Beverly Harriet Sokal, a Baltimore theater advocate, teacher and champion of Jewish education and the arts whose warmth and energy inspired generations of students and performers, died on Oct. 26 at age 99.
Sokal devoted her life to connecting people through creativity and community — whether guiding children in classrooms, mentoring young actors onstage, or promoting Zionist ideals rooted in compassion and justice. “She never stopped moving,” said her granddaughter, Amy Sokal. “Whatever community she was in — Habonim, her theater, or her family — she poured herself into it completely.”
Born on Oct. 10, 1926, in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sylvia and Frank Nemser, Sokal grew up in a close, extended Jewish family in Kansas City. Her parents divorced when she was a child, a rarity at the time, and she was raised largely by her grandmother, whose faith and warmth left a deep impression. “She was very close to her bubbe,” said her daughter, Dr. Dina Sokal. “Her grandparents went to synagogue and gave her that early sense of Jewish belonging.”
Even as a young girl, Beverly found her calling onstage. At the age of 4, she performed in a school play about “Mr. Duck went to meet Mr. Turkey,” and later sang “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” in Yiddish — a performance that sparked a lifelong love of theater.
After graduating from high school, she moved to Los Angeles to study acting at the University of Southern California and later at UCLA. But her ambitions changed as the Holocaust unfolded in Europe. “The Holocaust really inspired her,” Dina Sokal said. “She began to pray for the Jewish people, and Habonim gave her a way to act — to build a Jewish homeland.”
In 1947, Sokal joined Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement, and trained on a New Jersey farm before sailing to what was then Palestine. There she worked as a shepherdess on Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan, an experience she later described as transformative. “Leading 100 sheep gave me the beginnings of confidence to be a mother, a teacher, and to have faith in my dramatic ability,” she once wrote.
While in Israel, she met Ernest (Ernie) Sokal, a young civil engineer who had fled Vienna shortly after the Nazi takeover of Austria. They married and started a family on Kibbutz Hatzerim in the Negev, where their first of five children, Yoni, was born. Life there was difficult — “sandstorms, mines, no caretakers,” Dina Sokal recalled — but her mother loved it. She “treasured the flowers that covered the hills of the Galilee in spring,” Beverly once wrote.
After their infant son recovered from pneumonia, the couple returned to the United States, settling first in Manhattan before moving to Baltimore in 1957 when Capital Steel transferred Ernie Sokal to its new offices.
Sokal earned a psychology degree from the New School for Social Research and a master’s degree in teaching from Coppin State University. She worked for nearly two decades at the Montrose Training School, teaching creative drama and psychodrama to juvenile offenders.
“She believed in helping people who were having the hardest time in life,” Dina Sokal said. “Her Jewish values showed up in that work — compassion, justice, and giving every person dignity.”
Her teaching style was creative and intuitive. Using improvisation and role reversal, she helped her students build empathy and self-understanding. “She gave them hope and strength,” Dina Sokal said.
Sokal also taught preschool at the Jewish Community Center of Baltimore and creative drama for the Children’s Theatre Association. “She was a wonderful teacher who believed in drawing out each child’s strengths,” said her friend and colleague Marianne Angelella. “She made everyone feel special and part of an artistic community.”
In 1987, Sokal co-founded the Fells Point Corner Theatre, a merger of two small community companies that became a landmark in Baltimore’s performing arts scene. She served as director, fundraiser and organizer, building a theater that thrived on volunteer energy and a shared sense of purpose. “Bev was the one who got things done,” Angelella said. “At 70, she’d be climbing three flights of stairs with a ladder twice her size. She never said, ‘It’s not my job.’”
Under her leadership, the theater staged bold, socially conscious productions, often Baltimore premieres of off-Broadway works. “She wanted plays that reflected the times,” Angelella said. “She gave voice to the marginalized and made theater that mattered.”
Her energy drew others in. “She’d bring people to the theater and they wouldn’t leave,” Angelella said, laughing. “She built a family here.”
Through every chapter of her life — teacher, activist, artist — Beverly remained grounded in her Jewish identity. She and her husband managed Habonim Camp Moshava for years, nurturing a generation of Jewish youth. “That was her way of living her values,” Dina Sokal said. “She believed in Zionism as a force for rebuilding, for community, for hope.”
In her later years, Sokal was a joyful presence at family gatherings, known for dancing the hora and delighting in her grandchildren. “She could light up a room just by walking in,” Amy Sokal said. “Even when she had memory loss, she stayed social and joyful.”
Her positivity never wavered. During a long hospital stay, she charmed her nurses, complimenting their names and turning each encounter into a moment of connection. “She always put a rosy spin on everything,” Dina Sokal said. “She lived that way her whole life.”
“Mom was always busy — creating, connecting and caring for everyone around her,” Dina Sokal said. “She saw life through rose-colored glasses, and she made the rest of us see it that way, too.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
