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A Great Man Was in this Place, and I Knew it Not

By Leonard Fein

A great man was in this place, and I knew it not.

I write of my friend, colleague, and neighbor, Lenny Zakim, who died last week at the age of 46. Lenny was, somewhat improbably, the Anti-Defamation League's New England Director, which makes him sound like a rather office-bound bureaucrat, something he most assuredly was not. I was not among the many people, the very many people, who claimed him as a close friend, but I'd known him over the years as an effective advocate, devoted especially to building bridges across the chasms that here in Boston so often divide group from group - especially but not only Blacks from Jews and Jews from Catholics. I knew him as well as the creator of The Lenny Fund, a low-key philanthropy that funds local projects too modest to register on the radar screens of the more established philanthropies, creator as well of Team Harmony, a glitzy and immensely successful project to teach tolerance to high school students, most of all as the first person Jews in this town were likely to call in a time of Jewish trouble. Now and again, we did a piece of work together, and I was therefore aware not only of his energy and effectiveness, but also of how genial he was.

And I knew, as just about everyone in Boston did, that these last five years he was fighting a deadly cancer, that it was through his own efforts that he defied the doctors' prognoses and extended his days well beyond what was expected when the cancer was first diagnosed. Extended his days, and filled them with the same devotion and achievement that were long his hallmark.

But until his funeral, I'd had no idea how large a swath he'd cut, how many lives he had so profoundly affected, how beloved he was.

Lenny was buried erev Hanukkah. His cousin and his brother euologized him, and his three children, the twins having become b'not mitzvah just three weeks ago. And then, each briefly, eight close friends. Of these, it was perhaps Rabbi Mark Sokoll who best caught the mood and the man: It is no coincidence there are eight of us this erev Hanukkah, he said; Lenny was our shamash, standing a little taller than those around him and lighting us all.

How else explain a funeral attended by some 2000 people, a funeral attended by Senators Kennedy and Kerry, Boston's mayor Thomas Menino, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House, Michael Dukakis, and Bernard Cardinal Law, where none of these notables was among the eulogists, where again and again those who did speak told of how much they'd learned from the deceased, learned especially not to be afraid, especially not to be afraid of difference, and, unspoken but clearly understood, not even to be afraid of death?

He was a man, Bishop William Murphy said, who was without guile. He achieved what he did not by clever manipulation of the systems he confronted, but by the strength of his convictions and force of his example. People took his calls not because of his title or because they feared him but because he was a good man and because his goodness inspired them. The extraordinary funeral was not the product of spin; only love and respect can account for it.

The day of Lenny's death was also the day Professor Daniel Elazar died. Dan was a graduate school classmate of mine at the University of Chicago, and we'd stayed in loose touch through the years, drawn together by overlapping interests in Jewish life and by the fact that we were both political scientists by training. He was much the more learned, widely acknowledged as one of the world's foremost experts on federalism, and his contribution to Jewish life was the contribution of an erudite and devoted scholar. But Dan was also a major league academic entrepreneur, founder of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and, despite crippling polio, a man who traveled the world to lecture and to teach - among other things, to teach and to speak on behalf of the Sephardic heritage that was his pride.

Though our politics were miles apart, we understood each other as comrades, joined not only by shared memories but also by shared concerns. He was a close and careful student of Jewish organizational and communal life, contemporary and historical; I can think of no other scholar with nearly the range or the mastery of that vast arena.

There's a blessing wherein we praise God for the variety of his creatures. Lenny Zakim and Dan Elazar were about as different in manner and method as two people can be, the one lithe and abuzz, the other heavy, sober, one the community organizer, the other the community analyst. Both were, however, exemplars of great courage, Lenny these last years of refusing to be defeated by his disease, Dan through all his adult life pushing forward even as his physical capacity deteriorated. And each contributed greatly to this now diminished and bereaved community. The consolation is that we can be sure the memory of both will be for us a blessing.