The Oberfield Family

Samuel and Bessie Muchnik Oberfield lived in a small house at 1601 Bedford Street in the Hill District. They raised six children, Philip, Paul, Morris, Yetta, Ida and Jenney. 

After volunteering at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House in her youth, Yetta Oberfield (c.1907-2001) joined the staff in 1931, working as a membership clerk and a receptionist until she retired in October 1972. She witnessed major changes in the institution, including the opening of the Irene Kaufmann Centers in Squirrel Hill and the East End in 1948 and the merger with the Young Men and Women’s Association in 1960. During her long tenure there, Oberfield worked with Belle Barsky, Samuel Rosenberg, Ethel Laufe, Anna Perlow and Nathan Kaufman.

Oberfield lived in Riverview Towers in her later years. She regularly wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers on topics as diverse as criminal justice, her skepticism of congressional pay raises, her distaste for television, and her admiration for the late Major Richard Caliguiri. At age 92, after several of her friends at the living facility tripped on jagged patches of concrete between the center and a Port Authority bus stop on nearby Browns Hills Road, Oberfield started a petition to get the city to repair the sidewalks.

Her niece Irene Lee Oberfeld married Morton Dinovitz.