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75th Anniversary/essay

Max-imum
H
Effect

Robert Sklar

Contributing Editor

e would become a confidant of
U.S. presidents and Israeli prime
ministers from his big-picture
perch as dean of American Jewry and
as a late-blooming Zionist who came to
grasp Israel’s intrinsic role in building
Jewish unity.
But Detroiter Max Fisher — ardent
Zionist, business titan, mega-philanthro-
pist, communal leader and political force
— didn’t bond with Israel or Zionism
and, in turn, Jewish causes until visit-
ing the Jewish state on a United Jewish
Appeal (UJA) study mission in October
1954 at age 46.
Israeli statehood in 1948 and Keystone
Oil Refining Co. business partner Leon
Kay, a Holocaust survivor who became
an avid Zionist, brought Fisher, until
now “unaffiliated and relatively unin-
formed,” into the dynamic world of
Jewish affairs and philanthropy, accord-
ing to Sidney Bolkosky’s 1991 book
Harmony & Dissonance, Voices of Jewish
Identity in Detroit, 1914-1967. Keystone
Oil had been a sponsor of Jewish
Detroit’s Israeli Independence Day rally

Max Fisher: Champion of building
a strong Israel as the pathway
to a strong Jewish world.

on May 16, 1948, at the Central High
School athletic field in celebration of the
new State of Israel.
But it wasn’t until that first UJA mis-
sion, what Harmony & Dissonance called
“an unabashed attempt to enlist the
support of wealthy and influential Jews,”
that Fisher, who grew up in Salem, Ohio,
a small town with few Jews, discovered
his Zionist calling. That calling, with
encouragement from his wife, Marjorie,
eventually would command much of the

continued on page 54

FROM LEFT: Israeli
Prime Minister Golda
Meir with Max Fisher.
Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin
with Max Fisher by a
Chagall wall tapestry
at the Knesset in
Jerusalem. Max
Fisher and Dwight
Eisenhower at the
former president’s
farm in 1965.

COURTESY LEONARD N. SIMONS JEWISH COMMUNITY ARCHIVE

52

July 18 • 2017

jn

COURTESY MAX M. & MARJORIE S. FISHER FOUNDATION

