Little sister Michele Edith was born on April 25, 1945, in Florida. She was named after her great grandmother on her father’s side whose name in Hebrew was “Mikhaelah” and who led the family out of Russia fleeing the pogroms of Tsar Alexander III. Michele lived for a while in Washington, D.C. but grew up mostly in St Louis, Missouri.
She entered the Little Sisters of Jesus at the age of 22 on July 17, 1967 (the anniversary of her baptism a few years earlier), made first profession on February 2, 1970, and final vows September 25, 1975. She was regional of “Alaska-the lower States-and Martinique” from 1975-1981, and then in Rome on the congregation’s General Council from 1981-1987. After that she spent 20 years in Australia (1988-2008) among the Aboriginal People and 5 years in Israel (2008-2013), returning to the US in 2013 because of Alzheimer’s.
The following is an excerpt from what she wrote in December 2013 about her life, conversion, and illness: “My father was from a Jewish family. His parents emigrated from Russia to East St. Louis. My mother, from a small-town West Virginia family, became Jewish on marrying my father…. Being Jewish wasn’t too much a source of identity and pride for us 3 kids (Michele had 2 brothers, Michael and Larry). Nearly all our friends and most beloved teachers were Jewish, and most of the people we didn’t like were too. But it was deeply rooted in me and my brothers as our identity in the face of the world.
Like most teenagers do, I came to a time when I questioned religion. Without exactly thinking there was something religious about it, I was unconditionally attracted to non-violence. It was when I was a college student that the intuition of the presence of God got just too strong to be dismissed. And above all, the figure of Jesus spoke to me, because non-violence had been my most reliable intuition about the best response to life. There he was, the figure of non-violent love brought to its most intense point…. In some ways to be baptized seemed like an act that would ‘cost me everything’ and so it was natural to be on the lookout for something to do with my life that would take following Jesus as its whole meaning. Who was I to be thinking of religious life when I wasn’t even baptized and besides it was utterly foreign to me, but it ‘matched.’
Thinking back, I remember how much ‘Vulnerability’ felt like a key word for my attraction to be a little sister, being poor in the unprotected condition in which poor people are poor. That was what made it simple (if costly) to choose not being married: because it seemed to me that with children you absolutely are required to organize your life with ways that assure their protection. For instance, you could never choose a dangerous neighborhood to live in.
This explanation might be still at work for how I enter my health condition now, having Alzheimer. It was for being poor and vulnerable that I wanted to be a little sister. What it feels like now, is just a new step in ‘giving all back.’
My sickness feels like a path of ‘littleness.’ From that angle, and since in any case it is irreversible, I do my best to just take it as my own version of the path we all had in mind, when we chose being little sisters, as a path of love and trying to simply accept. It is a form of the prayer of abandonment.”
In the community she is also very much remembered as an avid reader, for her translating of many of our community writings from French to English, for papermache puppets she made in Chicago and for Scriptural “bead paintings” she did in Aborigine style while in Yuendumu, Australia. Michele also volunteered to participate in Alzheimer’s research to help others who suffer from the disease.
The last 3 years of her life were hard. She passed away at Catholic Charities’ Jenkins Senior Living Community in Baltimore in their Alzheimer’s Unit. Due to the Covid 19 lockdown, she was alone her last months, except for the staff. Three little sisters were able to visit her briefly during the last hours before she died.
She entered the Little Sisters of Jesus at the age of 22 on July 17, 1967 (the anniversary of her baptism a few years earlier), made first profession on February 2, 1970, and final vows September 25, 1975. She was regional of “Alaska-the lower States-and Martinique” from 1975-1981, and then in Rome on the congregation’s General Council from 1981-1987. After that she spent 20 years in Australia (1988-2008) among the Aboriginal People and 5 years in Israel (2008-2013), returning to the US in 2013 because of Alzheimer’s.
The following is an excerpt from what she wrote in December 2013 about her life, conversion, and illness: “My father was from a Jewish family. His parents emigrated from Russia to East St. Louis. My mother, from a small-town West Virginia family, became Jewish on marrying my father…. Being Jewish wasn’t too much a source of identity and pride for us 3 kids (Michele had 2 brothers, Michael and Larry). Nearly all our friends and most beloved teachers were Jewish, and most of the people we didn’t like were too. But it was deeply rooted in me and my brothers as our identity in the face of the world.
