A friend of Yitzhak Rabin, he championed Jewish causes and housing desegregation. : Norman Bernstein, a Washington real estate developer and philanthropist who championed Jewish causes and housing desegregation, encouraging local property owners to open their apartment buildings to African Americans in the early 1960s, died July 5 at his home in the District. He was 100. A son of Jewish immigrants from present-day Lithuania, Mr. Bernstein launched his real estate career in 1940, at age 19, raising money from friends and family to buy rowhouses with his older brother, Leo.