Remembering Philanthropist Mandell "Bill" Berman

I first heard the name Bill Berman at Camp Tamarack when I spent a week of winter break staying in a cabin at Berman Village during Winter Camp one year in the mid-1980s. I later had a chance to meet the iconic Jewish philanthropist and nationally known home builder at a Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit event when my father served as the CFO.

That was just a handshake however. It wasn't until my first year out of rabbinical school that I actually had the honor of getting to know Mandell "Bill" Berman. I began working at University of Michigan Hillel as the assistant director in the summer of 2004. The Hillel Foundation is named for Bill and his wife in recognition of the decades of support they provided.

My first encounter with Bill Berman was at a Michigan Hillel board meeting that he attended. He usually had his driver bring him to Ann Arbor, but this time he decided to drive himself. He was 86 at the time and arrived to the meeting late. I saw him in the Men's bathroom and he told me got a speeding ticket on the way to Ann Arbor. Mr. Berman told me that calmly explained to the driver that he wasn't even driving his age and shouldn't receive the ticket. He then laughed at his own story with his memorable chuckle.

A few weeks later, Mr. Berman called to say he wanted to take me out to lunch (he had mentioned his intention after the first board meeting, but I was still pleasantly surprised to get the invitation). I offered to meet him in Detroit for lunch, but he said he enjoyed coming to Ann Arbor to see the campus. We had a wonderful lunch meeting in which he dispensed so much sage advice. I listened intently to each word. I had the distinct honor to have more private lunches with him over the next couple of years in which I got to know this legend. At that year's Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Cleveland, Mr. Berman graciously took the time to speak to our student delegation sharing his thoughts on the Jewish community and inspiring these future leaders. Over the next days at the GA, I was amazed that every time someone saw I was from Michigan, they shared their favorite Bill Berman story with me (everyone had at least one).

2 Bills: President Bill Clinton with Bill Berman at a Hillary Clinton Campaign event in 2016

In Metro Detroit, Bill Berman's name was everywhere. Each year a Jewish professional in the community was honored with the Berman Award. When I would take Jewish teens to a youth group Shabbaton at Camp Tamarack, I'd be sure to let them know it was subsidized by Bill and Madge Berman. The beautiful Berman theater at the JCC has become a typical place to enjoy a concert, watch a film or be entertained with a musical or play. On a national level, the Berman name is likewise everywhere. He cared passionately about the Jewish future and understood the importance of surveys and statistics about the American Jewish community. Bill Berman was a builder when it came to homes, but he was also a visionary builder when it came to the Jewish community.

His volunteer leadership roles are too many to try to enumerate. Some of the more prominent positions included serving as president of the Council of Jewish Federations of North America, a co-founder of the Jewish Education Service of North America, a board member of the Jewish Agency and of the American Joint Distribution Committee. He also funded fellowships at Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He established the Fund for Research on Children with Disabilities at the Myers-JDC-Brooksdale Institute in Israel and chaired the 1990 and 2002 landmark Jewish Population Studies in North America. To further the study of the Jewish Community of North America he was the founder of the Berman Jewish DataBank, now at the Jewish Federations of North America, and of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, now at Stanford University.

Planting Trees for Future Generations

A few weeks ago one of the directors of Michigan BBYO (B'nai Brith Youth Organization) contacted me. She explained that as part of an upcoming retreat, the Jewish teens in BBYO were interested in planting trees near their BBYO Bittker Retreat Center and then dedicating each tree in a ceremony. She had heard that I used to lead such activities for Camp Tamarack in Ortonville, Michigan and asked if I would share my resources. Of course, I sent her my files from several years of these tree planting ceremonies and told her how meaningful they were. 

A week later I was asked to contribute a piece for "The People & The Book" section of the Jerusalem Report magazine that drew inspiration from the Torah portion Kedoshim. Knowing that mitzvot (commandments) for planting trees are given in this parashah, I began writing about my own tree planting experiences, discussing those ceremonies at Camp Tamarack. What follows is my contribution to the Jerusalem Report:

Trees for Grandchildren

The joy of planting for future generations

If I had to guess the first time I ever planted a tree, it was likely as a young preschool child on the playground behind Adat Shalom synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan. I don’t really recall planting that tree, but I know that it was an annual tradition for the little five-year-olds at the shul’s nursery school in the early 1980s.

The next time I was supposed to plant a tree was at a tree planting ceremony outside of Jerusalem during a teen tour following my graduation from high school. However, rather than actually planting trees, we instead donated money for trees to be planted on our behalf the following year since that year was a shmita year, meaning the soil of Israel was being left fallow in a seven-year cycle.

Bar Mitzvah T-Shirts in Africa

It's no secret that many of those cotton t-shirts we wear here in the First World ultimately get donated and wind up in the Third World. Thousands of t-shirts that get printed each year celebrating the losing team in the Super Bowl, NBA Finals and World Series usually get shipped to Africa. And for decades the customary bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah t-shirts that accumulate in teens' closets have been donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be sent to Africa or into impoverished neighborhoods throughout North America. When I lived in New York City, it was not unusual for me to see a homeless man wearing a donated bar mitzvah t-shirt or a Jewish youth group shirt that had been donated before the owner went off to college.

National Public Radio (NPR) did a story the other day on the fate of these donated t-shirts that wind up in Africa. It wasn't the first time such a story had been done. Almost three years ago Mother Jones ran a story titled "When Hooters T-Shirts Go to Africa: Donate an old t-shirt in the US? Someday it might travel to a country like Liberia." And over ten years ago the New York Times published a story that also tracked donated clothes to the Third World in George Packer's article "How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back." The basic premise of these stories is that once you donate an old sweatshirt or t-shirt to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, your old, used clothing takes on a new life somewhere else. We often don't think of who's wearing our old winter coat that we donated, but it does make for an interesting story.