in
the
continued from page 54
COURTESY DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
COURTESY MAX M. & MARJORIE S. FISHER FOUNDATION
right edge of the photo, there is a sign in
Hebrew and in English that reads: ‘Danger.
Frontier Ahead. No Passage.’”
The frontier: Jordan.
The transformative experience hosted
by UJA, an organization since folded into
Jewish Federations of North America, har-
kened to how Fisher’s Russian immigrant
Peter Golden
parents, Mollie and William, had urged
him and his sisters to drop coins in the
family’s blue-and-white Jewish National
Fund box to bond with Israel’s pioneers as well as charitable
endeavors.
The UJA mission proved an epiphany. It thrust Fisher into
the Zionist struggle and spurred him to step up.
“Across the arid hills, he saw
200,000 Jewish immigrants
huddled under makeshift
tents, reminding him of the
shantytowns that had sprung
up across America in the
Depression. There were few
jobs, scant medical care, and
water always seemed in short
supply. And there was no
peace for Israelis with their
Arab neighbors,” Golden remi-
nisced.
As his Jewish identity took
root, Fisher, a man of humil-
ity, began to attract the global
spotlight through the measure
of his deepening conviction to
Israel and the Jewish people.
“I just felt that I had to do
something,” he said in a digital
interview in the Max M. Fisher
Archives (maxmfisher.org).
PASSIONATE PURSUIT
TOP: Max and Marjorie
Fisher with Israeli Prime
Minister Levi Eshkol
and his wife, Miriam.
BOTTOM: Shimon Peres
and Jane Sherman (in
back) with Max Fisher
and Penny Blumenstein
at a Sherman family-
hosted reception held in
Franklin for the Israeli
leader on May 1, 2000.
Following the UJA mission,
Fisher made the commitment
to stand as a sentry for “our
most precious commodity” —
Jewish unity.
He didn’t disappoint.
Fisher’s greatest lesson
about Zionism, according to
Golden, followed fellow mis-
sion-goers electing the inde-
pendent oilman with problem-
solving instincts to represent
the group in a meeting with
Israeli Finance Minister Levi
Eshkol.
When Fisher suggested clos-
ing Israel to immigration until
its economy perked up, Eshkol
candidly reminded the American visitor what happened the
last time persecuted Jews had no place to go. “There has to
be an Israel so there can be one place in the whole world
where Jews may come in — any Jew in any condition — as a
matter of right,” Eshkol said.
Fisher found inspiration in Eshkol’s insistence that “Israel
exists so Jews may exist.”
MIDEAST FLAREUP
As Egypt, Jordan and Syria threatened Israel in 1956, punc-
tuated by Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal in July, Fisher,
as chair, led Detroit Jewry’s Allied Jewish Campaign to a
continued on page 58
56
July 18 • 2017
jn
LEONARD N. SIMONS JEWISH COMMUNITY ARCHIVE
jews d
Federation leaders Mark Schlussel and Max Fisher flank Butzel Award winner Joel
Tauber, center, at the Detroit Federation’s annual meeting in 1990.
Joel Tauber: He Felt Awed
Walking In Max’s Footsteps
Detroiter Joel Tauber — busi-
ness entrepreneur, major phi-
lanthropist, Jewish leader — is
proud to call Max Fisher his
main role model.
Their relationship began in
the 1960s when Fisher, a friend
of Tauber’s father-in-law, spon-
Joel Tauber
sored Tauber for membership
at Franklin Hills Country Club.
Fisher’s Franklin home bordered the golf
course.
When Tauber led the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit from 1983 to 1986,
and later as a lead officer of the Council of
Jewish Federations (CJF), which folded into
what became Jewish Federations of North
America, he and Fisher grew closer. Fisher
previously had led both organizations.
“Max was the master phone communi-
cator and called often to discuss various
events in the community,” Tauber, of West
Bloomfield, recalled in a JN interview.
When Tauber later chaired United Jewish
Appeal (UJA), again in Fisher’s distant foot-
steps, Fisher proved a key resource. In May
1991, UJA helped 14,000 Ethiopian Jews
make their way to Israel in 26 hours.
“It was Max,” said Tauber, “who contact-
ed President George H.W. Bush to request
the rebels delay their entry into Addis Ababa
long enough for the Jewish world to rescue
the endangered Ethiopians.”
At the same time, UJA was in the midst
of Operation Exodus, which rescued 1.2
million Jews from the former Soviet Union.
“Max not only supported our efforts,”
Tauber said, “but led two of the largest
fundraising events in Jewish history, raising
about $60 million each.”
Tauber served 2½ difficult years chairing
the committee that yielded the 1999 merg-
er of United Israel Appeal, UJA and the CJF.
“Through the infighting of the various
stakeholders,” Tauber said, “Max was sup-
portive and constructive toward making the
merger a reality. This was despite his own
reservations. But he recognized it was the
desire of the younger leadership to com-
plete the merger.”
Today, Tauber chairs the foundation and
is on the board of Jewish Federations of
North America. He’s on the executive com-
mittee of the Detroit Federation and
Israel’s Shalom Hartman Institute.
He’s honorary chair of Tel Aviv
University’s American Committee
and founder of Rise Together Israel.
In 1990, Tauber won the Detroit
Federation’s top honor, the Butzel
Award; Fisher was the presenter.
Fisher’s best attribute, said
Tauber, was an uncanny ability to
unite people from diverging viewpoints,
notably in politics, “where we were often on
opposite sides, but still were always able to
have intelligent, constructive discussions.”
Fisher didn’t flinch when asked why he
backed Republican incumbent Robert Griffin
over Jewish Democratic challenger Carl
Levin in the 1978 U.S. Senate race from
Michigan, Tauber recalled.
“His explanation was, as always, cogent
and correct,” Tauber said. “He felt that as
one of the few Jewish Republicans at that
time, he had to support the Republican
candidate if he were to have any power and
authority within the Republican Party.”
In Fisher’s later years, he and Tauber
enjoyed elegant Saturday lunches every
few weeks. They’d talk business, the econ-
omy, politics and, of course, Jewish life.
“When we were both in Florida,” said
Tauber, “I would go from Miami to Palm
Beach monthly just to continue our conver-
sation.
“Yes, he was the major influence on my
philanthropic career.”
A hallmark of that trickle down: Tauber’s
investment in several Israeli startups. He’s a
proponent of Michigan wooing Israeli high-
tech and biomedical companies to assure
the Great Lake State shares in even more
of Israel’s entrepreneurial bounty.
Fisher’s lasting impact also is evident in
Tauber’s founding of Rise Together Israel,
an initiative primed to improve the living
conditions of Israel’s less fortunate, begin-
ning with the younger generations.
“What’s unique in this test program,”
Tauber said, “is that it incorporates all nec-
essary elements for major social change in
the lives of the disadvantaged.”
Such big-picture thinking would delight
Max Fisher. •
— Interview by Robert Sklar