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Rayna Goldfarb, longtime teacher in Phila. schools

Rayna Block Goldfarb, 70, of Bryn Mawr, a longtime teacher in the Philadelphia School District, died Saturday, March 5, of cancer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Rayna Block Goldfarb
Rayna Block GoldfarbRead moreHandout

Rayna Block Goldfarb, 70, of Bryn Mawr, a longtime teacher in the Philadelphia School District, died Saturday, March 5, of cancer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Born in Philadelphia, Mrs. Goldfarb graduated from Olney High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Temple University and a master's degree in English education from St. Joseph's University.

She spent her 45-year career teaching English literature in the city's public schools, retiring in 2011 after 12 years as English department head at Lincoln High School. She held the same post at John Bartram High School in the late 1990s, and at Strawberry Mansion High School in the early 1990s.

Before that, she taught English at University City High School, Robert E. Lamberton High School, and John Wanamaker Junior High School.

Mrs. Goldfarb's life revolved around family, her students, and the cultural arts. Well-read and well-versed in film, theater, art, and literature, she loved sharing the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare with her students - even the ribald passages.

Culture wasn't a social privilege for Mrs. Goldfarb. Instead, she felt it was her civic duty to pass on an appreciation of the arts to her students, her family said.

"She dressed for the Ides of March in a toga, and delivered the lines from Julius Caesar," said son Michael.

"She dressed as a witch for Macbeth and did the 'Double, double toil and trouble' speech," he said.

"She'd reenact the whole thing for them," said daughter Rachael. "She brought it alive for them. It was not some archaic, medieval text. It reflected their lives."

She took her pupils on field trips to see stage shows and movies, and raised funds for them to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

Mrs. Goldfarb never shied away from speaking her mind. Against a background of political correctness, her candor could come across as inappropriate, her son said.

"She delighted in embarrassing me. She loved to ask people about intimate things. She'd ask perfect strangers questions that would make a hooker blush. And people loved it," her son said.

She thought nothing of telling young toughs "to keep quiet in a movie or wait their turn in line. And it would work," he said.

Having spent her working years in some of Philadelphia's roughest neighborhoods, Mrs. Goldfarb wasn't afraid of anyone.

"We'd go anywhere in the city, and kids would come up to interact with her," said her son. "My mom was proud of these kids."

She was the life of any party, singing, dancing, and telling racy jokes, her son said. "She liked to shock people. To say she was feisty is like saying John Rockefeller was a successful oilman."

Diagnosed with cancer in 2011, she was reluctant to give up working. Even as her health failed, she continued to visit her grandchildren in Washington and attend the opera in New York City.

She was married to Stanley Goldfarb Jr., a nephrologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Besides her husband, son and daughter, she is survived by two grandchildren; and twin brothers.

Services were Monday, March 7.

Donations may be made to the Jordan Center for Gynecologic Cancers, part of the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine, via: https://cancer.pennmedicine.org/giving

bcook@phillynews.com610-313-8102