Myra H. Kraft was an extraordinary woman who touched so many lives in Boston, Israel, the Former Soviet Union, and around the world. Her father, Jacob Hiatt, was a giant among giants, a founder of Brandeis, and a well-known philanthropist.  Myra carried on his legacy and became a philanthropist in her own right. As a Brandeis graduate, I initially only knew Myra from afar, and did not realize that one day I would have the privilege of calling this kind woman my friend.

I had the opportunity to get to know Myra on a personal level when I began working as Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Boston in 1990. From the first time we met at a Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) meeting, we instantly connected. We were two passionate women who loved Israel and wanted to change the world — not just for Jews, but for all people in need.

Myra became an early supporter of the advocacy work at the JCRC and an advocate par excellence. She gladly agreed to chair our Ethiopian Committee during the large waves of Ethiopian immigration to Israel. I will never forget how she agreed to host an 11 pm meeting in her suite at the General Assembly in 2000 in Chicago with the heads of the Jewish Federations of North America, Joint Distribution Committee, Jewish Agency for Israel, along with the ministers of education and absorption from Israel and ended up chastising them for not doing more to help fully absorb the new Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society.

I traveled to Israel many times with Myra. She loved Israel with all her heart and with all her soul. On a very large CJP solidarity mission to Israel in the middle of the Second Intifada, she reassured merchants she would bring some business to their empty shops and asked them to stay open late so we could all shop after our evening meeting. When the evening program ran late, she told the chair that she wanted to leave. He said no, but she proceeded to stand up and walk out with all 250 of us following her. The merchants were thrilled, the UJC leadership was not.

A couple of years later, around the time of my birthday, we were on a trip together to Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine. Myra led the students of the day school we visited in singing “Happy Birthday” to me in Russian, English, and Hebrew!  On that trip she asked our local JCRC staff person what he needed to make his choir more professional. When he told me he needed $10,000 dollars for new music equipment, Myra proceeded to write out a check. And, when it was time to help retire the debt of JCRC Boston’s senior center, Beit Baruch, Myra was there with the first $20,000 challenge grant, which ultimately leveraged $100,000 additional dollars — allowing us to pay off the debt in full.

I am grateful to Myra for so many things, but most important of all was the way she treated every staff person no matter their position. She treated them all the same and cared about each one as if they were her own family. She overflowed with constant acts of loving kindness like when she bought a set of teeth for one of the custodians or gave me tickets to a Patriots game for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday.

I will remember Myra as a giving, passionate, courageous fighter for social justice for all and a lover of Israel and the Jewish people. May her memory be for a blessing always and evermore.