Just as the Agency was getting off the ground, tragedy intervened as it had during the days of Weizmann and Marshall. In 1973, Louis Pin- cus died suddenly. Fisher was heartbroken. Pincus had not only been an effective advocate in the WZO for establishing a partnership with Jews in the Diaspora, Fisher had considered him a dear friend.
He was followed in June 1974 by Pinhas Sapir. A former finance minister, Sapir was a chief architect of the Israeli economy and a pow- er broker without peer in the Labor Party. The prime ministership had been his for the asking. Sapir, however, felt comfortable in financial matters and doubted that he had the emotional stamina to send young soldiers into battle. He chose to head the Executive of the Agency. Fisher was delighted. Sapir possessed a pervasive influence among Is - raeli politicos —he could get things done —and his image rivaled that of the prime minister. In addition, Sapir deeply appreciated fund-rais- ers like Fisher, about whom he said: “I see in these people the most precious group that I ever met in my entire life.” Sadly, Sapir died in August 1975.
His successor was Yosef Almogi, the mayor of Haifa and a Labor Party leader. Primarily, he was a political appointment by Prime Min- ister Yitzhak Rabin, who was warring with Shimon Peres within the Labor Party. In 1977, the Likud election victory deposed Labor. In February 1978, Leon Dulzin was elected chairman of the Executive at the World Zionist Congress.
After seven years, the reconstituted Jewish Agency still had its se- vere critics. In an article in the London Jewish Chronicle, David Elias was confidently predicting that the Agency’s days were numbered. Other critics persisted in lectures and in print to expound on why the Agency should be abolished. Much of the criticism still revolved around the inundation of Israeli politics in the Agency.
Fisher appreciated the objections. But it was not until 1977, when Menachem Begin and his Likud Party rose to power, that Fisher felt the Agency was stable enough to withstand a confrontation with the Israeli political machine over who had the final say in selecting the officers of the Agency and the heads of departments. Personally, Fisher liked Begin. He was struck by the contrast of Begin’s history as the
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leader of the Irgun — the militant underground — prior to 1948 and his gentle demeanor and soft voice. Unhappily for Fisher, Begin, like all politicians, jealously guarded the privilege of being able to dispense jobs to his supporters.
One morning, Fisher had an appointment to see Begin. When he entered the prime minister’s office, Begin was standing with a man whom Fisher did not recognize. Fisher greeted Begin and the prime minister replied: “Max, I want you to meet the next treasurer of the Agency, Yoram Aridor.” Fisher said to Begin that, with all due respect for Mr. Aridor, this was not how the system functioned. According to the principle of “advise and consent” in the 1971 partnership agree- ment, the Board of Governors must be consulted about the candidates. Begin demonstrated that he was not always soft-spoken. He became, says Fisher, “quite upset,” and insisted that appointments to the Agen- cy were the prerogative of the ruling party in Israel and in the WZO. Fisher answered: “That’s not how we’re going to do things anymore.” Aridor was rejected by the philanthropists, who also rejected Begin’s second choice for the post, Raphael Kotlowitz, whose sole qualification was his loyalty to Begin and the Likud. In a gesture of conciliation, Fish- er and the other philanthropists accepted Kotlowitz as head of the Immi- gration and Absorption Department. Five-and-a-half years later, though, Fisher was in Begin’s office telling him that Kotlowitz had overly polit - icized his department —in disregard of BOG policies. Begin protested, and Fisher replied that Kotlowitz would not be reappointed.
Fisher then sent a letter to Dulzin, the chairman of the Executive, reminding him that the fund-raisers held a veto over Jewish Agency appointments. Fisher’s successor as chairman of the Board of Gover- nors, Jerold Hoffberger, was in place when Kotlowitz was ousted. This was the first time the Board of Governors had been able to discharge a senior department head for lack of competency. And the decision of the philanthropists stood, despite Kotlowitz’s petitioning the new prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, to intercede, and even challenging the BOG’s ruling in an unsuccessful civil court case.
On the heels of this victory, the philanthropists forged ahead to per- suade their Israeli partners that department directors should be select-
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ed by merit, not political connections. Although Fisher was proud of these gains, he saw that the politicization of the Agency would endure to some degree, a byproduct of its entanglement with the government of Israel. Partisan politics infiltrated social and fiscal policies, and ap - pointments at the lower administrative levels. But merit had been ele- vated to a qualification, and this, Fisher felt, was a vast improvement from 1971.
***
The politicization of the Agency was not the greatest challenge that Fisher faced during his tenure; nor did he see it as the gravest danger to the survival of the Agency. Rather, it was the division between the members of the World Zionist Organization and the fund-raisers on the question of who was actually a Zionist. Fisher’s response to the debate, oft repeated while he was BOG chairman, was that “there are no non-Zionists at the Jewish Agency. History has made Zionists of us all.” In other words, the non-Zionist label had lost its meaning, because everyone working with the Agency was hoping to strengthen Israel. Fisher termed these men and women “new Zionists,” and an ideologi- cal commitment to live in Israel was not a prerequisite to qualify. Gen- erally, it was recognized that the WZO and the Diaspora were crucial to Israel’s survival, and the philanthropists’ money and efforts were critical to the functioning of the Agency.
To heal the rift between the two factions, Fisher and Dulzin insti- tuted the Caesarea Process, which began in February 1981, when the Board of Governors convened a special meeting at the seaside resort of Caesarea. Speaking to the conference, Fisher said: “The key issue today is not how many of us belong to Zionist parties. The key issue is how do we strengthen the Agency? How do we make the Agency the strongest single link between Israel and the Diaspora?”
Dulzin spoke next, telling the audience that the conference offered an opportunity to understand each other. “In this connection,” he said, “I want to tell you a story about Max Fisher. A year or two after we reconstituted the Jewish Agency, Max and I appeared before a press
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conference in Tel Aviv, and he was asked what is his belief as a non-Zi- onist. He said: ‘We are one people, we have a mutual responsibility to each other, Israel is the center of Jewish life, and we have to do ev- erything possible to bring a maximum of Jews to Israel; also, we have to be concerned for the future of our Jewish children and give them a Jewish education.’When Max finished, I was asked what I think. I said I believe more or less the same thing — the only difference is that I proclaim myself a Zionist.”
From the start, Fisher had maintained that the true discord between the WZO and the philanthropists was “functional, not ideological.” Thus, the intention of the Caesarea Process was to examine the de- cade-long partnership between the WZO and Diaspora fund-raising bodies in Agency operations. Six commissions emerged, dealing with goals and objectives, governance, immigration, Jewish education, fi - nances, and fiscal policy and management. Fisher’s hope was that as the Agency became more efficient, the WZO would see the value of the increased efficiency and not resent the greater voice of the philan - thropists in the allocation of funds.
His efforts were rewarded. As Charlotte Jacobson, one of the best- known Zionist leaders in the United States, observed: “It was worth the trip to Israel just to participate in this exchange.” Another longtime Zionist remarked: “Thanks to Fisher, we discovered that we are one family with one heart.”
Philosophically, though, there were Zionists like Uri Gordon, head of the Agency’s Youth Aliyah Department, who refused to relinquish the concept that every Jew belonged in Israel. In his essay, “My Zion- ism,” Gordon writes: “I was brought up to believe that going to kibbutz was the most important thing one could do. Kibbutz, they told me, is the highest rung on life’s ladder. What kind of ladder does today’s Zionist movement offer? Today the movement is afraid to reject the Diaspora. Yes, I want strong Jewish communities, but I have a Zionist world view which says, ‘Israel’s the target.’”
The hard-core Zionists, Fisher felt, would never be swayed, but he had other serious concerns —these ones regarding the philanthropists. Since 1971, he had been worried that the fund-raisers would grow in-
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different to the Agency because they had no say in its operation. Out of this concern, Fisher became a prime supporter of Project Renewal, a program that formalized links between the Diaspora and communities within Israel. Project Renewal twinned neighborhoods. The Jewish Federation in Detroit, for example, became responsible for the revital- ization of Ramla, while the NewYork community took on the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah. Project Renewal also nurtured Fisher’s overall objective. As Zelig Chinitz points out in A Common Agenda: “Project Renewal succeeded in creating a direct bond between Israel and Diaspora Jews, whereby each has had a personal stake in the pro- cess.... [It] transcended the conventional philanthropic relationship — that is to say, the benefactor became the beneficiary as well.”
The enterprise that most emotionally engaged Fisher was Jewish education. Interestingly enough, it was the World Zionist Organization that pushed for it, and Fisher found himself on the opposite side of the table from the American philanthropists, who were initially reluctant to earmark funds for education, since they believed that their respon- sibility was limited to rescuing Jews in distress. But beginning at the Caesarea Conference, Fisher started talking about the need “to save Jewish souls.” He was referring to education in the Diaspora and told the Board of Governors that teaching youngsters about Judaism and Israel should be added to the traditional goals of the Agency.
