Shatzi Weisberger

Joyce "Shatzi" Weisberger (; June 17, 1930 – December 1, 2022) was an American death educator, activist, and nurse based in New York City. She did not have a close relationship with her parents and was once kidnapped by her father after her mother came out as a lesbian. She grew up in a small apartment with her mother and her partner, unaware of their romantic relationship of more than 40 years. She spent time in the foster care system due to her father's homophobia. She attended summer camp as a child.

Weisberger's great-grandfather was Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor.

Career

Weisberger worked as a nurse for 47 years, specialising in both obstetrics and end-of-life care. Her nursing career coincided with the peak of HIV/AIDS-related deaths in New York City during the 1980s, a period during which she provided home care for individuals dying from the disease.

Activism Weisberger was a political lesbian,

Weisberger's activism began with direct action against racist redlining on Long Island during the Civil Rights era. One of Weisberger's earliest acts of activism took place at a queer die-in in New York City during the AIDS crisis, and was associated with anti-Zionism. On that day, she participated in a Black Lives Matter protest, in which she was dubbed "the people's bubbie" (a Yiddish term for a grandmother).

As she became associated with the anti-Zionist movement, Weisberger worked with the Palestinian Defense Committee, founded by Rabab Abdulhadi, staffing their literature table at various events. She also led Palestine-related workshops at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. She worked to build the political consciousness of other Jewish lesbians, arguing in a 1986 issue of WomaNews that "Jewish women in particular need to educate ourselves about the history of Zionism." Wearing a colorful floral blouse for the occasion, she said that she wanted to experience her death and "to share the experience with anybody who’s interested".

Weisberger experienced symptoms of a heart attack in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown in New York. Rather than going to a hospital, she stayed home and recovered there.

In April 2022, Weisberger told the LGBTQ&A podcast that she hoped to have time to experience the dying process in her own home; items in her house were tagged with the name of the person to whom she wanted to bequeath them. She expressed a desire for people to say their goodbyes and pick up their bequeathed items before she died, and did not wish to be drugged. She planned to be buried in a forest in Upstate New York. An obituary published in BuzzFeed News noted that her death was widely mourned on social media, while Them reported that a "joyous online memorial" and celebration of life was being planned. Middle East Eye quoted a post on Twitter by Egyptian activist and academic Alia ElKattan, who wrote that she had encountered Weisberger at a Palestine-related event the week before her death. Weisberger's body was oiled and bathed by a group of her close friends, and she was buried in Rosendale, New York on December 2.