Like most teenagers do, I came to a time when I questioned religion. Without exactly thinking there was something religious about it, I was unconditionally attracted to non-violence. It was when I was a college student that the intuition of the presence of God got just too strong to be dismissed. And above all, the figure of Jesus spoke to me, because non-violence had been my most reliable intuition about the best response to life. There he was, the figure of non-violent love brought to its most intense point…. In some ways to be baptized seemed like an act that would ‘cost me everything’ and so it was natural to be on the lookout for something to do with my life that would take following Jesus as its whole meaning. Who was I to be thinking of religious life when I wasn’t even baptized and besides it was utterly foreign to me, but it ‘matched.’
Thinking back, I remember how much ‘Vulnerability’ felt like a key word for my attraction to be a little sister, being poor in the unprotected condition in which poor people are poor. That was what made it simple (if costly) to choose not being married: because it seemed to me that with children you absolutely are required to organize your life with ways that assure their protection. For instance, you could never choose a dangerous neighborhood to live in.
This explanation might be still at work for how I enter my health condition now, having Alzheimer. It was for being poor and vulnerable that I wanted to be a little sister. What it feels like now, is just a new step in ‘giving all back.’
My sickness feels like a path of ‘littleness.’ From that angle, and since in any case it is irreversible, I do my best to just take it as my own version of the path we all had in mind, when we chose being little sisters, as a path of love and trying to simply accept. It is a form of the prayer of abandonment.”
In the community she is also very much remembered as an avid reader, for her translating of many of our community writings from French to English, for papermache puppets she made in Chicago and for Scriptural “bead paintings” she did in Aborigine style while in Yuendumu, Australia. Michele also volunteered to participate in Alzheimer’s research to help others who suffer from the disease.
The last 3 years of her life were hard. She passed away at Catholic Charities’ Jenkins Senior Living Community in Baltimore in their Alzheimer’s Unit. Due to the Covid 19 lockdown, she was alone her last months, except for the staff. Three little sisters were able to visit her briefly during the last hours before she died.
Little sister Michele Edith was born on April 25, 1945, in Florida. She was named after her great grandmother on her father’s side whose name in Hebrew was “Mikhaelah” and who led the family out of Russia fleeing the pogroms of Tsar Alexander III. Michele lived for a while in Washington, D.C. but grew up mostly in St Louis, Missouri.
She entered the Little Sisters of Jesus at the age of 22 on July 17, 1967 (the anniversary of her baptism a few years earlier), made first profession on February 2, 1970, and final vows September 25, 1975. She was regional of “Alaska-the lower States-and Martinique” from 1975-1981, and then in Rome on the congregation’s General Council from 1981-1987. After that she spent 20 years in Australia (1988-2008) among the Aboriginal People and 5 years in Israel (2008-2013), returning to the US in 2013 because of Alzheimer’s.
The following is an excerpt from what she wrote in December 2013 about her life, conversion, and illness: “My father was from a Jewish family. His parents emigrated from Russia to East St. Louis. My mother, from a small-town West Virginia family, became Jewish on marrying my father…. Being Jewish wasn’t too much a source of identity and pride for us 3 kids (Michele had 2 brothers, Michael and Larry). Nearly all our friends and most beloved teachers were Jewish, and most of the people we didn’t like were too. But it was deeply rooted in me and my brothers as our identity in the face of the world.
Like most teenagers do, I came to a time when I questioned religion. Without exactly thinking there was something religious about it, I was unconditionally attracted to non-violence. It was when I was a college student that the intuition of the presence of God got just too strong to be dismissed. And above all, the figure of Jesus spoke to me, because non-violence had been my most reliable intuition about the best response to life. There he was, the figure of non-violent love brought to its most intense point…. In some ways to be baptized seemed like an act that would ‘cost me everything’ and so it was natural to be on the lookout for something to do with my life that would take following Jesus as its whole meaning. Who was I to be thinking of religious life when I wasn’t even baptized and besides it was utterly foreign to me, but it ‘matched.’
