70 years.”

Rochelle Bohrer, honoree awards chair for the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations, calls Rifkin “amazing. For a lady of her age, she is just so sharp, so concerned, so involved.”

A child of the Depression, Rifkin grew up on Ruxton Avenue in West Baltimore, the second eldest of four girls. She recalls seeing poverty-stricken elderly neighbors close their doors and starve to death. Meanwhile, other neighbors were unable to feed their children.

Rifkin and her sisters played at Easterwood Park with balls made from rubber bands collected from their father’s newspaper delivery job. They used their mother’s clothesline to jump rope.

On her fifth birthday, Rifkin accompanied her older sister Naomi to the library. She passed the reading test and secured her own library card.

“Oh, look,” Rifkin recalls saying, “all the books there are in the world! If I read these, I’ll know everything!” It began a lifelong passion for learning.

Rifkin was among 15 grandchildren who regularly visited their grandparents on weekends. While most of the cousins played outside, Rifkin listened to the adult conversations from under the table. That’s when she first heard the term “helping hand.”

Each week, her mother tucked a quarter into a relative’s apron pocket to cover a meal for the family.

“That’s when I realized a helping hand meant helping in some small way,” she says. “Her attitude was, ‘You can’t help everybody. But you can surely give somebody who needs it a helping hand.’”

That was the genesis of a life devoted to giving.

Highest Calling

On an August evening in 1945, Rifkin, then 14, met 17-year-old Arnold Rifkin through a family connection and attended his fraternity’s moonlight cruise. They married in September of 1949 at Chizuk Amuno Congregation.

The Rifkins raised three sons, Alan, Scott and David, and today have 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“It’s an amazing gift she has given to each and every one of us,” Alan Rifkin says. “That generosity of spirit is the highest calling.”

As a member of Hadassah in the 1960s, Sally Rifkin was among 60 volunteers who worked closely with inner city children through a Baltimore City Adult Education Department program. Later, Rifkin secured a teaching assistant position. She worked in the mornings and took classes at the Lida Lee Tall School in Towson in the afternoons. She also took students and their young mothers on trips outside of their community, helping them to secure free hearing tests and teaching them how to budget money.

Following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rifkin joined the Winands Road Synagogue preschool and Temple Oheb Shalom religious school programs. Over the next few decades, she taught students at Baltimore Hebrew, Bolton Street and Beth Tfiloh congregations before opening Aleph Bet in Owings Mills in 1990, providing a Jewish atmosphere with full-day availability.

Rifkin implemented the philosophy she learned during her city training to adapt to the needs of each individual child.

“The most important thing was the child,” she says. “The environment could be changed to suit what the child needed.”

A Born Storyteller

While confined to her Stevenson home during the pandemic, Rifkin decided to write a memoir. “From Generation to Generation: L’Dor V’Dor” chronicles her family’s exodus from Russia through the present-day. She ordered just 36 copies, for her family.

Rifkin loves telling stories in her own inimitable style. For instance, on Passover, she spends 15 minutes telling the story of Moses and Pharaoh and the Exodus from Egypt. The children in her family sit in a circle and absorb every word.

“It is anything but routine,” Alan Rifkin says. “It’s listening to oral history in a way that’s compelling, in a way only she can do.”

Reading remains Sally Rifkin’s first love. When she recently had a medical issue requiring ambulance transportation, she stalled before heading to the hospital.

“She didn’t want to go to the ER without her books in case she had to stay,” Alan Rifkin says. “So she made them wait.”

Naturally, she apologized to the paramedics for the delay.

“She’s as gracious and decent as anyone could ever be,” Alan Rifkin says. “She was about the best role model anyone could have. She has a genuine generosity of spirit. It’s true to her core.”

Arnold and Sally Rifkin married at Chizuk Amuno in September of 1949. (Provided photo)

The following are the honorees at the 106th annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations of Maryland on May 12:

E.B. Hirsh Lifetime Achievement Award

Annette Saxon

A Woman Who Embraces Change Honorees

Adat Chaim Sisterhood — Cindy Perlow

Associated Women — Karen Singer

Beth El Congregation Sisterhood –- Dale Kahn

Beth Israel Congregation Sisterhood — Nancy Rogers

Beth Tfiloh Congregation Sisterhood — Judy Werner

Brandeis National Committee, Baltimore Chapter — Diane Burkom

CHANA — Robin Belsky

Chizuk Amuno Congregation Sisterhood – Susan Crystal

Covenant Guild, Inc. – Lois Balser

Hadassah of Greater Baltimore – Rachel Raphael

Israel Bonds Maryland Women’s Division — Carol Renbaum

Jewish Caring Network — Leni Hirschberg

Jewish Women International — Rosalind Asch

Kappa Guild Inc. — Sally Rifkin

Levindale Auxiliary – Julia Narrow

Miriam Lodge, K.S.B. Inc. – Charlotte Rutkovitz

Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Sisterhood — Hinda Sokolow

Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue Sisterhood – Rebbetzin Hindy Motzen

Rodger C. Snyder Memorial, Ladies Auxiliary — Michelle Nusinov

Support for Families of Nursing Home Residents — Sandra Block

Temple Isaiah Sisterhood — Sue Tafler

Women’s Club of Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom — Abby Hoffman

Women of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation — Barbara Sindler

For information about the annual meeting of the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations, visit jewishwomensfed.org