Leah was born on June 19, 1918, in Brooklyn, N.Y., into a progressive family. In her early years, she lived with her parents and maternal grandparents on the Lower East Side, on 9th Street overlooking Tompkins Square Park. Her parents moved several times in New York and the Bronx, taking advantage of landlords' premiums offering a year's rental for 11 months' rent. In the late 1920s, the family was forced to leave New York when Leah's father, Sam, was blacklisted from his work as a skilled fur worker because of his union activism and membership in the Communist Party. They lived briefly in Washington, D.C., then settled in Richmond, Virginia, where Sam worked first as a free-lance fur-coat repairer; later the family ran a grocery store. (The building that housed one of these stores still exists, on Moore Street. The family lived in a small apartment adjoining the store.) During some summers, Leah's family went to a camp in Maryland run by the International Workers' Order, where she first met Joe Jaffe. Leah attended the College of William and Mary, first at its Richmond branch, then at the main campus in Williamsburg, where she majored in home economics and minored in dietetics. (She had wanted to major in biology, but her parents didn't consider that a ladylike field of study.) In 1938, a shadow appeared on her lung in an X-ray, and believing she might have tuberculosis, she spent nine months at a sanatorium in the Smoky Mountains. Immediately after her graduation in 1940, she and Joe married - they couldn't before without jeopardizing her college standing as William and Mary didn't allow married women to be students. They lived briefly in Hampton, Va., then Newport News, while Lea did secretarial work at Langley Field before her first child, Sonia, was born in June 1942. Eight months later, Joe started working at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and the family moved to Havre de Grace, where Mark was born in March 1944. Carla was born in Washington, D.C., in August 1946, and soon after the family moved in with Joe's parents in Washington, when Joe had trouble finding a job after the war for political reasons. In 1947, the family moved to Brooklyn, and to West Haven, Connecticut, in 1950. Once all the children were in school, Lea went to work part-time as a lab assistant at New Haven Medical School Thyroid Lab; she also took folk-dancing classes, held Tupperware parties, and made enamel on copper jewelry. And Lea knit and sewed, making clothes, slipcovers, and curtains. (Leah changed the spelling, and pronunciation, of her name to Lea, but returned to Leah in her 70s.) When Joe got a job in the R&D department at Smith, Kline & French, the family moved to Levittown, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. Lea and Joe joined little theater groups, the William Penn Players and the Levittown Players, performing in such plays as The Wizard of Oz and The Mad Woman of Chaillot. Three years later they moved to Gladwyne, on the Main Line. Looking for a job, Lea replied to a blind ad for a medical correspondent, which turned out to be the same pharmaceutical company as Joe worked at. The company had never hired a married couple before, but since Joe and Lea would be working in entirely different divisions, SKF decided to take on the experiment. It worked exceedingly well. Three years later they moved to Gladwyne, on the Main Line. They continued to work at SKF until 1970, when Joe took early retirement. Lea and Joe found more little theater with the Wayne Footlighters. In 1970, Lea and Joe left Gladwyne and headed south, eventually landing in Miami, close to where Lea's father was living. In 1972, they worked with the Democratic National Committee when the Democratic National Convention was held in Miami -- a photograph shows Lea sitting on the stage behind a young Ted Kennedy giving a speech during the convention. For several years, as a volunteer, Leah organized the fund-raising auction for Miami's PBS station, and she also worked for Soon after Lea's father died, in 1974, Joe offered Lea the chance to go to China with the U.S.-China People's Friendship Association. It was only a few years since Nixon had opened up China for Americans, and the USCPFA was the only organization bringing visitors to China from the U.S. at that time. Lea leaped at the opportunity, which became a lifelong fascination with Chinese culture, art, food, language, and people. Her trip, in 1975, was only the first of many, some as a participant, some as a tour leader; the last one was with her sister, Anita, in spring 1989, in the midst of student protests they were unaware of until they left the country. In 1981, she spent the summer at a Chinese language institute at Nanjing University and was only one of two foreigners to take the final exam in Chinese characters rather than pinyin (using the Roman alphabet). Leah was one of the founders of the Miami chapter of the USCPFA and its president, and also served on its board, and also served on the Southern Region board of the USCPFA. She was an editor of the Miami chapter newsletter and lectured often about China and the Jewish community in China. At the same time, Lea was learning needlepoint and embroidery, and joined the Biscayne chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild of America. One day at the Bass Art Museum in Miami, she noticed some broken threads on a Japanese wall hanging on display and pointed it out to a docent friend of hers. That comment turned into an almost 10 years' long project for the Biscayne chapter in reconstructing and repairing this eight feet by 10 feet embroidered wall hanging; Leah wrote a brief description of this project for the March 1997 issue of NeedleArts magazine. She also contributed embroidery to a renovation of wall hangings at the Vizcaya Museum in Miami. Leah was active in or contributed to many organizations: the North Dade chapter of the Brandeis University National Women's Committee; the Institute for Retired Professionals of the University of Miami's School of Continuing Studies; the Edlers Forum of Florida International University; and the North Miami Beach Lions Club. In 1984 Leah and Joe separated and then divorced, although they remained friends until the end. While Joe moved to California, Leah remained in Florida, in the Miami area until 2004, then at King's Point in Delray Beach in Palm Beach County until 2009, and then her final move, to Kittay House in the Bronx shortly before Christmas 2009. After she moved to Palm Beach County, she became active in the USCPFA Palm Beach County chapter and served on its board. Throughout her life, Leah maintained interests in language, food, crafts, the arts and Jewish life, and blended them all with her fascination with China. She took notes on the dishes she ate in China and Chinese restaurants in the United States and succeeded in replicating them at home. She incorporated Chinese motifs into her embroidery. And she collected books and clippings about the ancient Jewish community in Kaifeng. Leah faced the end of her life head-on, and she wanted us to as well. "No guilt, no regrets," she said, several times, for herself, perhaps, but certainly for all of us. Leah is survived by her ex-husband; two daughters, Sonia and Carla; a son, Mark; six grandchildren (Jenn, Tim, Christie, Emily, Rachael, and Geoff); and nine great-grandchildren (Julien, Avalon, Camelot, Ashlynn, Brandon, Nicky, Trevor, Asim and Linus).