Thinking back, I remember how much ‘Vulnerability’ felt like a key word for my attraction to be a little sister, being poor in the unprotected condition in which poor people are poor. That was what made it simple (if costly) to choose not being married: because it seemed to me that with children you absolutely are required to organize your life with ways that assure their protection. For instance, you could never choose a dangerous neighborhood to live in.
This explanation might be still at work for how I enter my health condition now, having Alzheimer. It was for being poor and vulnerable that I wanted to be a little sister. What it feels like now, is just a new step in ‘giving all back.’
My sickness feels like a path of ‘littleness.’ From that angle, and since in any case it is irreversible, I do my best to just take it as my own version of the path we all had in mind, when we chose being little sisters, as a path of love and trying to simply accept. It is a form of the prayer of abandonment.”
In the community she is also very much remembered as an avid reader, for her translating of many of our community writings from French to English, for papermache puppets she made in Chicago and for Scriptural “bead paintings” she did in Aborigine style while in Yuendumu, Australia. Michele also volunteered to participate in Alzheimer’s research to help others who suffer from the disease.
The last 3 years of her life were hard. She passed away at Catholic Charities’ Jenkins Senior Living Community in Baltimore in their Alzheimer’s Unit. Due to the Covid 19 lockdown, she was alone her last months, except for the staff. Three little sisters were able to visit her briefly during the last hours before she died.
She entered the Little Sisters of Jesus at the age of 22 on July 17, 1967 (the anniversary of her baptism a few years earlier), made first profession on February 2, 1970, and final vows September 25, 1975. She was regional of “Alaska-the lower States-and Martinique” from 1975-1981, and then in Rome on the congregation’s General Council from 1981-1987. After that she spent 20 years in Australia (1988-2008) among the Aboriginal People and 5 years in Israel (2008-2013), returning to the US in 2013 because of Alzheimer’s.
The following is an excerpt from what she wrote in December 2013 about her life, conversion, and illness: “My father was from a Jewish family. His parents emigrated from Russia to East St. Louis. My mother, from a small-town West Virginia family, became Jewish on marrying my father…. Being Jewish wasn’t too much a source of identity and pride for us 3 kids (Michele had 2 brothers, Michael and Larry). Nearly all our friends and most beloved teachers were Jewish, and most of the people we didn’t like were too. But it was deeply rooted in me and my brothers as our identity in the face of the world.
Like most teenagers do, I came to a time when I questioned religion. Without exactly thinking there was something religious about it, I was unconditionally attracted to non-violence. It was when I was a college student that the intuition of the presence of God got just too strong to be dismissed. And above all, the figure of Jesus spoke to me, because non-violence had been my most reliable intuition about the best response to life. There he was, the figure of non-violent love brought to its most intense point…. In some ways to be baptized seemed like an act that would ‘cost me everything’ and so it was natural to be on the lookout for something to do with my life that would take following Jesus as its whole meaning. Who was I to be thinking of religious life when I wasn’t even baptized and besides it was utterly foreign to me, but it ‘matched.’
Thinking back, I remember how much ‘Vulnerability’ felt like a key word for my attraction to be a little sister, being poor in the unprotected condition in which poor people are poor. That was what made it simple (if costly) to choose not being married: because it seemed to me that with children you absolutely are required to organize your life with ways that assure their protection. For instance, you could never choose a dangerous neighborhood to live in.
This explanation might be still at work for how I enter my health condition now, having Alzheimer. It was for being poor and vulnerable that I wanted to be a little sister. What it feels like now, is just a new step in ‘giving all back.’
My sickness feels like a path of ‘littleness.’ From that angle, and since in any case it is irreversible, I do my best to just take it as my own version of the path we all had in mind, when we chose being little sisters, as a path of love and trying to simply accept. It is a form of the prayer of abandonment.”
In the community she is also very much remembered as an avid reader, for her translating of many of our community writings from French to English, for papermache puppets she made in Chicago and for Scriptural “bead paintings” she did in Aborigine style while in Yuendumu, Australia. Michele also volunteered to participate in Alzheimer’s research to help others who suffer from the disease.
The last 3 years of her life were hard. She passed away at Catholic Charities’ Jenkins Senior Living Community in Baltimore in their Alzheimer’s Unit. Due to the Covid 19 lockdown, she was alone her last months, except for the staff. Three little sisters were able to visit her briefly during the last hours before she died.
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