by Cathy Rosenfeld
This tribute to the lives and love of Milt and Marge Greenstein combines two Shofar columns, “Of Blessed Memory” and “Our Love Stories,” into one and is based on their pages in our Memorial Book (by Diane Bernbaum) and on an article that Marge wrote in the June, 2006 Netivot Shalom newsletter called “Milt and Me.”
Milt and Marge Greenstein, beloved and early members of Netivot Shalom, met by chance and shared a lifelong union lasting 71 years.
Milt’s parents escaped from Central Ukraine after two horrific pogroms and settled in the small town of Hampton, Iowa where Milt’s father had a junk business and they were the only Jewish family. Milt was born in 1925. They later moved to the larger town of Waterloo, Iowa to be part of a Jewish community. There Milt’s father got into the egg and chicken business and as a teen, Milt built the egg crates. That interest in building things was enlarged by a family trip in 1933 to the Chicago World’s Fair where Milt saw exhibits on freeways and highway interchanges and decided he would build things for a living. He earned a degree in Civil Engineering from Iowa State University, moved to the Bay Area in 1947, and got a job with EBMUD. He eventually enjoyed a long career as a project estimator for large construction firms.
Marge’s parents immigrated to the US from Hungary and she was born in the small town of Hellertown, PA in 1927. She attended a one-room schoolhouse there for a few years before the family moved to Bethlehem. Her father worked in a handbag factory, her mother in a clothing factory, and the family took in boarders. In 1945, her mother moved to LA and as soon as she graduated from high school, Marge traveled alone by bus across the country to join her. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in bacteriology and came to Berkeley in 1949 to work in the CA Department of Public Health as a microbiologist.
Milt taught folk dancing at Berkeley Hillel where Marge was an avid bridge player. They met there in 1949 when Marge was looking for a fourth for a bridge game and Milt “answered the call.” As Marge wrote in her 2006 newsletter piece, “We drew cards for partners and have been partners for the past 56 years.” Three months after that auspicious bridge game, they got engaged and were married soon afterwards, eventually raising three children in Lafayette and Moraga. Marge stopped working outside the home after their first child was born, devoting her time to raising their children and cultivating her beautiful gardens. She wrote of their children, “Each of our three children took different roads to their present state, and yet all of them seem to have absorbed our values. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Marge’s love for Milt infuses her newsletter article. She praised his skills as a handyman, skills that he generously shared with Netivot Shalom for many years, volunteering as our facility manager when we were on Berkeley Way, building the ner tamid, base for the small ark and shelving in the library, and engineering the height-adjustable table for the Torah in our sanctuary. Milt also made the games that we still use at our Purim carnivals. Marge wrote that Milt’s skills as an “estimating engineer extraordinaire” went well beyond canals, airports, and bridges and that “he can tell me how many clothes will fit into my carry-on suitcase, and which size jar to use for leftover herring dip.”
In explaining how they stayed happily married for so many years, Marge wrote that they were both children of immigrant parents “whose wisdom came not from college but from hard work and common sense.” She offers sage advice on how to build a successful partnership. “Communication, compromise, patience, and respect” are all necessary components, as is “developing friends with whom you can discuss issues that your spouse shows no interest in.” She noted that while she and Milt share many activities and interests including theater, traveling, bridge, gardening, and opera, “We go our separate ways at times.”
Marge ends her article with this beautiful tribute: “I am eternally grateful for the rich life I have, grateful that Milt’s parents escaped from Russia, and glad that ‘of all the fish in the sea,’ Milt chose me.” And we as a community are very glad that Milt and Marge Greenstein chose Netivot Shalom.
For the last years of their lives, they lived in a retirement community in Palo Alto to be near their son. Milt died in 2021 and Marge in 2024. They are survived by 3 children, 3 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren. May their memory be for a blessing and their long and happy marriage be an inspiration.