Woman Connected to Chabad Plummets to Death
Stephanie Becker, a 28-year-old Jewish woman active in Chabad programs, plunged to her death from the roof of a building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Thursday morning.
According to the New York Post and the New York Daily News, it is thought that Becker jumped from the roof of 55 West 26th St. at approximately 8:15 a.m., landing on a parapet outside the building’s fifth floor gym. Algemeiner, which also reported the story, characterized Becker’s plunge as a fall. All sources indicated that the woman did not leave a note.
Becker, originally from Stamford, Connecticut, had worked for IBM’s consulting services. She was an expert on advertising on video games and had co-authored a 2008 AdWeek article on the topic. A supervisor described her as “optimistic and dedicated.” Becker was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and earned an MBA from New York University while working for IBM.
Earlier this year, Becker had served as co-chair for the Chabad-affiliated Steinhardt Jewish Heritage Programs New York gala and she was reportedly active with Chabad as an undergraduate. As an alumna, she provided lay support for Penn’s Lubavitch House and JHP, a peer-to-peer outreach and mentoring program operating on 10 campuses nationwide.
According to Becker’s friends, she was a sweet, caring and friendly person. Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, Executive Director of Lubavitch House at Penn and President of Chabad on Campus, who saw Becker as recently as a week ago, characterized her as “wonderful, happy, a beloved friend to many.”
Photos on Becker’s Facebook page show that in recent years she had travelled to Colombia, Asia and Israel, and Rabbi Schmidt mentioned that she had been on a Birthright Israel trip.
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