Leon Dulzin remembers: “When Pincus died, I spoke to Max and said: ‘Let’s form a Pincus Fund for Education.’ At first, everyone was against it. Except Max Fisher. I’ll never forget: Max said to me ‘I never had a Jewish education. I miss not having one. I lived in a very dramat- ic time of the Jewish people —the Holocaust and the founding of Isra- el. So these things brought me here. Who knows what will happen with my children?’ Max persuaded everyone on the Board of Governors. He did it by telling them about himself. It had tremendous impact.”
Two entities were created for Jewish Diaspora education: the Pin- cus Fund, which Fisher chaired and which, from 1975 until 1988, fur- nished $13.7 million in grants. And then there was the Joint Program. This was headed by Mort Mandel and spent $18.2 million.
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***
Of all the undertakings in which Fisher immersed himself, the Jewish Agency for Israel was the one that was molded most closely in his im- age. It was the institutional embodiment of realpolitik, a pragmatist’s dream —evolving, filled with philosophical and procedural tensions. It was noble at times, petty at others; it was flawed —but it worked. After twenty years what will stand as Fisher’s greatest achievement at the Jewish Agency is the singular fact of its reconstituted existence. Israeli political scientist Dr. Daniel Elazar explains: “The Jewish Agency is important in two ways. First, it is the vehicle through which the Jewish people as a whole —in the Diaspora and in Israel — have been able to participate in a systematic way in building Israel. Second- ly, the Agency has become the nexus of what I call the ‘world Jewish polity,’ which is the organized governance of world Jewry. After 1948, Jews had to rebuild their relations to each other around the fact that we now had a politically sovereign state. At the same time, we also had a Diaspora, which somehow had to be linked to this state if we were going to keep the Jewish people connected. The Jewish Agency, through the reconstitution, provided this link. In my book, The Jewish Polity, I discuss three types of Jewish political leaders: constitutional founders, constitutional interpreters and statesmen. I include Max as a statesman, because he’s the only Diaspora leader I know of who saw the necessity of having this link. Whether he used the term or not, Max was a polity builder. He was not seeking a more streamlined method for giving money to Israel. He had this vision of a polity, in the larger sense, and he stuck with it. That was his accomplishment.”
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Chapter 11
PERSONAL BUSINESS
ONCE MAX FISHER added his work at the Jewish Agency to his other commitments, his life became an unending series of telephone calls and meetings from Detroit to Jerusalem, from Washington to New York. “For a long while there,” says Marjorie Fisher, “Max just came home, changed clothes and left.”
Marjorie, beginning in the 1960s, began to drink more heavily. Max, she thought, was unaware of it. Initially, she did not see the problem and only noticed that she had less patience, felt on edge. Her most overwhelming feeling was of loneliness.
She recalls: “Several nights a week, after dinner, I would take all four of the children on the bed with me. Everyone would get in their nightgowns and pajamas. They’d ask me questions; we’d talk about anything they wanted to discuss. Little Margie would fall asleep and they’d carry her back to [her room]. That’s what we would do when Max was away.”
For Marjorie, the answer seemed to be to accompany Max on his trips. “We had to go here,” says Marjorie, “and we had to go to there. I was torn. I went with him, but I had children at home. Julie needed me to go with her for shoes. Mary needed to go to the dentist. I felt guilty about leaving them. But after we got to where we were going, I hardly saw Max. He would be in meetings from seven o’clock in the morning until midnight. I’d sit in the hotel room with a stack of books. Traveling with him was fine if I wanted a long rest.”
Marjorie may have felt forced to lead an event-filled life more fa - miliar to the wives of politicians, but she did not feel the typical con- straints of a political wife. “Their husbands are always running for
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office,” she says. “Mine wasn’t.” Therefore, she considered herself free to use her sense of humor to lessen the demanding aspects of her and Max’s social obligations. And her behavior sometimes produced unusual quasi-geopolitical results.
One afternoon, Marjorie’s friend, Lisa Anderson, phoned her in Franklin and told her that she and her husband John had asked the Princess of Morocco to visit. Lisa was calling to invite the Fishers to join them for dinner.
“Do you speak French?” Lisa asked Marjorie.
“High-school French,” Marjorie answered.
“I’m having fourteen for dinner and I’m trying to find people who speak French. You have to come.”
“Max doesn’t speak French.”
“Don’t worry about Max. Morocco’s ambassador to the United Na- tions [Ahmed Taibi Benhima] wants to meet Max. You come and talk to the princess.”
After Lisa hung up the phone, Marjorie sat, holding the receiver and thinking about the invitation. Then she quickly dialed the Andersons’ number.
“Lisa,” she said, “do you know who you invited? You invited a Jew with the Arabs?”
“I know. They want to meet you.”
“Fine. But the day after your party, you come aboard the Marmara, and I’ll have lunch for your guests.”
Marjorie and Max went to the Andersons’ for dinner. Afterward, with Max deep in conversation with Ambassador Benhima, Marjorie sat on the couch with the princess, and by her own account, “was get- ting along pretty well with her high-school French.” She asked the princess what she did during the day in Morocco.
“I play Gin Rummy,” the princess replied. “I love it more than anything.”
Marjorie recalls: “I thought that the princess might be a bit bored with my French because I can’t carry on much of a conversation. So I asked her if she wanted to play cards.”
Lisa Anderson supplied a new deck. Marjorie unwrapped the cello-
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phane, took the cards out of the box and shuffled them. “What shall we play for?” Marjorie asked. “Whatever you like,” the princess said.
“Well, let’s make it exciting. Let’s play for Israel and Morocco. Two hands out of three.”
“Splendid.”
Marjorie dealt and won the first hand. Then she won the second. “The princess,” recalls Marjorie, “was so upset. But I told her not to be depressed, that tomorrow I would give her a chance to win back Mo- rocco. So we had them for lunch on our boat and the princess couldn’t wait to play again. As soon as lunch was finished, she said: ‘Where are the cards?’ I won two straight hands and so Israel owned Morocco. The princess was literally depressed that she had lost her country, but the afternoon ended nicely and then I forgot about it.”
Several months later, Marjorie and Max were attending a dinner at Israel’s Embassy in Washington. While chatting with another cou- ple, Marjorie turned and saw that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had just entered the room. “I adored Golda,” says Marjorie, “She was straightforward. With Golda, it was ‘These are the facts. Let’s make up our minds.’ But she was also terribly sensitive. I remember when she traveled all over Israel to pay condolence calls to the families of boys who were killed. Every Israeli soul was precious to her.”
Marjorie walked over to Golda, kissed her and said: “You look wonderful.”
“You listen to me,” Golda snapped, pointing her finger and yet bare - ly containing a smile. “Don’t you ever, ever play Israel for Morocco in a card game again. You could have lost.”
“Why are you screaming at me? All you have to do is go pick up Morocco. You own it.”
“Next time, you play for the United States against Morocco. You could have lost.”
“No, I couldn’t have,” Marjorie retorted. “And why are you yelling at me? I got you Morocco. With no bloodshed.”
Golda, now openly smiling, said: “Don’t you ever do that again.” Then she kissed Marjorie on the cheek.
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***
Like many men of wealth, Fisher had regularly received crackpot mail and phone calls — strangers requesting small fortunes or asking to use his box seats at Tigers games or hurling anti-Semitic slurs at him. However, once his connection to the Nixon White House and Israeli leaders became known, the letters and phone calls took a terrifying turn: his life and the lives of his family were threatened. Asecurity de- tail was hired to guard the house in Franklin. Soon after, assassination plots against Fisher surfaced — plots originating with Libyan leader Muamar Qaddafi and the PLO. The White House ordered protection for Fisher from the FBI, but the threat of assassination continued, be- coming familiar to international experts on terrorist and anti-terrorist activities. For instance, Amos Aricha, former chief superintendent of the Israeli police force who became a novelist, published a political thriller, Hour of the Clown, in which the Mossad and the CIA uncover a plan to assassinate a group of men who are “known for their un- qualified support of the Jewish state,” among them, Senator Daniel Moynihan, Senator Jacob Javits and “Max Fischer [sic], adviser to the [president] on Jewish affairs.”
The plots and the around-the-clock security men made an already complex home life even more complicated. Julie Fisher Cummings re- calls: “It was a very difficult time for our family to begin with. The FBI came and spoke to the children. We were not allowed to go to school alone; we were told to memorize the locations of the police stations between our house and school, and if we ever believed we were being followed, to head straight there. I’ll never forget coming down to the kitchen in the mornings and seeing shotguns on the table. It was just sort of hard living like that.”
