Berkovits, Myra, 1944-

Myra Berkovits (née Mosse) was born April 10, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father emigrated from Romania to Canada, later moving to Chicago, where he met Berkovits’s mother, a daughter of Russian immigrants. After graduating from Loyola University, Berkovits married and started her career as an educator teaching at an elementary school in inner city Chicago. She taught there for twelve years before moving with her husband, son and daughter to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since arriving to Las Vegas in 1980, Berkovits has made contributions to the city, both in the public and private sectors. In 1982, Berkovits purchased Las Vegas Menu Review, a restaurant promotion-concierge company, from neighbor and friend Mike Katz. During this time, she also interviewed restaurateurs and wrote articles for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Berkovits sold Las Vegas Menu Review, and after going through a divorce some years later, started a competitor business called Las Vegas Dine Direct.

In the early 1990s Berkovits left the private sector to renew her teaching license at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). She later earned a master’s degree in Educational Supervision from the University of Phoenix. Berkovits taught in the Clark County School District during the 1990s and from 1999 to 2013 she served as the administrator of Title I HOPE (Homeless Outreach Program for Education), which was the District's homeless outreach program for children living in Clark County.

Berkovits’s other passion was for Holocaust education. Driven by this interest, Berkovits contacted Edythe Katz, well known and respected for her work with Holocaust education, as the founder of what is now the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center. Berkovits became one of six interviewers in the city for the Shoah Foundation, documenting survivors’ stories. One interviewee, David Berkovits, would later become her husband of fifteen years.