By Ellen Braunstein
Shulamith Caine, a poet, teacher, feminist and Jewish activist whose quiet strength and lyricism left a lasting impression on generations of students, readers and family, died June 29. She was 95.
To her children and grandchildren, she was a woman of intellect and intention, one who lived fully, thought deeply and laughed easily.
“She was inspirational,” Sarah Caine Kornfeld said of her mother, who belonged to Lower Merion Synagogue in Bala Cynwyd. “She was brilliant and serious, but also silly. Even two days before she died, she made a hat for her Diet Coke straw out of a New Yorker subscription card that had slipped from her magazine.
That was her mother, Kornfeld said, reading, creating and living a spirited life.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1930, Caine grew up immersed in Jewish learning and Hebrew language. Her father, Pinchos Wechter, was an Arabic linguist who studied for his Ph.D. at Dropsie College. He went on to teach Judaic subjects at Gratz College.
Shulamith attended Philadelphia High School for Girls and Massad, a Zionist Jewish summer camp in the Poconos. She went to the University of Pennsylvania for both undergraduate and graduate studies in physical anthropology at a time when few women pursued higher education, let alone fieldwork in academic disciplines.
“She was a woman before her time,” said Gidon Caine, the youngest of her two sons. “If she had been born maybe a decade later, her path might have been different.”
But instead of letting the world define her, she carved out her own way — with empathy, with words, with action, he added.
Her poetry, published in volumes like “Love Fugue,” reflected that interior world — intimate, sensual, layered with memory and history. The acclaimed poet Eleanor Wilner once wrote of Caine’s work: “To a silken and sensual language of desire, she brings a wise restraint, a knowing eye and an uncorrupted heart.”
Her son, Uri Caine, an internationally known pianist and composer, often collaborated with his mother, setting her poems to music and taking her on tour with his ensemble across Europe. “She really was the world’s oldest roadie,” Gidon Caine joked. “She could hang with much younger performers and they loved her.”
Even as her poetry gained recognition, Caine remained deeply committed to Jewish life and causes. Fluent in Hebrew, she instilled the language in her children from a young age. “We all speak Hebrew because of her,” said Gidon Caine. “My dad had to learn it as an adult, but my mom made sure we knew it as children.”
The family lived in Bala Cynwyd near their Orthodox synagogue and the Jewish schools the children attended: the Solomon Schechter Day School (now the Perelman Jewish Day School) and Akiba Hebrew Academy for high school.
Caine was active in the Soviet Jewry movement, making a trip to the USSR with her husband Burton Caine, an ACLU legal activist and Temple University law professor who died in 2023. They delivered books, jeans, money and moral support to refuseniks, Jewish Russians forbidden to emigrate to Israel.
“She wasn’t just writing letters or donating,” said Uri Caine. “She was there, on the ground, helping get people like Natan Sharansky out.”
Shulamith and Burton’s shared sense of justice and Jewish identity informed all aspects of their life together.
“She was very culturally and spiritually Jewish,” Kornfeld said. “She was traditional, but always with a purpose, raising educated children, teaching Hebrew, celebrating life.”
That purposeful spirit extended to her work as an educator. After teaching in Philadelphia and Lower Merion public schools, Caine joined the faculty at Drexel University, where she taught English literature and writing. She often wove feminist literature into her curriculum like Abigail Adams’ letters to her husband John Adams. “She was someone who broadened people’s experience,” Gidon Caine said, “never in a confrontational way, but always in a supportive and thoughtful way.”
She taught students whose families had never been to college before. She treated them like scholars, engaging them in real conversations about literature and life, he said.
A proud feminist long before the label was mainstream, Caine gathered regularly with her women’s group in Philadelphia to talk books, politics and life.
“My mother wanted to maintain a certain level of intellectual interchange with friends,” Kornfeld said. “She taught me that as well. You don’t want to just sit on the phone with idle chatter. Talk about ideas.”
Her mother was socially perceptive, Kornfeld said. “She knew how to read the room. She could be the supportive wife to her prominent husband one minute, and the confident poet on center stage the next.”
She had a flair for the unexpected. “She went to Woodstock at age 39,” said Gidon Caine. “Dropped us kids at Savta’s and went off in her ’60s Marimekko dress.” That sense of curiosity and adventure never left her.
Her family remembers her not only for her intellect and activism but also for the warmth and laughter that infused their home. She was known to lead Friday night songs around the table and at Passover Seders she somehow always ended up reading the part of the wicked son. “It became a running joke,” Kornfeld said. “But it fit. She had a mischievous glint in her eye — always did.”
As her health declined in recent years, Caine remained intellectually sharp. She read The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer cover to cover every day and kept up with both American and Israeli politics.
She never stopped learning and she never stopped caring, Kornfeld said. “She loved life and, with eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, there was so much for her to live for.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
Shula it was such a worm, kind, smiling and accepting personality. I’ll always have a very warm place for her memory in my heart.