Max was unnerved by the thought of an assassination attempt, but his attitude toward it was grounded in his pragmatism. He knew that if the 1960s proved nothing else, it was that anyone could kill anyone — John Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy —the list was as long as it was tragic. Max had no intention of being
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scared off, and besides, there was little he could do about it. He told Marjorie that he wouldn’t even be able to hate the person who pulled the trigger. All he could do was hire extra guards and heed the advice of the FBI man in charge of his case, Special Agent Jack Jackson. Fortunately, Special Agent Jackson appreciated the pressure that Max was under, because Max, along with Marjorie’s brother-in-law, Stanley Burkoff, were inclined to test his patience.
One evening, Stanley, his wife, Joyce, and Marjorie drove to Max’s office to pick him up. They were going to dinner at the London Chop House and then to a show at the Fisher Theatre.
“I drove into the garage of the Fisher Building,” says Stanley Burkoff, “since the FBI wouldn’t let Max stand outside. Jack Jackson was there behind the wheel of a nondescript dark green Ford. He wait- ed for Max to come down on the elevator and get in my car. Then he told us: ‘You drive to the Chop House. I’ll be right behind you. When you go into the restaurant, somebody will already be there. I’ll be with you through dinner and before you go to the show.’”
“At the Chop House,” continues Joyce Burkoff, “Marjorie and I tried to figure out who the other FBI fellow was. We were convinced it was a guy at the bar who was watching our table in the mirror. It was the most obvious thing you ever saw. When we were finished eating, I said to Jack Jackson: ‘That tail you planted was awful.’ He said: ‘Why? Who do you think it is?’ I said: ‘That fellow at the bar.’ He said: ‘You’re wrong. It was the guy sitting behind your table.’”
“After the show,” says Stanley Burkoff, “Jack Jackson tells me to take my normal route home, down the Lodge Expressway, and he’ll be in his car behind us. I start driving. Joyce is in the front with me and Marjorie’s in back with Max. Kidding around, I said to Max: ‘Do you think that I could lose this guy?’”
Without hesitation, Max replied: “Good idea. Try it.”
“I step on the gas pedal,” says Stanley, “and I’m going ninety miles an hour, and weaving in and out of traffic. I keep checking the mirrors and everyone else is looking around, out the windows, and no one can spot the FBI car. I’m sure I’d lost the tail. Max is really hysterical. He can’t stop laughing.”
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As Stanley pulled into the Fishers’ driveway, he glanced in his rear- view mirror. Jackson’s dark green Ford was right behind him.
“How did he do that?” Stanley said to Max once they were out of the car.
“It’s my business,” Jackson answered.
Max was still laughing when Burkoff asked the FBI agent: “Was I any good?”
Jackson looked at Stanley and Max, and sadly shook his head. “You were fair,” he said. “But both you guys better forget about a life of crime.”
***
For Max’s younger children —Mary, Phillip, Julie and Margie — the central fact of their childhood and teenage years was that their father was rarely present. (By the late 1960s, Jane Fisher was no longer living with Max and Marjorie. She and her husband Larry Sherman had three children of their own —David, Sylvia and Scott.)
Says Mary Fisher: “Up until 1968, Dad had always been busy. But his work had mainly been in Michigan —for Romney, the local fed- eration, the Torch Drive and his business interests. After Nixon’s first election, though, he was working nationally, and in Israel, and he was gone all the time. I remember wanting to tell him: ‘Look, Dad, these people are not as important as we are.’ I understood what his priorities were, but that didn’t mean I liked them or that I didn’t try to change them every chance I got.”
But changing his priorities was impossible for Max. He brought the same blind energy to politics and the Jewish Agency that he had brought to the oil business. Engulfed by these commitments, he was unable to scale back. Even on those evenings when he was in Franklin and promised himself to focus his attention on his wife and children, he was constantly being called to the telephone, which was, as an inter- viewer once remarked, his “favorite instrument.” A photograph, often referred to by the Fisher family, shows Max sleeping on a couch, his right hand still pressing a “telephone” to his ear — long after he had dozed off and the phone had been pried from his fingers.
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However, there were times when everything appeared to be in place with his wife and children — fishing jaunts to the Bahamas, parents’ day at summer camps and school graduations. Max fretted that his absence would rob his children of the necessary discipline, and so he attempted to rein them in by spanking them when they mis- behaved. Margie Fisher Aronow recalls that her father “would have difficulty with it. He’d say: ‘This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you,’ but his heart wasn’t into punishing us, and he’d start laughing. We used to put books in our pajama bottoms, which made him laugh harder.”
On occasion, it would strike Max with excruciating clarity that he was abandoning one of life’s grander pleasures by not being around to watch his son and daughters grow up, and he would turn to Marjorie and say: “I miss the children. There’s never enough time.”
“And the children,” says Marjorie, “never knew it. Max is so qui- et about the way he feels. But he told me over and over again: ‘I’ve missed so much.’”
Max decided that one way he could rectify the situation was to bring his children with him to meetings or on his travels. After graduating high school, Mary went with him to Israel and California; Julie used to sit on his lap at business conferences; Margie traveled with him to Sa- lem, Ohio, when his high school named him alumnus of the year. And in January 1971, Phillip, at the age of twenty, had his first extended period alone with Max when he accompanied him to Israel.
They almost didn’t make the trip. William Fisher had suffered an- other heart attack and was admitted to the intensive care unit at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach. Unhappy about being confined, he tried to escape from his room. As someone who had unremittingly followed the news, William was also unhappy about being deprived of his radio. But Max had just received a series of death threats and several news services reported them. Max’s sister Gail, worried that their father would hear them, removed the radio from beside his bed. The doctors assured Max that William was in no imminent danger. He could go to Israel with Phillip.
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***
The late 1960s and early 1970s were fertile ground for father-son dis- sonance. The cultural antagonism was cast around what was then de- scribed as “the Generation Gap.” Logically enough, each side had a uniform. Fathers were neatly barbered and wore pinstripe suits. Sport- ing beards and hair past their shoulders, sons dressed in work shirts and bleached denims.
“I went off to the University of Hartford in 1969,” says Phillip Fish- er. “I thought going to Connecticut —actually, getting away from De- troit — would be the best thing for me. I was really striving to form an image of myself, to get out from under my father’s shadow. I had been pretty sheltered in high school and I moved into my dorm room and met my first hippie. By Christmas break, my hair was long; I had a motorcycle —the whole nine yards. Dad was Establishment, and he wasn’t very happy about these developments. He gave me a hard time, particularly about my hair.”
Although fathers and sons were often at loggerheads over cultural styles, for many the greatest rift occurred over America’s involvement in Vietnam. Max and Phillip disagreed mightily about the war, and their debate intensified in the spring of 1970, when President Nixon announced that he had ordered U.S. troops into Cambodia. Nixon’s announcement ignited antiwar protests on college campuses across the country. At Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsman fired on protesters, killing four students. The next day, 450 colleges and uni- versities went on strike. Antiwar rallies escalated into riots. A national day of student protest was scheduled for May 9 in Washington, D.C. Max supported Nixon’s decision, believing that the United States had to confront the Soviet Union wherever the Kremlin chose to fight — whether in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. On May 2, Max wrote the president: “My congratulations to you. It takes great cour- age to make the decision you did on Cambodia, when you knew there would be an outcry against it from people who do not have the facts and who do not appreciate what long-range effects it might have on this country and the world.”
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Phillip, at the University of Hartford, was considering leaving school and joining the protesters. He phoned his father.
“Dad,” he asked, “what’s Nixon doing?”
Max explained the geopolitical reasoning behind the U.S. push into Cambodia. Phillip said that the whole war was wrong — how could this latest installment of it be right?
Max thought for a moment. He recalled how unyielding his father had been about what he should do and what he shouldn’t. Was that the way he wanted to deal with his son? No, he decided, it wasn’t. “Look,” Max said, “you asked for my side of the story and I gave it
to you. But it’s your decision —you make up your mind.” Phillip left school to join the protest marches.
Though Max was a believer in conducting important business via the phone, he did not feel that parenting fell into that category. So the trip to Israel in 1971 was going to be, in part, an opportunity for father and son to become reacquainted.
On the morning of January 23, Phillip and Max flew from Detroit to Washington, D.C. While his father attended a two-hour meeting at the State Department to discuss William Rogers’s conception of land for peace in the Middle East, Phillip toured the capital. Their next stop was New York City, where Max, with leaders from the United Jewish Appeal and Council of Jewish Federations, attended meetings on the upcoming reconstitution of the Jewish Agency. Phillip took another tour. Late that afternoon, they left for Tel Aviv. On the flight, they talk - ed about Phillip’s schooling, what he enjoyed about college and what he found difficult, and his plans for the future. When they stepped off the plane at Lod Airport, an Israeli man who worked for the Jewish Agency approached them and said: “Mr. Fisher, I am very sorry to have to tell you that your father has died.”
