Wishing The Detroit Jewish News

COURTESY MAX M. & MARJORIE S. FISHER FOUNDATION

A Happy 75th Anniversary!

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the

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Max Fisher at a campaign event for President Reagan

continued from page 61

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62

July 18 • 2017

jn

Fisher told Bolkosky the Six-Day
War “created the idea that the Jewish
state could take on the world and
still win. It gave every Jew enormous
pride.”
Led by Fisher and Zuckerman,
Detroit Jews galvanized behind Israel
and gave beyond its relative size to
help stabilize the homeland of am
Yisrael — the Jewish people.

POSSIBLE ACCORD?

Did Fisher believe a lasting peace
could descend upon Israel and the
Palestinians, a conflict that coars-
ened with the first Palestinian inti-
fada, or uprising — which resulted in
terrorist attacks on Israel in 1987.
“Oh, sure,” Fisher told me in a 2004
interview in his Franklin home with
stunning certainty. By now, the sec-
ond intifada was in full swing.
Over the course of history, Fisher
said, 50-some years is not long: “I’ll
tell you what I once told George
Schultz, the secretary of state under
President Reagan: ‘You know, peace
is like entering a long tunnel. When
you first get in the tunnel, it’s dark.
And you move along and move along,
and finally see a dim light. And at the
end of that dim light, you start seeing
some hope — then a period of hope
and peace.’”
With a wink and a nod during our
conversation, Fisher urged American
Jews to increase support for Israel
regardless of political differences
over selected government policy.
“A strong Israel gives strength to
the Jewish people,” he said. “It really
does. The future for all of us is helped
by the alliance that we have and the
mutual support that we give.”
He added, “As terrible as things are,
we can’t give up. We have to continue
the struggle. The Jewish people have
fought for thousands of years for a
homeland. Now we have one. It’s ours
to sustain.”
A master consensus builder, it’s no
surprise Max Fisher built a reputa-
tion as the Jewish diaspora’s greatest,
most enduring representative.

For decades before Fisher emerged
as integral to the soul of Detroit
Jewry, Zionism was already cham-
pioned locally by Sarah Davidson,
Fannie Wetsman, Dora Ehrlich,
Isadore Levin, Fred Butzel, Rabbi
A.M. Hershman, Emma Schaver,
Leon Kay, Louis Berry, Sheldon Lutz,
Benjamin Laikin, William Avrunin,
Hyman Safran, Simon Shetzer, Ann
and Charles Newman, Rabbi Leon
Fram, Rabbi Morris Adler and Philip
Slomovitz, longtime publisher and
editor of the Detroit Jewish News —
and so many others.
Says Arthur Horwitz, current
JN publisher and executive editor:
“By the time of Max Fisher’s arrival
in Detroit, the
community was
already a hotbed of
Zionist activity. He
plugged into this
energy and became
that once-in-a-
generation leader
able to elevate the
Arthur Horwitz
causes he embraced
— and the people
around him. He
was a leader who strategically and
seamlessly combined his Jewish and
secular interests and passions, and
modeled them for others to embrace
and emulate.”
Fisher’s legacy, says Robert
Aronson, was one “of service to the
Jewish people above all — of using
one’s resources and one’s talents and
abilities to advance the needs and the
causes of the Jewish people — that
it is the highest calling to aspire to
work on behalf of the Jewish people.”
Fisher was the epitome of the man
who rose to the occasion on behalf
of Israel and the Jewish people — no
matter the stakes.
It was Theodor Herzl’s imagina-
tion that led to the development of
a Jewish state in the shadows of the
Holocaust. It was Max Fisher’s deter-
mination that helped keep the fledg-
ling state on the Jewish diaspora’s
front burner. •