Goldie Steinberg, Oldest Jewish Person, Dies at 114

By JTA August 18, 2015

Goldie Steinberg, reportedly the world’s oldest known Jewish person, died at age 114.

Steinberg, according to Chabad.org, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s news site, died Sunday at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Long Beach, New York. She was two months away from her 115th birthday.

Steinberg was born in 1900, one of eight siblings. As a child, she survived the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, in what is now Moldova, in which 49 Jews died and 500 were injured over two days.

In 1923, she moved to the United States. Steinberg lived in New York City, where she married and had two children. She worked as a seamstress until retiring at age 80, and lived independently until age 104.

“My grandmother’s life — surviving the pogroms, losing siblings in the Holocaust — it was a history lesson,” said Peter Kutner, Steinberg’s grandson, according to Chabad.org. “She was a very selfless person; she always thought of others.”

Steinberg is survived by her two children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

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