Recalls Phillip: “My father stopped; he froze. I’m used to him mak- ing split-second decisions, but not now. He stopped for a full minute. It was as if he were praying. I said: ‘Dad, I’m so sorry.’ But he was oblivious to me or to anyone else.”
Finally, Max, in control again, told Phillip: “I’ve got to see Golda and Dayan, and President [Zalman] Shazar. When I’ve finished, you’ll
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stay in Israel and I’ll go to Detroit and arrange everything. Then I’ll come back next week and pick you up and we’ll go home.”
Phillip said that he would prefer to return to the United States with his father; he didn’t want him to be alone. Max looked at him and nod- ded. Then they went to visit Golda Meir. The prime minister hugged Max and offered her condolences. Defense Minister Dayan walked in. Golda served coffee and cookies, and Phillip sat in as they discussed Secretary of State Rogers’s proposals. The discussion lasted for an hour and a half. Afterward, Max and Phillip rode to President Shazar’s house. Max spoke to the president for an hour regarding plans for the June reconstitution of the Agency. Late that afternoon, Max and Phillip returned to New York and then caught a flight to Detroit.
***
Funeral services for William Fisher, eighty-two, were held on Janu- ary 27, in Southfield, Michigan. In a private room at the Ira Kaufman Chapel, before the crush of family and friends gathered, Max stood over his father’s open casket. Even in death, William’s face retained its determination. Max stroked his father’s hair and turned to his niece, Sharon Ross Medsker, saying “Dad always liked that.”
The squabbles between Max and William in Salem and during their salad days at the Keystone plant were long forgotten. Until the end, though, their relationship was unusually formal. At one point, after Mollie died in the summer of 1969, Max invited his father to attend a White House dinner with him. William refused without explanation. At the dinner, Max was seated with President Nixon. The president offered to sign Max’s place card as a memento. Max asked him to in- scribe it to his father, which Nixon did. Max later presented the card to William, who pocketed it and said nothing.
Norris Friedlander, William’s accountant in Florida who did double duty as a surrogate son, says that “William was very proud of Max and loved to hear someone compliment him, but he would never tell a stranger: ‘My son’s such a success in business and is a friend of the president and Israel’s prime minister.’ Bill Fisher had an East Europe-
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an Russian mentality. He couldn’t let himself go. I know something about that because my family came from the same place that Bill came from. They were reticent people. It was how they lived. So Bill’s ways did not surprise me —not a bit.”
Nor should William’s ways have surprised Max, since they essen- tially mirrored his own. And it was not only a penchant for reticence that they had in common. In his eulogy for William, Rabbi Irwin Groner remarked on traits that those familiar with both men claim were inter- changeable facets of their personalities. “There was,” said Groner “a certain dominant quality about Bill Fisher that one sensed in every encounter with him. He lived by fundamental and fixed principles to which he offered his steadfast loyalty and his unswerving dedication. He was a man for whom the standards of integrity conveyed great meaning. His word was his bond.”
William and Max may have been much more alike than otherwise, but there remained an unmistakable — and somewhat mysterious — distance between them. In commenting on the scope of William’s life, Rabbi Groner unwittingly located the barricade that divided the father from the son. Said Groner. “Bill belonged to a generation of pioneers who came to an unknown land and who coped with strange and dif- ficult circumstances. They were sustained on this odyssey by a vision of freedom and of peace, and by the hope of giving their children an opportunity for a better life.”
William’s resoluteness provided Max with opportunities that were unavailable to a Jew in a Russian shtetl. Yet it was William’s fate to rear an equally resolute son who, in his own manner and on his own terms, was also a pioneer. Of necessity, Max’s perceptions of freedom and peace were moreAmericanized than William’s. They were a product of a small, turn-of-the-century town and an efflorescing nation in love with progress and poised on the threshold of a technological gold rush. Thus, Max’s goals contained ideals of economic and social potential for American Jews that projected his father’s immigrant aspirations beyond William’s bravest dreams. If, in moments, William felt left behind, then perhaps that is simply the bittersweet lot of fathers who are courageous and industrious enough to hand their sons a better world.
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William understood the breadth of Max’s accomplishments — how far the son had traveled from the gloomy steerage of the ship that had brought the father to Ellis Island in 1906.
Not long after William was buried next to Mollie at Clover Hill, Max was sifting through his father’s personal effects. Tucked safely in the top drawer of a bureau, Max found the place card that President Nixon had signed.
***
Of all the friends that Fisher made in business, philanthropy and poli- tics, two men can be judged to have grown closest to him: Al Taubman and Henry Ford II. Taubman’s friendship with him began in earnest in the early 1960s. Fisher’s friendship with Ford dates to a few years before, in the late 1950s, when Ford’s first wife, Anne, was raising money for the Detroit opera. But Fisher and Ford became particularly close during Romney’s 1962 campaign for governor.
Their backgrounds could not have been more different. Fisher was the son of Jewish immigrants; Ford was the WASP heir to one of the world’s premier industrial dynasties whose grandfather, Henry I, was an ardent backer of anti-Semitic publications that were treasured in Hitler’s Third Reich. But Henry II’s antipathy for his grandfather was well known. Henry Ford I, an imperious man, had cruelly mistreated Henry II’s father, Edsel, who died before the age of fifty. Explaining his father’s death to a friend, Henry II commented: “Grandad killed my father.”
Henry Ford II was eager to distance himself from his grandfather’s reputation. For example, after Chaim Weizmann became the first pres - ident of Israel, Henry presented him with a new Lincoln limousine. There were only two of its kind in existence. Henry gave the other one to President Harry S. Truman. Twenty years later, Ford sponsored Fisher and Alan E. Schwartz for membership to the Detroit Club, which had a policy of excluding Jews.
Today, according to Tim Kiska, author of Detroit’s Powers & Per- sonalities, Schwartz is a “legal patriarch [with] the best Rol-o-dex in
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town,” who “helped build the Honigman, Miller, Schwartz & Cohn law firm, the most prestigious Detroit legal shop begun in the last forty years.” But in 1952, when Schwartz returned to Detroit from Harvard Law School, he was struggling to win a spot for himself, and Fisher, as he had done with Taubman, took him under his wing.
Explaining the problem at the Detroit Club, Schwartz says that “Henry just thought it was time that they had some Jewish members. Max and I agreed. So Henry and Joe Hudson sponsored us. On our first try, the board turned us down.” When Schwartz learned that he and Fisher had been rejected by the Detroit Club, he phoned Fisher and said: “Well, Max, how do we deal with this? What do you think we should say about it?”
Fisher answered: “Alan, you don’t understand it. This isn’t our problem. It’s the Detroit Club’s problem. They now have to wrestle with the question of whether they were really prepared to open up to Jews or not. Just let it sit. Don’t let it concern you.”
A year later, Fisher and Schwartz were approached again by Ford to join the club and were accepted. More Jewish members followed. Schwartz had the chance to observe the Fisher-Ford friendship and says, at bottom, the two men just “trusted each other. Henry had a lot of confidence in Max because he was a self-made man who had been so successful in every sense —financially, socially and politically. Henry felt very comfortable with him as the person whom he could confide in and who wasn’t seeking anything from Henry. They were pals.” Henry’s son, Edsel B. Ford II, who in April 1991 was named presi- dent and CEO of Ford Motor Credit, believes that his father and Fish- er grew so close because “there were few people in the world who were at the same power level as my father. Max was one of them.” In addition, says Edsel, “Max was the angel on my father’s shoulder. He talked everything over with him. Max is the great calmer, and my father was impulsive. Max was willing to listen to him. He is the kind of man who can talk to the president about a global issue one minute and then the next minute he’s discussing a mundane personal problem with someone else.”
Fisher’s ability to listen and calmly offer suggestions was some-
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thing that Edsel valued after he graduated from college and entered the family business. They were trying years for the great-grandson of the company’s founder; the Ford mantle, he says, is not easy to wear, and Edsel had his troubles with his father.
“When I couldn’t get through to my father,” says Edsel, “I used to use Max. I could say things to him that I couldn’t say to my father and then Max would talk to Dad. More than anyone, Max has been a men- tor for me. Generally, I had a wonderful relationship with my father, but he was Henry Ford first and foremost and that’s very difficult. It was very hard for him, and hard for me being his son. Max helped me when I was frustrated. I would say: ‘Max, Dad’s not listening.’”
