Joyce "Shatzi" Weisberger (née Schatzberg; June 17, 1930 – December 1, 2022) was an American death educator, activist, and nurse based in New York City. After a 47-year career in nursing, she began engaging in public death education and end-of-life advocacy. Throughout her life, Weisberger was involved in several activist movements, including the civil rights movement, anti-nuclear movement, ACT UP, and campaigns against police brutality. In her later years, she was affiliated with the New York chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, expressing opposition to Zionism.
Early life Shatzi Weisberger was born as Joyce Schatzberg in Brooklyn on June 17, 1930. She did not have a close relationship with her parents and was once kidnapped by her father after her mother came out as a lesbian. She grew up in a small apartment with her mother and her partner, unaware of their romantic relationship of more than 40 years. She spent time in the foster care system due to her father's homophobia. She attended summer camp as a child. Weisberger's great-grandfather was Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor.
Career
Weisberger worked as a nurse for 47 years, specialising in both obstetrics and end-of-life care. Her nursing career coincided with the peak of HIV/AIDS-related deaths in New York City during the 1980s, a period during which she provided home care for individuals dying from the disease. Weisberger began her nursing career after obtaining a master's degree in psychiatric nursing. However, she later became critical of the psychiatric practices at the time, which she described as unethical. This led her to speak publicly about the need for mental health care reform. In the 2010s, after being present during a close friend's death, she turned her focus to death education and advocacy. She took a five-month, 70-hour course in Thanatology at the Open Centre, and a course in hospice care with the New York City visiting service. She then started holding workshops on "the art of dying". She organized "death cafés"—informal gatherings that aimed to foster open conversations about mortality and dying in a supportive environment.
Activism Weisberger was a political lesbian, a member of ACT UP, and a part of the public opposition to nuclear technology as a member of Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology. She was also an organiser with the Independence Party of New York City (which broke away from the Independence Party of New York) for 25 years. Weisberger's activism began with direct action against racist redlining on Long Island during the Civil Rights era. One of Weisberger's earliest acts of activism took place at a queer die-in in New York City during the AIDS crisis, where she cried because she felt that she was "in the right place doing the right things with the right people". Weisberger attended numerous protests and demonstrations in New York, leading The Advocate to describe her as "a fixture". She was active in protests against police brutality in the United States, supported abolition of the police and of prisons, and was associated with anti-Zionism. She became known for her protest signs, such as one reading "Jewish dyke standing with Palestinian queers". In 2021, Weisberger cited her age as a positive contributor to her activism, explaining that her presence "brings attention to the issues that matter" and expressing an intent to participate in "as many demonstrations as I possibly can".
Nuclear Weapons Weisberger faced arrest as a result of her actions against nuclear weapons, forming Radical Jewish Lesbians Organizing and Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology (DONT) in the 1970s.
ACT UP In the 1980s, Weisberger joined the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, known as ACT UP. At the time, many people treated the disease as something easily transmittable, leading to people dying alone or having few, if any, visitors. She states in an interview that this began her advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS, whom she visited in their homes to provide care.
Police Brutality Weisberger wrote a column in HuffPost stating that she wanted the police to be abolished for her 90th birthday, and that the "only way all people will ever be able to live and die as they wish is if we pursue abolition.” On that day, she participated in a Black Lives Matter protest, in which she was dubbed "the people's bubbie" (a Yiddish term for a grandmother). During the Covid-19 pandemic, she broke curfew for elderly people to attend another Black Lives Matter protest. She would also go out alone to protest with a Black Lives Matter sign attached to her walker.
Zionism
Weisberger grew up as a Zionist; she hoped to travel to Israel and live on a kibbutz. She later described this as the result of "brainwashing" during her childhood. She stated that around 1983, someone suggested that she read a book whose title she no longer remembered, and it led her to begin questioning her views on Zionism and eventually to oppose the ideology entirely. This took place roughly a year after the Shatila massacre. As she became associated with the anti-Zionist movement, Weisberger worked with the Palestinian Defense Committee, founded by Rabab Abdulhadi, staffing their literature table at various events. She also led Palestine-related workshops at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. She worked to build the political consciousness of other Jewish lesbians, arguing in a 1986 issue of WomaNews that "Jewish women in particular need to educate ourselves about the history of Zionism." Weisberger was a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and associated with its New York City chapter for the last six years of her life. She told Middle East Eye in 2021 that being part of a community of Jewish anti-Zionists made it "much easier to protest against Zionism than it was before."
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