Sylvia Rothfarb

Dr. Sylvia Hassan Rothfarb, beloved wife, mother, sister and grandmother, passed away on the evening of July 31, 2011 in Tampa, Florida. Daughter of Anna Tornheim Hassan and Albert Hassan, who emigrated from Palestine and Egypt in the 1920s, Sylvia was born on August 21, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, where she grew up with her four cherished sisters. In 1958 she married the love of her life, Allan B. Rothfarb, an arts educator and supervisor in Dade County Public Schools, in Miami, Florida, where they raised three children with infinite love and a great spirit for the arts and education.

She earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Mexico City College and a Ph.D from the University of Miami, where she also taught. Dr. Rothfarb was a senior program evaluator and foreign language supervisor for Dade County Public Schools, where she worked for over 30 years and contributed nationally to the fields of foreign language education, research and evaluation. Throughout her highly successful career, she was dedicated equally to rigorous research and analysis as well as to balancing this work with a humanitarian goal of understanding and serving the various communities she studied. Her publications, including her dissertation, "A Systems Management Model for the Planning, Implementation and Evaluation of Transitional Bilingual Education Programs in Florida" and "Second Language Learning in Bilingual Communities" were widely acclaimed, and she is missed and remembered with great regard and affection by her peers from those decades of work.

She retired in 1993 and moved to Tampa in 1994, where she was a member of Temple Ohev Shalom and Hadassah. In her retirement she continued to consult professionally and loved to travel and meet relatives in far away places, painted, and committed herself tirelessly to her family. Her family loved her with all their hearts, and always will. She is survived by her devoted husband Allan, her children Steven, Robert, and Shari, her daughter-in-law Lois, her son-in-law Avishai, her grandchildren Zachary, Mathew, Ariel, and Daniel, and her sisters Regina Shore, Rochelle Simons, and Sondra Marshak. She is predeceased by her loving parents and sister, Pearl DeBram.

Funeral services will be held at Gan Shalom Cemetery, Tampa, on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 3:00 PM. The family suggests memorials be made to the Dr. Sylvia H. Rothfarb Education Fund at Temple Ohev Shalom of New Tampa, Florida.