Ursula Merkin

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Ursula Merkin (1919–2006) was a German-born, American-Jewish author and philanthropist.

She was born born in Frankfurt, Germany to Isaac Breuer, a noted German Rabbi as Ursula (Sara) Breuer. At the age of fourteen in 1933, she left Germany with her family for Palestine where she remained with her father, to whom she was very close, until his death in 1946 at the age of 63 in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, she emigrated to the United States where she found a teaching position at a Jewish girls' school in Paterson, New Jersey.

In 1950 she met and married Hermann Merkin, a German-Jewish businessman, who was twelve years her senior. They had six children and were married for over forty years until his death in 1999 at the age of 91. Ursula and Hermann Merkin sponsored the well-known New York venue Merkin Concert Hall and were involved in a variety of Yeshiva University functions as well as with other Jewish philanthropies. They were also deeply devoted to Fifth Avenue Synagogue, of which Hermann Merkin was Founding President.

She was a granddaughter of Solomon Breuer, a great-granddaughter of Samson Raphael Hirsch and mother of the novelist and cultural critic Daphne Merkin. She was best known for her involvement with Reuth, an Israeli charity for the elderly begun by her mother and Paula Barth. She maintained a strong tie to and a great love for the Holy Land until her death in 2006. She was known fondly by most of her friends as "Ullah," which is affectionate for Ursula.

She also wrote many novels; most notably, Borrowed Lands, which was published by Rubin Mass Ltd. in 2000 in a second revised edition. She died in New York at the age of 86 after a long bout with lung cancer.