Jane Hein

Jane was born in New York City to Harmon (1891-1954) and Edna Lichtenstein (1893-1985). She shared the same birthday with her maternal grandmother Jennie Silberstein (1867-1941) and they often celebrated it together. Jane was preceded in death by her brother Robert and husband John. She is survived by her children Simeon and Jeremy, as well as Jeremy's children Rose and Chandrima.

Jane was a vibrant and ethusiastic soul who was far ahead of her times. Her many interests included nature, foreign languages, music, pre-school education, alternative medicine, and Asian religions. She never stopped learning and exploring. She bought every Beatles album for us to listen to and mourned when the band broke up; she was forty-years old at the time and our father John was mystified.

Jane took her sons to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 and came back with a garbage can painted teal to use for recycling. She was an avid birth watcher and regularly participated in the annual bird count organized by the Audubon Society. Despite feeling chilly in winter, she gave away her racoon-skin coat when the ethical treatment of animals movement started.

Jane embraced globalism and multiculturalism long before they became buzz words. She quickly became fluent in French when she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris during the 1950s. On the same European trip, she picked up Swedish when she worked at a pre-school center in Sweden. Jane taught herself German so she could speak with John's parents even though they spoke English very well. She studied Japanese for her work as a self-employed pre-school teacher. For many years, Jane organized musically oriented play-groups in our basement and local libraries for Japanese mothers and their young children. Their husbands had one-year jobs in the US and the wives were extremely isolated in their small apartments and often had no ability to speak English. Jane played the guitar and sang songs to help them learn. Then she decided to learn sign-language with the hope of being an interpreter in the public schools.

Jane was an early believer in alternative medicine and a sceptic of the claims by drug companies. She studied and practiced homeopathy and Bach flower remedies. If you named an ailment (worrying about life transitions, for example) she would name the flower to reduce it (Walnut). She was constantly providing bottles of liquid remedies to all who knew her. Jane also advocated diets based on the four blood types and helped numerous people, including a neighbor's daughter who suffered from severe arthritis that disappeared completely. On many evenings Jane would be found with a small silver hammer and a 12-inch human-body replica "tapping" on various spots to heal a friend who listened by phone or on Zoom. Often a group would tap simultaneously for each other, and the house sounded like it was filled with shoe makers!

Of all Jane's interests, Asian religions was probably the one that showed her ability to never stop learning and evolving. Although she always identified herself as Jewish, in the 1970s she began practicing Transcendental Meditation and then began a life-long membership in a spiritual community led by the Indian Jain monk Guru Dev. As part of the initiation blessing, he gave Jane the name Jain which she used the rest of her life. Jain went to India with Guru Dev and a group of his followers, then became a vegetarian and began excluding turkey from our Thanksgiving meal in favor of something made from tofu; my meat-loving German American father (blood type O) didn't complain.

In the 1980s, Jane became a member of Ruth Denison's Buddhist community (Sangha) in Joshua Tree, California. Ruth was the first woman to be designated a Buddhist teacher in the Burmese Vipassana tradition. Jane became a trusted assistant to Ruth, travelled across the country with her, and went on over 100 retreats, many of which were for women only. After Ruth passed away 2015, Ruth's students asked Jane to teach them about Buddhism and she did via Zoom. Jane's last Dharma talk was a few weeks before her passing.

Jane said that the spirit or consciousness continued after the body died. She told many stories of her mother, brother, and husband contacting her after they passed away. Let's keep an open mind in her honor.