Marcia L. Cayne; Zionist Group Leader

Marcia Liebert Cayne, president of the national 60,000-member Assn. of Reform Zionists of America, who urged Israelis “to reclaim the beauty of Judaism as a living, rather than a rigid or restrictive, form of religion,” has died. She was 57.

Mrs. Cayne died of cancer Saturday at Tarzana Medical Hospital, said Debby Edelsohn, the organization’s regional director.

“She embodied the essence of the organization--the love of Judaism and the Jewish people and passionate commitment to the state of Israel,” said the group’s New York-based national director, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who was in Woodland Hills for Mrs. Cayne’s services Tuesday.

Mrs. Cayne was serving her second term as president, and had previously served as the group’s national vice president and as president of the Pacific Southwest Region. She was instrumental in launching the organization’s project known as “Operation Equality.”

As national spokesperson for the group, Mrs. Cayne championed equal rights and respect for her religion in Israel.

“We can no longer be docile and permit others, for their self-serving interests, to look at Reform Jews as if we were lepers,” she said in April at the group’s national convention in Woodland Hills.

Mrs. Cayne was a member of the Va’ad Hapoel (Zionist General Council), World Zionist Organization and the American Zionist Movement, and was a delegate to the World Zionist Congress in 1987 and 1992.

She was also a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and served on the executive committee and board of trustees of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the North American board of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Jewish National Fund and United Israel Appeal.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Mrs. Cayne was a founding member there of the Howard Beach Chapter of Cancer Care.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1970, she became a founding member and vice president of Shir Chadash, New Reform Congregation, Encino, which is now known as Kol Tikvah, Woodland Hills, and a vice president of Temple Judea in Tarzana, where she was president of its sisterhood.

Mrs. Cayne was on the executive committee of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations of the Los Angeles region, and of the Middle East Commission of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

She is survived by her husband, Maurice; daughter, Naomi Finerman, and brother, David Liebert.

The family has asked that any memorial contributions be made to Operation Equality, Assn. of Reform Zionists of America, 838 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021, or to Kol Tikvah, 20400 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, Calif. 91364.