Cover Story: Moving Federation Forward

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People skills have made Robert

Aronson the top professional

for Jewish communal Detroit.

HARRY KIRSBAUM
Staff Writer

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I hen you talk to Robert Aronson
on the phone, don't picture him
sitting calmly in his chair. He'll
be pacing a well-traveled path in
the narrow space between his desk and the cre-
denza. The extra-long phone cord gives him
free rein to walk and think.
As chief executive officer of the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit for the past
10 years, he is clearly a man with energy.
The Federation will celebrate his 10th
anniversary with a presentation at the Board of
Governors meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 26.
In the last decade, Aronson, 48, has been a
catalyst for significant change.
A partial list includes overseeing the
Federation's move from downtown Detroit to
Bloomfield Township, playing a major role in
developing projects with Israel's central Galilee
(the Detroit Jewish community's Partnership
2000 region) and starting a $50 million fund-
raising campaign to upgrade the Jewish
Community Center and improve Jewish life
experiences, especially in Jewish education.
Not bad for a guy with a fine arts degree
and a master's in social work.
The third-generation Milwaukee native said
he "sort of moved around a lot" in his youth. He
spent months at a time in Israel, where his
grandparents were founding members of Kibbutz
Eifat in the central Galilee. But it was while he
was attending the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago that he discovered his purpose in life.
It was 1973. The Yom Kippur War had

Robert Aronson's
first decade as CEO
of the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan
Detroit has spurred
significant change
in our community.

erupted, and Aronson
found he had another
passion besides art.
"I wanted to do
something for the
Jews," he said. "I did-
n't really know what
the words 'Jewish
community' meant. I
certainly didn't know
what the Jewish
Federation meant,
but I had an instinct
that sitting in my stu-
dio making prints
while the war was
going on, was not going to do it forme."
When he graduated from art school two
years later, he began looking for work in the
Jewish world.
"I didn't know what to do. I had no qualifica-
tions. There weren't many Jewish organizations
that would hire a printmaker. I finally got a job as
an 'aide de camp' at the Milwaukee Federation."
The pay was $4,000 a year.
Within a month of his hire in 1975, the
United Nations passed the infamous "Zionism
is racism" resolution.
"That kind of lit my fire," Aronson said.
He put together a pro-Zionism community
rally in Milwaukee. After four days of nonstop
work, 2,000 supporters showed up and he
thought to himself, "This is where I want to be."
In 1980, while he was the Milwaukee
Federation's campaign director, he was recruit-
ed as a community consultant for the Council
of Jewish Federations in New York. Three years

later, he was recruited as executive director of
the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. In 1987, he
was elected its executive vice president.
People skills are what propelled him there,
said Mark Brickman, then Milwaukee
Federation president. "He has the ability to
relate to anyone at their level. Most people
come away from a first meeting with Bob
Aronson and they feel they've found a lifelong
friend," Brickman said.
Aronson's role models came from the lay
leadership. "I saw that it was possible for a man
of wealth to care about something in the com-
munity and work hard at it," he said.
When asked to apply for the Detroit
Federation's top professional position in 1989,
Aronson eventually beat out two other candi-
dates because of his "energy and vision for build-
ing the Jewish community" said David Page,
Federation president from 1992-1995 and chair-

DRIVING FORCE on page 10