Ursula Merkin (née Ursula Sara Breuer) was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1919, the daughter of noted rabbi Isaac Breuer and Jenny Breuer, a founder of Women's Social Service (later Reuth). A German-born Orthodox Jew, she fled Nazi Germany with her family in 1933 at age 14, first to Palestine, where she remained close to her father until his death in Jerusalem in 1946 at age 63. She then immigrated to the United States, securing a teaching position at a Jewish girls' school in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1950, she married Hermann Merkin, a German-Jewish businessman 12 years her senior. Mother of J. Ezra Merkin and the noted novelist and cultural critic Daphne Merkin, who eulogized her as one of the most vivid people she had met, Ursula became a prominent philanthropist in Jewish institutions, serving as chair of Reuth in fulfillment of a promise to her mother after her children were grown. She was also recognized as a novelist and teacher. Ursula Merkin passed away on July 23, 2006.