Goodbye, Abe, and thank you - The Jewish Standard

The world feels a little emptier now, without Abe Foxman in it.

The flood of statements extolling him seems to try to fill that hole; of course they can’t, but still they’re interesting. Even though Abe died on Sunday, the flow started immediately, and real feeling comes through the inevitable blandness.

That’s because Abe was an extraordinary man.

He must have been forged by his childhood, in ways that those of us born into easier times can’t imagine. Everyone who survived the Holocaust needed both courage and luck; one without the other wouldn’t be enough. Abe was a child, so the courage wasn’t his, but his parents’ bravery got him through.

And then he — and they — were plunged into a situation of such emotional complexity that they cannot possibly have left it unmarked. Young Abe would have learned about how far love can go, how blinding it can be, and how it can make people either blind to other people’s pain or exquisitely sensitive to it. Abe was sensitized — he was both passionate and compassionate, as his longtime friend, the journalist Gary Rosenblatt, said.

Because he was brought up as a Catholic, churches weren’t foreign to him. He was able to do interfaith work with an open mind and heart. He was able to talk to popes, seeing them as both spiritual leaders and actual people. That’s another rare talent.

Because his parents were able to bring him back to Judaism with love, patience, tact, insight, and humor, he learned the importance of those things, and used them in his work.

Because he and his parents spent years in a DP camp, he knew how hard transitions are, and how they affected people.

Because of the years he and his family spent on an egg farm in south Jersey, he learned how to vaccinate chickens. (True, that skill might have been less useful than the others, but you never do know.)

Throughout all of this, he was able to maintain a sense of humor, of openness, and most of all of optimism, which he ascribed to his background.

I knew Abe for 11 years; I met him on his last day at the ADL, so I saw him in what was a very active retirement. He knew too much to fade quietly into some self-indulgent shadow. Instead, he was always available when I — and scores of other reporters and writers — asked for his opinion.

He cared deeply and truly about the Jewish people. That was not a persona that was helpful at the office; it was one of the deepest truths of his being. He cared passionately and compassionately about the Jews.

His decades at the ADL ensured that he’d know just about everybody either in leadership positions in the Jewish world or in the outside world with an influence over Jews, and he used that knowledge to help his people.

He was honest, straightforward, and strategic, idealistic but not naive.

And his optimism was bone-deep and invigorating; I’m sure I’m not alone in having felt that if he, given his history, could be optimistic, then I could be too.

He was also extraordinarily responsive. If I texted or emailed him, he’d answer. If I wanted a quote — or more likely at least a short discussion — I could have one. And that went both ways. If he wanted a story about anything in the Jewish Standard or the New Jersey Jewish News, he’d get it.

I was far from the only reporter, and we are are far from the only publication, to have benefitted in that way from his generosity.

I have found his metaphor about antisemitism to be so useful that I’ve used it often — with complete attribution, of course. He often said that antisemitism is a kind of slime, a sickness that has lived beneath the surface in this country since its founding. Most of the time it’s contained, but at times the sewer covers are removed and it slithers out, corrupting the ground it oozes over. The covers had been nailed down tightly after World War II, but they hadn’t been cemented — probably they couldn’t be — and more and more of them have been thrown aside since about 2015.

Abe didn’t despair, and he didn’t give up, but he was disheartened enough so that at times it was hard for him to maintain his optimism. He did hold onto it, but now we will not be able to know how he would have continued to do it as the world darkens around us.

I know that I am one of a very large group of people who mourn Abe’s death because we benefitted so much from his life. We offer our condolences to his family and friends. We know that the world has suffered a loss because he is no longer in it, but that it is far better now than it was before he entered it.

He’d end his emails and texts to me with “hugs,” so hugs, Abe. Your memory already is a blessing.

—JP

Opinion