Memorial Notice for Linda Jum
03/09/2015 03:17:35 PM
Shmira will begin at 4:00 p.m. today at Prout Funeral Home, 370 Bloomfield Ave, Verona, NJ 07044 (973) 239-2060. Please click here to sign up for a slot or two.
The funeral service will be at Bnai Keshet on Wednesday, March 11th, at 11 am
Linda grew up in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway, Queens. She identified as a Jew from the time she was a young child. She graduated from SUNY Stonybrook with a degree in biochemistry. Later she received an MBA from NYU. She had been accepted to Harvard Law School when she was struck by breast cancer, and her law career was derailed. In 1997, immediately after undergoing a stem cell transplant, she traveled to Millen Georgia to participate in what may have been the first Jewish Habitat for Humanity effort to help rebuild a black church burnt by arsonists. On that trip, she met some women from Montclair who urged her to move from Long Island make her home there. She joined Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist synagogue, and then went on to be involved in the national Reconstructionist movement, serving for many years on the board of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. She was most proud of helping found a Jewish Reconstructionist summer camp, Camp JRF, with Rabbi Jeff Eisenstat, and was honored for a youth initiative she established there which is now known as Noar Hadash. She spent her life bringing people together, working in the worlds of Jewish education and diversity. She was founding director of the Jewish Multi-Racial Network, and worked for more than 10 years at the Jewish Education Association, which became the Partnership for Jewish Living.