On Friday nights during World War II, you never quite knew how many people would end up sleeping at the Levinson home.
Norma Burdett later described how young Jewish men and women — new to Washington, D.C., for military service or government jobs — would “fall in” late, needing a Shabbat meal, kosher food and a place to stay. Her mother asked guests to leave their shoes by the door. It wasn’t just to keep the house clean. It was also the family’s way of knowing how many people had stayed the night and would be coming to breakfast, her daughter, Stacy Burdett, said.
That scene — a home open to strangers and Jewish life organized around hospitality — became a pattern in Burdett’s own life. Burdett, an Orthodox, Washington-area community volunteer who helped build and sustain institutions in Jewish Washington for decades, died on Dec. 20 at 95.
Friends and community members described her as outgoing, compassionate and reliable, someone who showed up again and again, often behind the scenes.
“She gave her all,” said Belle Davis, who served with her on the scholarship committee at the Hebrew Academy, now Berman Hebrew Academy. “She knew so many people in the community, and the rest of the committee may not have known what they were going through, but Norma knew everything.”
Burdett was raised in a household shaped by Jewish learning, public responsibility and communal service. Her parents, Rabbi Moshe H. Levinson and Tikvah Levinson, immigrated from Palestine in 1924 and moved to Alexandria in 1929. Her father served congregations in Alexandria and later in Washington, and was among the leaders who helped establish what became Berman Hebrew Academy after World War II.
In those years, Stacy Burdett said, the Washington Jewish community was small and cooperative, with leaders working across denominations before divisions became more pronounced.
The Levinson home was part of that early network. Judy Marwick said her parents, Abe and Helen Spector, met there around 1940, when young people arrived in Washington for wartime work.
“My parents were not the only couple who met there,” Marwick said. “They made life and Shabbat very, very pleasant for a lot of people.”
Burdett carried that history with her and reminded others not to forget it. Rabbi Uri Topolosky, rabbi of Kehilat Pardes – The Rock Creek Synagogue, which meets at Berman Hebrew Academy, said she was quick to correct him when he once failed to use the full name of the school’s upper division, named for her father.
“She was always reminding us not to take for granted where this community came from,” he said.
Burdett, who had three children, worked as a bookkeeper and executive assistant. She also did professional and lay catering. Her daughter, Stacy Burdett, said she viewed food as central to Jewish life and community-building, both practically and symbolically, and she understood how meals, celebrations and shared space helped bind people to one another and to institutions that were still taking shape.
“Food is the spine of Jewish life,” Stacy Burdett said.
After moving to Silver Spring, Burdett was among the founders of the Silver Spring Jewish Center and Summit Hill Synagogue, later known as Woodside Synagogue Ahavas Torah. Rabbi Avrom Landesman, a founding member and the first president of Summit Hill Synagogue, said Burdett was deeply involved in Jewish communal life and known for taking on demanding, often unseen roles.
“One of the things I remember most is that she took care of the mikvah at Silver Spring Jewish Center,” he said. “You have to make women comfortable. She was good at that.”
Stacy Burdett said her mother viewed the mikvah as one of the most spiritual experiences of her life and believed it should be approached with dignity, sensitivity and respect for privacy.
“She would want to invite more women into an experience she thought was beautiful,” Stacy Burdett said. She saw the role as essential, even if it brought little public recognition.
“These were not 9-to-5 roles for her,” her daughter added. “Volunteerism and community building permeated her life.”
Belle Davis also pointed to Burdett’s decades of fundraising and quiet organizing for families in need.
“She was devoted to the causes she believed in,” Davis said.
As a young woman, Burdett enjoyed the social life of Jewish Washington, attending dances at the Jewish Community Center and forming friendships across denominational lines, her daughter said.
“She was audacious,” Stacy Burdett said. “Very outgoing.”
Later in life, Burdett spoke openly about an abusive first marriage and the stigma divorced women could face in a religious community. Married three times, she used her experience to encourage other women not to withdraw.
“She would say, ‘Come to shul holding your head up high,’” her daughter recalled.
Rabbi Topolosky, who grew up next door to Burdett, said neighborhood children knew her as “Bubbe Norma.” He remembered her open door and her ability to make people feel like family.
“She expanded her reach of family far beyond her relatives,” he said.
At her funeral, held during Chanukah, rabbis noted the tradition of limiting eulogies during festivals, Topolosky said, before finding ways to speak anyway.
“How could we not celebrate the life of somebody who touched all of us?” he said.
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