In Henry Ford, Fisher saw someone who “honestly does things from his heart. [But] he finds it very hard, quite often, to express his emo - tions. I’d say ‘Come on, Henry, why don’t you let it go?’ But really, he finds that side of things pretty difficult.”
Regarding his relationship with Fisher, Ford told an interviewer: “I’ve always felt that I could count on Max when I was in trouble.” And Ford was well acquainted with trouble. Fisher helped him through upheaval at Ford Motor Company, the dissolution of his sec- ond marriage to Cristina, and saw him through the scandal that erupted when Ford was arrested for drunk driving in California with his girl- friend, Kathleen King DuRoss, beside him. Along with Marjorie, Max encouraged the romance between Ford and DuRoss. She later became Ford’s third and final wife.
In February 1972, when the Fords and Fishers visited Israel togeth- er, Henry was still married to Cristina. The two couples flew from En - gland with Irving Bernstein, executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal, and Walter Hayes, an English friend of Henry who served as a public-relations officer at Ford. Henry had decided to visit Israel to determine whether Ford Motor Company might supply auto- mobile components to an Israeli businessman, Joe Boxenbaum, who had recently opened an assembly plant in Nazareth.
The deal was not without economic risks. According to Walter Hayes “the Arab boycott offices in the Middle East were alert and alive to companies setting up in Israel, and ... the prospect of Ford being
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placed on the boycott list could probably be taken for granted.... Other companies, some of them household names, had closed subsidiaries in Israel to protect their bigger and more profitable Arab markets.” Discussing the boycott with Fisher, Ford told him: “Nobody’s gon- na tell me what to do.”
The first day in Israel, Teddy Kollek, the burly indefatigable mayor of Jerusalem, guided the group on a tour of the Old City. Kollek, who had known Fisher for nearly two decades, held him in the highest es- teem, because, he says, “many men like Max would’ve stayed home and pampered themselves. But he feels a responsibility for Israel. And when he’s here he doesn’t throw his weight around. He’s very sensitive to the complicated nuances of life in Israel.”
One of these complexities was the ailing Israeli economy. During the week, Fisher introduced Ford to Israeli leaders: Golda Meir, Shi- mon Peres, Abba Eban and David Ben-Gurion. The politics surround- ing Arab oil were frequently the focus of conversation.
Fisher was impressed with how thoroughly Henry had prepared for these meetings. Yet when he questioned Ford about them, Henry smiled modestly and replied: “It was over my head. I didn’t understand half of what they were saying.” Fisher answered with a phrase that he in- variably used when Ford was being self-deprecating or sidestepping his obvious emotional reaction: “Henry,” Fisher said. “You’re full of shit.” Ford expressed interest in seeing the Suez Canal, so early one morn- ing, Max, Henry, Walter Hayes, Irving Bernstein and his nineteen- year-old son, Robert, who was spending the year living on a kibbutz, hopped on a twenty-eight-seat French Frelon helicopter in Jerusalem and headed for the Sinai.
In Henry, his affectionate biography of Henry Ford II, Walter Hayes writes: “We were over the Sinai Desert ... when the helicopter shud- dered as though it had met bad weather and then began to gyrate as if wounded. Henry fastened his seat belt; I was torn between the desire to do the same and get my camera out. I managed to do both before we hit the sand with an almighty thud.... We piled out of the Frelon onto the Sinai, which was covered with shells of some snail-like creature and stretched forever.”
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A rotor blade had snapped, and while the pilot radioed for another helicopter, Fisher set off on a stroll.
Irving Bernstein called: “Max, where are you going?”
Ford quipped: “Don’t bother him. He’s looking for oil.”
Actually, Fisher was looking for oil. The shells littering the sand were, Fisher believed, signs that an ancient sea had once covered the area. And that could signal oil below.
However, Fisher’s exploration was cut short. Within twenty min- utes, the relief helicopter landed and the pilot stepped out. Before any- one could climb in, Ford asked the two pilots to stand next to each other and remove their aviator headgear. The two young men appeared dumbfounded by the request, but they complied. Underneath his head- gear, the first pilot wore a yarmuIke —the skull cap worn by observant Jewish men. But the second pilot was not wearing one.
Nodding to himself as if he had finally solved a knotty problem, Ford said: “I want the religious guy flying the new helicopter.” “What?” Fisher asked, incredulous.
“It can’t hurt,” Ford replied. “He got us through the crash. No use taking any chances.”
The pilots explained that it was against regulations for them to swap helicopters.
Ford said: “Max, can’t we do something about this?”
Irving Bernstein had an idea. He radioed Bir Gafgafa, headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Sinai, and was patched through to Hakirya — Israel’s version of the Pentagon — in Tel Aviv. Bernstein reached Ezer Weizman, who was then chief of the air force, and ex- plained Ford’s reluctance to fly with a nonobservant Jew at the controls. Weizman started laughing so hard that Bernstein began to break up as well. At last, Weizman gave the pilots permission to switch helicopters. As they boarded for the flight to the Canal, Ford was obviously relieved. Two days later, Ford visited Joe Boxenbaum’s assembly plant in Nazareth. Says Walter Hayes: “[Though] Henry was not convinced the agreement would make economic sense for Israel or Ford ... he was not prepared to have anybody stop him from carrying on the nonpolitical everyday business of the Ford Motor Company.”
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As a result, the Ford Motor Company was placed on the Arab boy- cott list, where it remained for fifteen years.
“It was just a pragmatic business procedure,” Henry said years later. “I don’t mind saying I was influenced in part by the fact that the com - pany still suffers from a resentment against the anti-Semitism of the distant past. We want to overcome that. But the main thing is that here we had a dealer who wanted to open up a agency to sell our products —hell, let him do it.”
Fisher felt that more lay behind the decision than business. Despite the countless tabloid pages Henry filled in his lifetime, he had an in - satiable need to do what was right when it came to issues of fairness. And he’d be damned if he’d let any pressure group push him around —regardless of consequences.
This quality drew Fisher to Ford. By nature a cautious man who ex- celled at patiently constructing a consensus behind the scenes, Fisher admired his friend’s sudden, ham-fisted method for reaching a decision and barreling into action. Impetuousness had its place, but each man would need the other’s talents by the mid-1970s, when they, along with Al Taubman, endeavored to restore the deteriorating face of Detroit.
***
By the end of 1972, Fisher was exhausted. Nixon’s re-election cam- paign was behind him, but the reconstituted Jewish Agency, still in its infancy, required constant care. So the last week of the year, he paused for a vacation in his Palm Beach apartment.
Following their marriage in 1953, Marjorie had insisted that Max take an annual winter break in Florida because she said that the sun rejuvenated him; he could stretch out in the oceanside light, visit with friends and see his children. Best of all, Marjorie thought, was that her husband was away from his office, and although he was nev - er far from a telephone, he was able to relax. And so in the years before they purchased their house on the shores of Lake Worth, the Fishers rented a penthouse apartment at the Sun and Surf, on Sunrise Avenue, in Palm Beach.
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Now, it was 6:30 a.m., on New Year’s Day, 1973. After tossing and turning from midnight on, Max woke with a start. He was still scared. A bad dream? Hardly. It was real. Last night, the doctor had come. The scene hung on the dim edge of memory. Then Max rolled over. Marjorie was sleeping. Careful not to wake her, he slipped out of bed, put on his robe and walked into the living room. Through the wall of windows, he saw the pink streaks of dawn coming up over the ocean. Usually, gazing out at the blue-green water calmed him, so he went to the book-lined den just off the living room, sat in his chair and watched the sun rising above the water.
Last night, Max had been terribly frightened. While dressing for a New Year’s Eve party, he suddenly grew dizzy, then short of breath. Marjorie says that “his skin turned gray.” She phoned the doctor, helped Max onto the bed and loosened his tie. The doctor arrived and examined Max. He said that Max had suffered from an arrhythmia, a variation of the normal heartbeat. There was medication to treat it. But Max would have to reduce his work load, watch his diet and generally lead a less stressful life; after all, he was only six months shy of his sixty-fifth birthday.
Recently, Max had experienced a round of health problems, remind- ers that — as the saying goes — always is not the same as forever. (Also, eighteen months after William’s death, Henry Wenger, Fisher’s mentor, had died.) About with cataracts was Max’s most immediately distressing ailment, making it nearly impossible to read.
Yet the underlying predicament was his time commitments. Philan- thropy, politics and serving on boards of directors had its rewards, but he was stretched too thin. And his cluttered schedule kept him from his family, aggravating problems that required his attention.
Mary and Phillip were in their twenties and on their own. His daugh- ters, Julie and Marjorie, were living at home, and Max was, at the mo- ment, at odds with Julie. She had been steadily dating a young man since she was sixteen. Her boyfriend was nine years her senior, which concerned Max. He felt eighteen-year-old Julie was too young to be so seriously involved with someone who was twenty-seven. During Christmas vacation, Julie had asked her father if she could get married.
