Mrs Tania Haftel

Tania Bieler Haftel, 83, formerly of Philadelphia PA and Margate NJ, died peacefully at home at Seagate at the Hamlet, Delray Beach FL, Sunday November 12, 2017. The cause was complications from lung cancer, said her daughter Stephanie Haftel. “She was a force of nature,” said her sister Nora Jean Bieler Levin.

A stunning woman with a wide range of talents, penetrating intelligence, incisive humor and an indomitable will, Mrs. Haftel quickly made her mark on the Delray community she embraced. She served as an elected member of the Finance Committee and as Vice President of the Hamlet Country Club Board. As chair of the Club's Entertainment Committee she helped organize group trips, lectures, shows and events.

From knitting to needlepoint, Mrs. Haftel’s hands were always bejeweled and busy. She loved jewelry and wore it well, along with her signature 5-inch heels and St. John's knitwear.

On her 75th birthday her friend Marcia Spear gave her a hand-made vintage- button costume bracelet. Mrs. Haftel was so intrigued that with her friend Marilyn Sonnabend she helped form a squad of Hamlet volunteer companions to gather buttons, string tiny beads, design new bracelet combinations, and sell their product at local events, with proceeds donated to Florida breast cancer organizations. From 2011 to 2016, donations from the Hamlet's “Sisterhood of the Traveling Bracelets” (http://www.buttonbracelets.org totaled nearly six figures.

The first-born child of alien residents in Leipzig Germany -- businessman Hirsch Bieler-Suwalski (born Grajewo, Poland) and concert pianist and Leipzig Conservatory graduate Anna Burstein (born Kishinev, Romania) –- Mrs. Haftel arrived in Leipzig's Jewish Hospital in December 1933, eight months after her father was dismissed from an executive position when his Russian-German oil company was among the first confiscated by the Third Reich. The day he lost his job his wife informed him she was pregnant, setting in motion a three-year effort that led to the young family's exit from Leipzig to Tel Aviv (Mandate Palestine) in October 1936. In July 1938 -- four months before Kristallnacht – she and her mother sailed from France on the Queen Mary to join her father in Philadelphia.

A graduate of Philadelphia’s select Girls High School, Mrs. Haftel attended what is now Drexel University until she married at age 21 and began a career. Unlike many of her generation, she juggled work and motherhood from that point. In 1958 her daughter Stephanie was born. By then she was providing administrative support to the civil rights-oriented Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), later becoming Executive Secretary at Reform Temple Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park PA, where she worked directly for Rabbi Bertram Korn and Executive Director David Mitchell.

In 1964 Mrs. Haftel married her second husband, Bernard Haftel. Shortly after, they both joined Convoy Oil Corporation, a specialty-lubricants firm founded by her father in 1939 after he came to America. They ran the business from 1985 to 1994, when they sold it and moved to The Hamlet.

Mrs. Haftel’s legacies to Philadelphia included a chamber music program for seniors which she created (1988) to bring her widowed mother Anna back to the piano. Initiated As “Sixty Plus or Minus Players” with staff at the Settlement Music School where her mother taught for over 30 years, the program -- now known as the Adult Chamber Players group -- continues today at multiple branches of the School.

The Haftels were world travelers who transited the Panama Canal, circled Cape Horn, and (mostly with friends) visited sites from Seattle to Singapore, Moscow to Malta, India to Vietnam, Tienamen Square to Tierra del Fuego.

Mrs. Haftel was a competition bridge player, foreign-film aficionado, and lover of classical music, opera, theater and jazz. After her husband's death she made regular rounds of NY plays (but only Tony Nominees) and could be found at Metropolitan Opera HDTV broadcasts or local and Havana jazz clubs. For several years she hosted teenaged Israeli Scouts as part of Israel's Traveling Caravan Program, becoming a close friend of the boys and their families. She returned to Leipzig with her daughter in 2011 to sign that City's Golden Book as part of a Schalom Week reconciliation program to welcome back former residents driven out under Hitler.

Mrs. Haftel was predeceased by husbands Bernard Haftel and Melvin Bormack, and an infant son Robert Bormack. She is survived by her daughter Stephanie Haftel of Middle River MD; her sister Nora Jean Bieler Levin of Washington DC (Michael H.); her sister-in-law Marian Newstat and niece by marriage Dolores Katinsky (Boynton Beach FL); her nephews Jeremy Ben Levin (Michelle) and Daniel Hirsch Levin (Washington DC); and great-nephews Michael Caden and James Benjamin O’Hara Levin (Washington DC), plus cousins in Maryland, Tel Aviv, Israel and around the world.

Donations may be made to the Settlement Music School Adult Chamber Players Program, PO Box 63966, Philadelphia PA 19147-3966 (https://www.settlementmusic.org/individual-giving/ ); the Judische Kulturbund Project, Leipzig Program, 4000 Cathedral Ave., NW, No. 505B, Washington DC 20016 (http://www.judischekulturbund.com/support-and-sponsorship ); or a charity of the donor's choice.