Naomi Feldheim, a longtime Great Neck resident and advocate for political change, died last week. She was 78.
Feldheim, who taught kindergarten in the Great Neck Public School system for nearly two decades, was active in liberal politics since her first protests against the Vietnam War during the 1970s and participated in the running of the Great Neck library.
Feldheim raised her youngest daughter, Deb Levheim, as a single mother after her divorce from her husband Gerald – a challenge that Levheim said did not damped her dedication to her children or to activism.
“It was not easy, but she always was there to do carpool and pickup and put dinner on the table,” Levheim said. “She loved us enough to want to make the world a better place.”
Jen Feldheim-Gray, Feldheim’s oldest daughter, paid tribute to her mother’s social activism and compassion in a eulogy delivered during memorial services.
“You have inspired me to strive to be the best wife and mother I could be,” wrote Feldheim-Gray. “You have shown me how to fight for what is important, how to love unconditionally, forgive, accept, and keep moving forward. Without your example, my life would never be as rich as it is.
Great Neck Library Trustee Josie Pizer, who knew Feldheim for decades and described her as a close friend, said her involvement with the library was largely due to Feldheim’s insistence. As president of the library’s nominating committee, Feldheim suggested to Pizer that she run for trustee.
“Naomi was one of our home-grown activists. She was an educator. She remembered every student she ever had in her kindergarten class,” Pizer said. “There was never what I consider a really good social justice cause that she did not support, fight for. She was a wonderful human being.”
Feldheim was born in 1935 in Manhattan Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood flanked on three sides by ocean. Her father, an orthodontist, served in the Navy during World War II and her mother worked as a lawyer for the Jewish women’s organization Hadassah.
Her family moved to Baldwin by the time she was a teenager, and she attended a year of college at Brandeis University before marrying Gerald Feldheim. Gerald found work in Washington, D.C., and Feldheim continued her education at George Washington University, earning a bachelor’s degree.
Feldheim’s first daughter, Jen, was born in 1960. Rachel Feldheim, who would later die in an auto accident in Great Neck, was born in 1962, and Deb was born in 1968.
During the 1970s Feldheim worked with anti-war and labor organizations, and protested against the Vietnam War – activities that sometimes involved her children.
“She did the child rearing in our house and she always took me to political meetings,” Levheim said.
Feldheim also active in the arts, serving as a docent at the Nassau County Museum of Art and as a board member of the North Shore Community Arts Council, according to Shirley of Romaine of Reach Out America – a civic society co-chaired by Feldheim until her death.
While Feldheim had not worked professionally while raising her young children, her 1977 divorce from Gerald changed the family’s circumstances. Feldheim worked for several years with the Parent-Child Home Program, a childhood literacy nonprofit, before becoming a Great Neck Public Schools kindergarten teacher in 1984 – a job she would hold until 2005.
Feldheim’s love of children, her daughter Deb Levheim said, was intimately linked to her desire to change the world for the better.
“She really felt like kids were just little people who would be the future of the world,” Levheim said. “Teaching was her profession but it was also her avocation.”
Feldheim continued to be active in politics and the community for decades, working with the Great Neck teacher’s union, participating in a retired educators organization and serving on library committees.
