Jewish leader and human-rights advocate Rosalyn Borg, z”l, passed away June 27, 2021, at the age of 85, in her home in St. Louis. The cause was lung cancer. Borg served as area director of the American Jewish Committee in Portland and St. Louis. She is survived by sons Scott Biespiel, Houston, Texas; Matthew Biespiel, Chicago, Ill.; David Biespiel and wife Wendy Willis, Portland; sisters, Bonnie Spiesberger, San Francisco, Calif., and Bebe Borg, Miami, Fla.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

She was a pioneering female executive in the commercial waste management industry, was instrumental in bringing Sesame Street to Houston public television, and was active and deeply connected to the Tulsa Jewish community since the 1940s.

She was the daughter and granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ukraine.

While director of the St. Louis branch of AJC from 1988-2001, Ms. Borg focused on combatting human trafficking, building coalitions among the St. Louis area’s diverse ethnic, racial and religious groups, and expanding the AJC's annual Interfaith Lecture Series for Jews and Christians.

As director of the Portland chapter of AJC from 1986-1988, she was instrumental in establishing the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. She served on the board of the five-state coalition of private citizens and government officials whose purpose was to address the problem and threat of religious and racial harassment and violence in the Northwest through united action.

In 1987 she led AJC’s advocacy for redress legislation for Japanese-Americans who were interned in the United States during World War II. She was recognized in the Congressional Record by U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui (D, California) for her efforts to bring about passage of the legislation in the House of Representatives. He included her editorial, “Internment of Japanese-Americans Needs Redress," first published in the Catholic Sentinel, in support of “recognition of a grave injustice and an apology for that injustice, pardon to those who were convicted of violating the evacuation and curfew laws, financial compensation to the 60,000 survivors, and the establishment of an educational trust fund.”

In every city she lived – Tulsa, Houston, Portland and St. Louis – she served on numerous boards, including the Tulsa City-County Citizens Advisor Committee to the Mayor, University City Plan Commission, and University of Missouri St. Louis Chancellors Advisory Committee on International Relations. She was a long-time member of the board of directors of the National Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies.

Before starting her professional nonprofit career, Ms. Borg was president of Containerized, Inc. from 1976-1986. Owning a private roll-off and rear-loader company, she was a rare female executive in the typically all-male industry, featured in the Houston Business Journal and profiled in the industry’s international periodical, Waste Age.

In a 1984 interview she said, “As a woman in the refuse business, I do everything a man does. We have the same problems, we make the same kinds of decisions. In that sense, nothing is different, and it should not be.”

Ms. Borg’s work promoting women in the workplace began long before she was in private business. As president of the Houston chapter of National Council of Jewish Women in the 1970s, she was instrumental in creating Career Branch to open doors for young women for civic, philanthropic and private sector advancement.

Rosalyn Borg was born in Decorah, Iowa, on Sept. 6, 1935, to Joe Borg, president of Borg Compressed Steel, and Ruth (Lenske) Borg, a homemaker and volunteer. She was the oldest of four sisters.

Ms. Borg graduated from Central High School in Tulsa, where the Borg family settled in 1946. She graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Michigan in 1957 and married fellow Tulsan Stephen E. Biespiel. The marriage ended in divorce.

While raising her sons in Houston, Ms. Borg became active in Citizens for Good Schools, the coalition that, in 1969, defeated the all-white male school board by electing a slate of progressive, female, Jewish and African-American candidates. Ms. Borg later was active in HISD’s Volunteers in Public Schools, serving as founding president. The same year, Ms. Borg participated in a National Council of Jewish Women program to bring the newly  created Sesame Street to Houston’s KUHT public television, working with the Harris County Community Action Association.

Building opportunities and bridging differences was at the heart of Ms. Borg’s life. “Human relations, is the art of making strangers into friends,” she once said in a public address.

Throughout, Judaism was the center of her soul: “My parents were Jewish to the core of their being. Having known the discomfort of anti-Semitism, they were proud of being Jewish, proud of a long heritage, proud of the traditions, rituals, ethics of their Judaism. They brought into our family as part of who we were and who they expected us to be. Judaism was not an afterthought; it was not just observing holidays to maintain a reputation. Synagogue, home observation, Jewish organizations, were part and parcel of who we were; it was our identity, it was where we belonged and were accepted. It was community, home, family.”

Memorial contributions may be made to the Rose Borg Sukkoth Fund at Congregation B'nai Emunah, 1719 S. Owasso Ave., Tulsa, OK 74120.

Funeral services to be held Thursday, July 1, 10:30 am (Central Time) at Rose Hill Cemetery. Evening minyan services to be held Thursday, July 1, 5:30 pm (Central Time) at Congregation B’nai Emunah.