Ethel Finn, a longtime Montgomery Village resident who helped build the Jewish community that became Kehilat Shalom in Gaithersburg and later worked for 25 years in social work at Shady Grove Medical Center, died on May 31. She was 85.

Finn and her husband, Cantor Saul Z. Finn, were part of the early group that saw a need for a Conservative congregation in the Gaithersburg and Montgomery Village area. What began as Gaithersburg Hebrew Congregation later became Kehilat Shalom.

Ethel helped in the early days, including with efforts to find an initial meeting space at Watkins Mill Elementary School, said her daughter Rebecca Hoffman. She later served on the religious school board and taught young children in the religious school.

Michael Goldman, whose family was part of the congregation’s early years, said the Finns, both Ethel and Saul, were central to what developed.

“Saul and Ethel were a pretty amazing team,” Goldman said. “For sure, Kehilat Shalom would not have developed without them.”

In the Finn home, Judaism was part of daily life. The family kept kosher, kept Passover and went to services. The girls attended Hebrew school and later Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. Finn raised her three daughters, Jennifer Finn, Rebecca Hoffman and Sarah Blake, to be proud Jews, Hoffman said.

Jewish holidays meant planning, cooking and work. For Passover, Finn kept shopping notes in a notebook, brought holiday dishes up from the basement and referred to dishes she made as “my famous” whatever was on the menu — including “my famous chicken with matzah-nut stuffing for the Seder.”

Finn was born in the Bronx and spent most of her childhood in northern New Jersey. She was an only child. Her parents, Frances and Murray Winters, were not highly observant, Hoffman said, but had a strong Jewish identity.

Books were part of a famous family story. Finn’s father and his brother ran a secondhand bookstore in Greenwich Village.

Winters was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for carrying a true-crime magazine when New York restricted the sale of accounts of real crimes. His case, Winters v. New York, went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, which struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Finn inherited that world of books in quieter ways. She loved to read and served on the Gaithersburg library advisory committee. When Hoffman pictures her mother, she pictures her reading, often books with medical themes.

Finn attended the University of Connecticut. Later, she became an elementary school teacher and taught sixth grade. She stopped teaching when she had children, but she did not stop looking for the work she really wanted.

“She would tell you if she was here that that was not her calling,” Hoffman said of teaching. “What she really wanted to do was get into a helping profession.”

Finn went back to school at Hood College in Frederick and earned a master’s degree in community counseling.

At what was then called Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Hoffman said Finn became the person who stepped in when patients or families needed help. She would try to solve problems, explain choices and calm fears. She stayed late, took calls at home and worked Christmas and Easter.

“She just always wanted to figure out a way of helping,” Hoffman said.

Finn was also the person who kept a home running. She was a neat freak, her daughter said, a woman who could not stand clutter.

She loved blue, turtlenecks and floral patterns. After Saul died in 2003 and she later remodeled the house, she chose blue carpet, blue wallpaper and blue paint.

She was welcoming in concrete ways. When babysitters came over, she put out bowls of M&M’s and potato chips.

Finn met her husband Saul on a Jewish singles weekend.

They became a team in marriage, Jewish life and raising their daughters. They moved to the Washington, D.C., area because of his government job. Saul was also a cantor with a strong voice and deep knowledge of the liturgy. Ethel was not a great singer, Hoffman said, and sometimes played that up for laughs. Her daughters looked forward to birthday calls because she would sing “Happy Birthday” in an exaggerated opera voice.

At home, life around Shabbat and holidays could be regimented. Dinner had to be ready in time for Saul to eat and get to services. Ethel helped make that possible.

She could be strict. When Rebecca once forgot to take her lunch to school, Finn first said that was how she would learn. Then she felt bad and brought the lunch anyway.

That combination — lesson first, rescue close behind — was familiar. Finn helped with homework, heartbreak, shopping and school supplies. After her daughters moved out, they could call at any hour.

She had sayings. “What can I help you with?” was one. Another was, “If you really wanted blank, it wouldn’t be this hard to decide.” Her daughters also remembered that they never heard her curse.

Finn’s health declined in recent years, Hoffman said. Her mobility became limited, and by the end she was no longer able to walk. The family had planned to bring her home for hospice care, but she died at Shady Grove Medical Center before that could happen. The cause was sepsis, after she had been living with colon cancer.

Finn remained, throughout her life, what Hoffman called “an extremely likable person.” Since her death, and even before, people who knew her have told the family the same thing.

“I loved your mother,” they said.

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the greater Washington Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.