 In 1948 she immigrated to New York City, then moved to Minneapolis, and then to St. Louis, Missouri.There, she took up activism for affordable housing, the pro-choice movement, and the antiwar movement.In 1982, in response to news reports of massacres committed by a Lebanese Phalangist militia with the complicity of the IDF during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Epstein developed a different perspective on the Arab–Israeli conflict; she began to express opposition to Israel's military policies.