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Max said no and would not discuss it further. Julie threatened to elope. Max became furious. Julie asked what he would do about it, get the FBI after her? In his frustration, Max replied yes, that’s exactly what he’d do.
The standard adolescent gyrations of his children, although ex- asperating, were not unexpected. He felt that within a few years the worst of the conflict with his children would die a natural death. There was, though, a grave dilemma that would not vanish, that had actually grown in intensity, namely, his wife’s drinking, which frightened Max as much as his own declining health.
Even among professionals who treat alcoholics, the border between excessive drinking and alcoholism is subject to debate. To Max, by the early 1970s, Marjorie appeared to have crossed it. Marjorie believed that Max was unaware that late each afternoon she started pouring her- self vodka and drank for two hours. Some of the Fisher children also believed that their father did not notice their mother’s startling alco- hol consumption or, like in a host of other families with an alcoholic in their midst, chose to overlook it, thinking, unrealistically, that the malady would correct itself. But Max confided to one of his oldest friends that he was “beside himself with Marjorie’s drinking,” and, other than being with her more frequently, did not have a clue about how to handle it. Marjorie Fisher says: “I was very lonely, but I would never blame [my drinking] on Max.”
She didn’t have to. Max blamed himself, his interminable traveling. There are three identifiable crisis points in Max Fisher’s life. The first transpired shortly after he departed Salem for Ohio State; the sec - ond was during the final year of Sylvia’s life; and the third was at approximately 7 a.m. on New Year’s Day, 1973. What makes them identifiable is the manner in which Fisher chose to deal with them. At the three junctures, he attacked his turmoil by examining it in writing, cataloging his distress and proposing solutions to himself —a pragma- tist’s makeshift guide to subduing adversity. In college, he compiled self-improvement lists and deprived himself of meals when he missed his mark; in 1952, he kept a running commentary of his despair in the face of Sylvia’s heart disease; and in his Palm Beach penthouse, in
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1973, he removed a yellow legal pad and pen from a side table, and sketched out his troubles and his plans for countering them.
“Have been trying to put into perspective a new life style,” Fisher wrote. “There is no question continuation of the past would create many problems — physically, mentally and emotionally. Most im- portant, [my] relationships to my family have been adversely affect- ed when some changes were delayed. [My wife, Marjorie], in this regard has shown great patience. There is no question that the lack of balance in [my] family relationships has robbed me of a great deal of happiness.
“Looking into the future, I would like to consider certain changes. “Let us start with physical — No question I cannot continue what
I have been doing —certain obvious physical problems are develop- ing. The abuse I have been giving my body is beginning to show [my] weight is [my] number one problem. I have put on over twenty pounds which have hurt me physically.
“The question is —realizing this —what will I do about it? A crash diet will bring about a reduction —but this does not solve the problem. Do I have the will power to adjust my style of eating for my own good over a period of time? I believe I must and will.
“At the same time I must learn to exercise again. My refusal to even move coupled with [my extra] weight is a serious physical problem. I can walk —swim, ride, bicycle and play golf —but I must also be consistent about it. “The problem with my eyes is serious. There again I must get other advice —but I will be positive —eyes are so import- ant to me because of my love of reading —yet [up until] now I have not been willing to sacrifice. Will I? [I] must do something.
“I know also that my heart rhythm is out of balance because of the above reasons. I believe I must have the best medical advice on this and I must adjust myself to what needs to be done.
“Business and outside activities — There is no question I must make serious adjustments. Agreat deal of [the] things I now am doing are not necessary and I must withdraw. I have reached the top of all the [Jewish] charities and I must confine myself to [the Jewish] Agency and [in] the rest [of the Jewish charities] become a senior statesman.
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“I have plenty of things to do in Detroit and some activities in Washington.
“On Washington scene — I should be willing to take on special assignments to maintain my relationships and responsibilities — but there again [I] must be phased out to a reasonable degree.
“Now comes the most important [part] —relationship to my family. There will [be] little time to capture what I have lost —but to whatever extent I can I should spend [time] with my children and my wife.
“I have lost a great deal —no one can really appreciate what I have lost except myself. This is something I will suffer from more than any- thing else. I can gain so much from all of my family if I would allow it. “Marjorie has been so patient [with] —and tolerant of me. But this cannot continue. I must give of myself because she has so much to give. This of all things I have mentioned is the most important.
“I have locked all my thoughts and ambitions within me. Can I open myself up? I feel I must. The love of a woman like Marjorie is some - thing to treasure and not to fight. I am so fortunate and I badly need her help and patience. We can have much to look forward to if I can allow myself to give. It is too much to ask but I hope she appreciates my problems and will be patient with me.
“All of this is a tall order —Can I make all these adjustments? “All it will take is will power and an understanding of what really
matters.
“I remember when I was eighteen —I kept a diary [and] I had the will power to bring about changes.
“Can I do it now?
“I promise to give it a good try. I am going to grade myself as I did when I was eighteen on these requirements — health; weight; exercise; eyes; diet; business and charitable activities / balance; MF family relationships.”
***
When Fisher completed writing the document, he signed and dated it as if it were a contract, then slid the sheets into a folder and conse-
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quently had them filed in his office, inspecting them on occasion to gauge his progress. For the next eighteen years, with differing degrees of success, he wrestled with his goals. He underwent the routine phys- ical ailments of aging. In the main, he was scrupulous about doctor appointments, weighed himself each day, cut back on chocolate ice cream and the brownies, chocolate chip cookies and coffee cake that Manya Kern, the Fishers’ longtime Detroit housekeeper, baked with inimitable skill, and adhered to a regimen of swimming, calisthenics and a modified weight-lifting program.
Striking a balance between business, philanthropy, politics and the requirements of family would prove more challenging. Fisher would be engaged in this process for the next twelve years. By then, Marjorie was conquering her addiction to alcohol, and Max was discovering that his involvement in causes had cost his family far more than he had ever imagined.
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Chapter 12
PLAYING HIS ROLE: 1971-1974 THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE, PART II
THE LACK OF progress toward peace in the Middle East frustrated Fisher and most American Jews. No matter how turbulently the politi- cal sands shifted, the landscape remained the same.
For example, in August 1970, the “stop-shooting, start talking” ini- tiative of Secretary of State Rogers paid off. Egypt and Israel agreed to an unofficial cease-fire. Within days, the Egyptians violated the truce. Russian technicians manned Soviet-supplied SAM batteries in the Canal Zone, while Soviet pilots flew missions against the Israeli Air Force. Egyptian President Nasser died in September 1970. Although his successor, Anwar el-Sadat, grew disenchanted with the Kremlin, he balked at a formal treaty.
Also in September 1970, the Palestine Liberation Organization tried to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan. Syria hurried to shore up the PLO attack with tanks. Nixon viewed the Syrian invasion as a Sovi- et-inspired, global chess move against the United States. He put U.S. forces on alert and requested that Israel intervene for Jordan. The Israe- lis mobilized; Syria withdrew. In the aftermath of the crisis, Kissinger won a battle with Rogers. The White House shelved the notion of im- posing a Mideast peace and leaned toward rearming Israel to restrict Soviet inroads in the region.
Kissinger’s methodology had vigorous backing in the Senate. Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, a powerful Dem- ocrat, pushed through an amendment to the Defense Procurement
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Act that — according to Jackson’s biographer Peter J. Ognibene — “made an essentially open-ended commitment to fulfill Israel’s need for military weapons.”
Nixon and Kissinger continued to extricate the United States from Indochina and to implement their policy of detente with the Russians. Reducing tensions between the superpowers appeared to be a strategy that the American Jewish community would embrace. Israeli security could only be strengthened by the Soviet restraint of its Arab clients. Therefore, as historian Melvin I. Urofsky observes in We Are One!: American Jewry and Israel, it stunned the administration when “the monkey wrench thrown into the gears of détente [originated] ... from a totally unexpected area: American Jews suddenly wanted their govern- ment to pressure the Soviets into allowing Russian Jews to emigrate.” Between 1945 and 1966, conventional wisdom held that the once-flourishing Jewish population of Russia had been devastated by the Second World War and then crushed by the Communists’ resolve to abolish religion. In 1966, though, novelist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel published The Jews of Silence, an account of his recent trip through the Soviet Union. Wiesel documented that three million Jews had survived the Kremlin’s assault on Judaism. In the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, thousands of Soviet Jews applied for exit visas to Israel. Russian authorities punished the applicants by stripping them of their jobs, expelling them from schools and harassing their families. As Urofsky writes, it was not long before “Jewish agencies saw the Russian emigration problem as second in importance only to Israel.”
