An Ivy League educated 28 year old Jewish woman plunged to her death on Thursday in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Stephanie Becker, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Co-Chair of the Chabad affiliated Steinhardt Jewish Heritage Programs New York Gala this year, fell from the 30th floor and left no note behind, according to authorities.
Chabad Honoree Falls to Her Death in Manhattan
An Ivy League educated 28 year old Jewish woman plunged to her death on Thursday in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Stephanie Becker, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Co-Chair of the Chabad affiliated Steinhardt Jewish Heritage Programs New York Gala this year, fell from the 30th floor and left no note behind, according to authorities.
“She fell 30 stories to a parapet, just outside the building’s fifth-floor gym,” Police said according to the New York Post.
“She went to Jewish school and came to Chabad all the time. She was honored at Lubavitch House at Penn as an alumnus as well, and was a very sweet, happy person,” a friend at UPenn told The Algemeiner.
Originally from Stamford, Connecticut, Becker was a consultant at IBM while committing her time outside of work to Jewish causes.
“She went with us on Birthright, she was a wonderful, happy, beloved friend to many, she was a social linchpin, somebody that everybody knew and related to, she was the best,” Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, Executive Director of Lubavitch House at Penn and President of Chabad on Campus said in an interview with The Algemeiner. “I saw her last week because she used to meet with students for our mentoring event in Manhattan. She always came to Shabbos dinners.”
“It is really, really hard to understand this,” said the Rabbi, who had known her for 10 years, “I feel sick, we all cared for her very much and I want people to remember her positively.”
“It is a terrible tragedy,” he added, “she was the kind of person that everyone would want to be like.” “We miss her very much and our hearts go out to the family,” he concluded.
The Algemeiner obtained a portion of a speech Becker gave at a Steinhardt JHP Alumni Gala.
“During New Student Orientation, with the high holidays approaching, the rabbis were there to make sure we knew that the Jewish holidays were a time to celebrate (and they knew how to celebrate a good time, too),” she said. “At the time, I could barely comprehend the impact that these rabbis and this organization would have on my life, but I could taste the passionate spirit and moral fiber behind the wild Jewish dancing and knew this was something in which I had to get involved.”
The incident on Thursday occurred at 55 West 26th Street at around 8:15 a.m.
“At work, Becker was an expert in advertising on video games, and co-authored a 2008 article on the subject in AdWeek,” the New York Post reported. A report in the New York Daily News cited a LinkedIn recommendation for Becker, where a former supervisor described her as “an articulate, intelligent, optimistic and dedicated consultant.”
why
Why is it taken for granted that there was no fowl play involved????
To number 1
You meen ‘foul’ play. BDE may am yisroel know no sorrow! May her familiy be comforted.
To 1
I do not think that birds were involved
no one special
There were no signs of birds in the area.
Sympathy...
I agree with #1-first thing I wondered. Jealousy is a horrible motivator. Also, sounds like she had a great external life. Being alone is so empty in reality. Sympathy to the family.
agree with # 1
amazing how NYPD are always going after suicide and we find out years later it was not
i guess its a very easy way to close a case
tzippy
baruch dayan haemet
It look like to me that someone want us to believe that she killed herself! personally, i do not think so at all.
Hashem should help the family to go through the trauma!
agree with number 1
sure doesn’t seem like she’d commit suicide
not even signs a few months before
let’s think, man
ad mosai
aibeshter we cannot take it any more
Andrea Schonberger
Her family must be devastated–such a tragedy. I’ve been there myself being a person who suffers from clinical depression and has been on meds for years; thank G-d I’ve only had suicidal thoughts and not put them into motion. Let this be a lesson to everyone that just because a person looks happy doesn’t mean they are.
sad
Nebech Nebech
If she was depressed and hid it well, then this is just so terrible.Depression can be the worset disease and I will tell you this-if someone is determined to kill themselves, nobody knows because they had a plan. and remember, there should never be a permamanent solution to a temporary problem.
It isn-t my business
Kind of stoopid and callous of some of the previous commenters !
It is a sad story and there is reason for obituaries !
Ann Landers not
discussing if someone committed suicide r”l is not for public forum, I am sorry.
TG that most people don’t know from this, but it is a private issue, and people really should learn public forum, as in courtesy and respect on the internet. You would not want your life shared all over. If you think about it in private to yourself, thats one thing, but how hurtful and humiliating if the family and friends see it splattered all over the internet. Its like posting it on the subway walls. Have some decency.
Accident
It says she fell. It doesn’t say she jumped.
So sad.
BDE. May her family be comforted. What a tragedy – and not a time for jokes or puns about birds ## 2,3, and 4.
Milhouse
PUBLIC NOTICE: Some sick person is forging my name on comments. The comment that currently appears as #6 on this thread was not written by me, and the person who wrote it is obviously a sick and jealous person. I have asked the moderator to remove it, but I’d like to know why someone would do such a thing in the first place. Get your own name, pal, this one is taken.
bdh :(
bdh
Milhouse
#16, And now I thank the moderator for removing the forged comment. (The current #6 is not it.)
zai a mentsh
before people make comments ,they should think for a moment how they’d feel if others wrote such foolish and insensitive comments about their own family member RL.
Irma j
I am devastated and I never met her.
So terribly sorry
Baruch Dayan HaEmes. She didn’t leave a note so probably nobody will ever know the whole picture. It’s a terrible tragedy for her family and friends. Someone I was friends with died almost exactly the same way nearly 40 years ago. Don’t judge, don’t speculate and let her poor family grieve in peace.
Ron Samuels, Scranton
I cannot fathom how such a young, pretty, and positive thinker like this girl could have had the guts to jump to her death. The mere thought of it or fantazing about it is not even part of a Yid’s neshama. Which prompts me to ask if she was a guyores who was not converted halachically; or something like that.
Yossi
oyyy Baruch dayan haemet :'(
Chaim Tovim to #22
Your comment is so off the wall… even if your warped mind thinks of such things, you shouldn’t say them, let alone add your name to them…
Joe Morgan
@Ron:
We have “2” neshmas. Her nefesh elokis “would never ”fathom” but her nefesh behamos would.
Humans are frail!
To 22:
Jews are also human, thank G-d, regardless of conversion or ffb!
There have, unfortunately, been such incidents, even from big shot Rabbinical families! Yes, the neshama itself is perfect, but there is more to the composition of a Yid than just the neshama. Therefore, such frailties can affect a Yid like that.
Ron Samuels, Scranton
From Ron Samuels, to Chaim Tovim: Look anything is possible these days. I’ve witnessed a chosid with silk black kapote all as a facade only to turn out to be arrested for a strange thing in Brooklyn, not Crown Hts.
Disaffected
It is very simple. Chabad programs attract the emotionally needy. Behind her facade, there was probably trauma or mental illness which Chabad could not do a single thing for.
Stop playing games. Leave college students alone with your vodka and free food. Or at least be honest enough to have a mental health professional on board to provide real help for those who need it.