A Memory of Phil Klutznick
By Leonard Fein
Phil Klutznick, who died earlier this month, faded so gradually from the scene -- he was 92 at his death and hadn't been well for some years -- that many of the younger generation may not have recognized his name when they read the obituaries. A pity, that: Phil was not only a major actor in Jewish life; he was an uncommon Jewish communal leader, especially noteworthy for his honesty and his mentshlichkeit.
I knew him only casually before I acceded to the Klutznick Family Chair in Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis University back in 1970. My first clear recollection of him is a letter I received upon being appointed to the chair he'd endowed. In that letter, Phil very pointedly asserted that I must always feel free to express my own views on things, notwithstanding any discomfort those views might cause the Klutznick family. That was a very rare thing for a donor of an endowed chair to say, silence on the matter being then as now the prevailing norm. I was appropriately appreciative. (I no longer recall whether I actually wrote to him of a brainstorm I had at the time, or merely mentioned it to him some years later. Why, I asked, was it necessary for him to endow a chair? Would it not be simpler were he to endow me directly? I was perfectly prepared to become the Philip Klutznick Leonard Fein, and we could split the savings in overhead 50-50.)
Not many years later, Phil was one of the early backers of Moment Magazine, and just a year after that, when Moment was precociously foundering, was instrumental in arranging a significant bank loan for the magazine. (Most oddly, the bank in question went bankrupt, while Moment survived.) And then, over the years, Phil remained helpful, providing financial support for the magazine on pretty nearly an annual basis.
It was during those years that we'd lunch together whenever I visited Chicago, and where I'd hear his stories -- and complaints -- regarding Jewish life. And it was during those years that, virtually alone among the gentry of the Jewish community, he boldly expressed his dovish views regarding the Arab-Israel conflict. The encouragement he thereby and often more directly gave to those of us who thought Menachem Begin was misguided and misguiding, at a time when the expression of such critical views was widely taken to be an act of unacceptable heresy, was immensely important. If a former president of B'nai Brith International, a former chair of the Conference of Presidents, a former president of the World Jewish Congress, a former general chair of the United Jewish Appeal - to name some but scarcely all his leadership positions in Jewish life - could publicly dissent from the then-prevailing views, such views could not be dismissed as outside the boundaries of communal discourse. ("Could not be," but often were. Yet even if the powers-that-were did not take the Klutznick example all that seriously, it did strengthen the spine of the dissenters.)
But it was actually a later episode, in 1987, that led me to appreciate just how rare a mentsh Phil Klutznick was. That was the year in which two very different people offered to purchase Moment, which I'd been publishing and editing for 12 teetering years. The more interesting offer was contingent on our delivering Moment to the purchaser free of debt, no small challenge to a magazine that had lived since its inception with cash trickle rather than cash flow.
Our debts at the time were not large by normal standards. We owed tradespeople some $35,000, nothing at all to banks, our credit worthiness being too laughable for banks to consider lending to us. But $35,000 was a high mountain to climb. We had a loyal group of supporters, but they'd supported our producing the magazine; how could we now turn to them and ask them to subsidize our letting go of it?
Reluctantly, I called Phil. He was direct: "Keep at it until your deadline, then call me and tell me how much is left and I'll take care of it." And so it was, when weeks later we were stuck with $14,000 of remaining debt.
I'm sorry that Phil and I never collaborated on an essay that very much wants writing but that would be unseemly for me to write alone: "The Art of Giving Graciously," we'd have called it. Too often, philanthropists toy with those who are cast in the role supplicant. I well recall the exceedingly wealthy man who came within an inch of establishing a $2 million endowment for Moment, only to let me know some days after his own deadline for a definitive decision that he "couldn't handle so large a gift," that "like all of us, I often say the first thing that comes to my head," that instead he'd send us a contribution of $25,000. I very much wanted to tell him what he could do with his $25,000 check; instead, of course, I swallowed my pride and told him how grateful I was.
For most of us who are involved in institutions that depend on other people's generosity, the act of asking is not easy. Too many of those on whose generosity we depend seem to delight in making it harder -- or, at any rate, are insensitive to the awkwardness the supplicant experiences. Phil Klutznick knew better. May the memory of the righteous be not only for a blessing, but also for an example.
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