***
Fisher first approached the administration about Soviet Jewry during his tenure as president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Wel- fare Funds. On December 30, 1970, a Jewish leadership conference had gathered in Washington to ask the government for assistance in seeking clemency for the Leningrad 11.
The case had begun on June 15, 1970. At 8:30 a.m., Russian author- ities arrested the Leningrad 11 at SmolnyAirport as they boarded a sin-
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gle-engine Aeroflot plane that was scheduled to fly from Leningrad to Petrozavodosk, a city on the Finnish border. Nine of those apprehend- ed were Jews who hoped to leave for Israel. Russian authorities alleged that the group, armed with knives and pistols, intended to hijack the plane. Six months later, on December 24, a Leningrad court convicted all eleven under Article 64-A. The article declared it treasonous to flee abroad and equated a planned crime with one that had been commit- ted. Nine of the defendants were ordered to serve prison-camp terms ranging from four to fifteen years. The other two defendants — both of whom had applied for exit visas to Israel —were sentenced to die before a firing squad.
According to Soviet law, the Leningrad 11 had seven days to file their appeals with the Russian Federation’s Supreme Court.
By December 30, only twenty-four hours remained for the con- demned. Through the morning, Fisher attended meetings with con- gressional leaders. He had also scheduled an afternoon visit with Sec- retary of State Rogers at Foggy Bottom. Dr. William Wexler, head of the Presidents Conference, and Rabbi Herschel Schacter, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, accompanied Fisher to the State Department. They implored Rogers to intercede or to ask Nixon to speak with the Soviets. Rogers was sympathetic, but he replied that his options were limited.
“What about the president?” Schacter asked. “This is an apolitical cause —purely humanitarian.”
“The president’s busy,” said Rogers, “but I’ll call him.”
Rogers left the room, returning five minutes later. “Let’s go,” he said. The four men took the back elevator to the garage, entered the secretary’s limousine, and rode to the White House.
At 4:20 p.m., they walked into the Oval Office. Nixon sat behind his desk. Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and George P. Shultz, director of the Office of Management and Budget, were talking to the president. (Fisher had been friendly with Shultz since 1969, when, as secretary of the treasury, Shultz investigated how industry could provide training and jobs for inner city residents and discussed the subject at length with Fisher.)
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Before entering the Oval Office, Rogers had cautioned the three Jewish leaders that Nixon’s schedule was tight and not to engage him in an extended dialogue. So they hastily repeated their request — could he intercede for the Leningrad 11?
The president did not rush them, nor did he immediately answer their question. He reminisced about his 1959 kitchen debate in Mos- cow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Nixon recalled telling Khrushchev that “a real test of a society is the manner in which a gov- ernment treats its Jewish citizens.” The president then remarked on his admiration for Israel and said that had the Leningrad 11 been Israeli pilots, they would have escaped with the plane.
After a half-hour, Nixon said: “I’d be happy to help the Leningrad 11, but you know I’m Public Enemy Number One in the Kremlin. The minute I try, they’ll probably shove these guys up against a wall and shoot them.” He paused. “There’s a way, though. Listen, last time Gol- da was here I said to her, ‘Trust me.’ Which is what I’ll say to you: ‘Trust me.’”
That evening, Fisher received a call from a presidential assistant. The death sentences of the two Russian Jews were being commut- ed to fifteen-year prison terms. Fisher never learned how Nixon managed it. He guessed that the president spoke to Kissinger, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Washington. The Russians would soon be seeking several concessions from the United States — i.e., an arms limitations agreement and most-favored-nation trade status. The Kremlin probably surmised that granting Nixon’s request was an investment in the future.
***
With such a promising start between the administration and the Amer- ican Jewish community on the fate of Soviet Jewry, Fisher anticipated that the cooperation would continue. Early in 1971, he saw that he had miscalculated. Nixon believed that a superpower such as the So- viet Union could not let the United States dictate its internal policies — after all, would the United States allow Russia to set its national
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agenda? Hence, Nixon believed that the way to obtain freedom for Soviet Jews was to apply pressure to the Russian government without humiliating them. Fisher subscribed to Nixon’s method. Regrettably, a considerable portion of the American Jewish community did not. Protests against the Soviet Union burgeoned. Since Nixon would not openly nudge the Kremlin, the organized Jewish community felt that Soviet Jewry was not a priority at the White House. Consequently, the protests intensified. A radical element, Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, planted a bomb outside the Soviet cultural center in Washington, D.C., while in New York, JDL gangs stalked Soviet dip- lomats and cursed them in Russian.
Nixon publicly deplored the anti-Soviet violence. Fisher and seven- ty-three American Jewish leaders sent him a telegram stating that they were “united in our abhorrence of these acts,” but added that “they be- lieved that Soviet Jews should be permitted cultural and religious free- dom and should have the right to emigrate from Russia if they wish.” Because Fisher was pressed for time, he was grateful that the quarrel over Soviet Jewry did not reach its zenith until after the 1972 election. Caught between the White House and the Jewish community, he had the sinking, helpless sensation of watching the battle lines being drawn and knowing that there was, just then, nothing he could do to prevent the impending showdown. For the first six months of 1971, Fisher was traveling back and forth to Israel in preparation for the Founding As- sembly of the reconstituted Jewish Agency. On his visits, when he had a break between Agency meetings, he buttonholed American Jewish leaders and encouraged them to give the Nixon administration the ben- efit of the doubt. He also spoke frequently with the Israeli press, re - peatedly telling them that “the president understands the Soviet Jews’ situation and takes much more action on it than he is given credit for.” But Fisher’s election to the chairmanship of the Board of Governors in June further crowded his schedule, and then he had to focus his attention on the upcoming presidential campaign. The Nixon organi- zation for 1972, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), was in place by the spring of 1971, with Fisher one of its eight original members. At this point, CRP’s primary goal, according to its chair-
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man, Francis L. Dale, publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer, was “to study the manner in which the campaign should be waged.” Fisher was again anxious to take a stab at the Jewish vote. Nixon had garnered 16 percent of it in 1968; Fisher thought that the president had a shot at doubling that percentage.
For two months, Fisher worked the phone, calling his contacts around the country and in Israel, talking to Jewish leaders and pro- fessionals, fund-raisers, journalists — anyone who could give him an up-to-the-minute reading on the swaying political sensibilities of the Jewish electorate. In August, Fisher sent a six-page précis to John Mitchell, who in March 1972 would resign as attorney general to direct the Nixon campaign. In his abstract, Fisher outlined his ground plan for enlarging Nixon’s percentage of the Jewish vote.
“It is my feeling,” Fisher wrote, “that a swing could be made in the voting pattern of the Jewish community —if we understand the basic issues and we start organizing now on a low-key basis.”
For Fisher, the basic issues were —Israel: “The one thing the Jewish community is united on.” Economic policies: “I find a strong tendency [among leaders] toward some sort of controls, plus a stimulation of the economy through investment tax credits [and] an adequate money supply.” Law and order: “There is a strong feeling on this issue among Orthodox and Conservatives who live in cities and have not been able to move because of low-income status and age limitations. They have suffered considerably from crime.” Fisher said that the next issue, So- viet Jewry, was important for two reasons: the “great emotional re- sponse” it engendered, and because college students were attracted to it. (The 1972 election was the first in which eighteen-year-olds were eligible to vote.) He did tell Mitchell that “the president has a very deep understanding of this problem,” and that he had “discussed it with him on previous occasions.”
Noticeably absent from Fisher’s evaluation was the expanding dis- pute between the White House and the organized Jewish community. Fisher thought that it would be sapient to get past the election before the controversy careened out of control. To circumvent future hostili- ties and to assist Soviet Jews in their emigration, Fisher lobbied Mitch-
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ell in his précis to speak to the president about doing more for Soviet Jewry. Fisher wrote: “The matter of Yiddish broadcasting in Russia by Radio Free Europe is a very important issue. In addition, [how] about a statement by the Department of Justice and the State Department allowing [Soviet Jews] entry into the United States? I believe this was done in the case of Cuba.”
Considering these priorities, Fisher said, CRP should have a full- time man in Washington, who understands “the pluralistic nature of the Jewish community [and] its high degree of organizational life.” He recommended Lawrence Y. Goldberg, a young, active Republican from Providence, Rhode Island. Fisher’s next point to Mitchell was notable because it was perhaps the most straightforward statement Fisher ever made on the political challenges of dealing with Jewish communal groups.
“The community,” Fisher wrote, “is over-organized. [But] one must not be taken in by the claims of the organizations as to the control of their constituency. For example, B’nai B’rith may say they have a million members they control. They may have a million members, but they hardly control the votes. [However], having their help can be very constructive, especially among their leadership.”
Fisher stressed that the campaign had to inform “the rank and file of what the president has done for Israel. Though a broad section of the leadership knows of his involvement, this has not filtered down. One of the great opportunities we will have is publicizing the assistance Israel receives in credits, grants and arms.”
Fisher proposed that they approach the Anglo-Jewish press, mak- ing certain “that the proper information is carried through the news or editorial section.” He volunteered to write letters “to opinion makers and leaders from the various [Jewish] communities.” Fisher believed that a letter-writing campaign would underscore the political slant he brought to his work as a leader in Jewish America.
As he told Mitchell: “One of the things I have tried to do very care- fully in my relations with organizations and the leadership of the com- munities (I make almost forty or fifty appearances a year before some of these organizations) is to be as factual as possible without being
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political. The fact that I have been able to do this is evidenced by a great deal of newspaper coverage that I have received from the Jewish press, which makes me believe that we have built a base from which we can become actively political. ”
Fisher promised to organize the general fund-raising activity, but only if it was “part of the regular structure and not on an ethnic basis.” In conclusion, Fisher stated that he was prepared to begin and would wait for Mitchell’s comments.
***
Over the next several months, Fisher and Mitchell discussed campaign tactics. By February 1972 (while Nixon was making his historic visit to the People’s Republic of China), the operation was under way — an operation that was characterized in The New York Times as the “most broad-based vote-getting effort [that] any Republican presidential can- didate has ever directed at the American Jewish community.” Fish- er had Lawrence Goldberg running the nuts-and-bolts of the effort: locating regional campaign chairmen around the country, setting up fund-raising events, and overseeing the 375,000 direct-mail pieces that were sent to influential Jewish groups.
According to Maurice Stans, who chaired the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President (FCRP), Fisher and Taft B. Schreiber, chairman of MCAin California, were the two people that had the responsibility for bringing the Jewish community into the Nixon camp. “This was not just for funds,” says Stans, “but for votes. Taft worked in Califor- nia and Max did the rest of the country. Max doesn’t have a fundrais- ing machine in the sense that he had 1,000 people scattered around he could call and say: ‘Get to work.’ It was that black telephone book of his, of people he knew who revered him and who would contribute because he thought they should. Max is so highly respected that his direction influences the direction of a lot of other people.”
In keeping with his long-standing practice, Fisher began his fund-raising activities with his own pledge — $250,000. Then he culled his list of “campaign workers” from his contacts in the business
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world and Jewish communal life. He even persuaded Henry Ford II to support Nixon. Perhaps chairing the National Center for Voluntary Ac- tion had changed Ford’s mind. He donated $100,000 to the campaign. In New York, Fisher enlisted the aid of, among others, Gustav Levy, head of the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs; George Klein, president of Barton’s Candies; and financier Bernard J. Lasker. So spectacular were the fund-raising efforts of Fisher and Lasker that William Safire, in Before the Fall, writes that he and Leonard Garment “tried to play it down,” because the emphasis in the press was on “Jew- ish money” from Fisher and Lasker and “that kind of thing was not, to use an old expression, ‘good for the Jews’ or for Nixon.”
Fisher’s organization spread itself across the country. Some of its members included: in Florida, investor Robert Russell; in Georgia, Dr. William Wexler, former head of B’nai B’rith and the Presidents Con- ference; in Illinois, Samuel Rothberg, chairman of Israel Bonds; in Maryland, Joseph Meyerhoff, one of the biggest builders in America and a former chairman of the UJA and Israel Bonds, and his daughter- in-law, Lynn Meyerhoff; in Missouri, Mel Dubinsky from the UIA; in Ohio, Edward Ginsburg, a former chairman of the UJA and current chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee; and in Wisconsin, Al- bert Adelman, a former vice chairman of the UJA.
As Fisher had urged, the administration reached out to executives from the national Jewish press. On March 13, one hundred of these executives attended a kosher lunch provided by the CRP and received briefings from Herbert Stein (who had replaced Paul McCracken as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers), Leonard Garment, William Safire and Joseph Sisco. Following the briefings, Fisher host - ed a cocktail party for the executives.
Between April and October 1972, Fisher spoke to sixty groups in thirty states. He also personally recruited potential big givers — some- times in conjunction with Maurice Stans. In early June, after Fisher spoke to 100 members of Philadelphia’s Jewish community at the Bel- levue Stratford Hotel, he and Stans encountered one of the more un- pleasant circumstances of soliciting big gifts.
Maurice Stans recalls: “Max brought a man in who wanted to make
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a substantial contribution. The man sat down; we shook hands, and he said: ‘Mr. Stans, how much for Luxembourg?’ I replied: ‘Pardon me.’ The man said: ‘Well, I don’t know how these things are done. But I want to be an ambassador to Luxembourg. How much do I have to give?’ “I told him: ‘We are not in the business of selling ambassador - ships. There is no way that I can commit to anything like that. I can tell the White House that you are interested. I’ll do it whether you contrib- ute or not, but your contribution should be based on what you want to do to help re-elect the president.’
“Max was astonished. He had no idea that the guy was going to talk that way. I would say that during the next year Max was still so embar- rassed about it that he apologized to me six times for having brought the guy in without having a better measure of what he was going to say. That wasn’t a typical case. Max would usually size an individual up before bringing him in.”
Two weeks later, Fisher left the campaign fund-raising circuit to pur- sue his responsibilities as president of the Council of Jewish Federations. Hurricane Agnes had struck the Northeast, which had already been saturated by a week of incessant rains. The storm left over 100 people dead. According to the Associated Press, “the impact was especially severe along the Susquehanna River in [Wilkes-Barre], Pennsylva- nia.... Three hospitals had to be evacuated and several radio stations were forced to go off the air.”
Fisher traveled to Wilkes-Barre to assess the damage and to confer with community leaders. It was a harrowing trip. Roads, railways and airports were flooded. Fisher and several members of the CJF execu - tive staff discovered that because of breaks in the flood control dike, nearly 90 percent of the town’s 1,600 Jewish families had to be evac- uated from their homes; 800 of its 900 Jewish businesses were de- stroyed; synagogues, a religious school and a recreation center had collapsed in the mud.
During a telephone conference with the CJF’s national executive committee, Fisher described the tragedy and estimated that $2 million would be required to rescue the families and the community. The ex- ecutive committee unanimously approved Fisher’s request that every
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federation contribute to the emergency fund. Fisher brought in case- workers to counsel the families and help get them back on their feet. Youth volunteers were organized to clean up. Within two months, the waters receded, building foundations were shoveled from beneath banks of mud, and the CJF’s aid to Wilkes-Barre topped $2.27 million.
***
One of Fisher’s major thrusts in the 1972 campaign was to identify dis- tinguished Jewish Democrats who would be willing to endorse Nixon. He knew it was a long shot because the pattern he was endeavoring to change was well rooted in American Jewish history.
In a 1988 article published in Judaism magazine, “The Republi- can Party and the Jews,” Professor Herbert L. Solomon points out that during the seventeen presidential elections between 1860 and 1924, Jews primarily voted Republican — the party of Abraham Lincoln. (One exception was when Jews backed the erudite Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916.) But in 1928, the Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith, a Roman Catholic. Jews, hurt by the overt anti-Semitism of the day, felt a kinship with Smith, since Catholics were then victims of discrimination; a Catholic president might herald a declension of prej- udice. Thus, a cohesive Jewish Democratic vote materialized.
This trend resumed in 1932 with Franklin Roosevelt. In his next four elections, FDR averaged 58 percent of all votes. Yet in light of his Jewish appointees to the Cabinet and Supreme Court, his Jewish advis- ers and his apparent sympathy for the oppression of European Jewry by Nazism, Roosevelt captured an average of 86 percent of the Jewish vote. Furthermore, Roosevelt was the father of modern liberalism and seen as the protector of the disenfranchised, while Republicans were now perceived as the party of the rich. As bellwethers in trade union- ism and civil rights, Jews carried the banner hoisted by Roosevelt until 1972. By then, another issue had become central to Jewish American life —the survival of Israel.
Although Fisher had bored in on several issues dear to Jewish hearts, the statistic he quoted again and again to the groups he addressed was
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that “the Nixon administration has given $1.1 billion of military and economic aid to Israel —as much as the United States expended in the previous nineteen years.”
It was a compelling argument. And when Fisher picked up his cam- paigning again after July 15 — his sixty-fourth birthday — the argu- ment was even more compelling, because at the Democratic National Convention, Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota had been nominated to oppose Nixon.
Professor Herbert Solomon explains: “Regarding Israel, the for- mer Jewish distrust of conservative sincerity ... shifted to doubts of liberal trustworthiness. The first signs of these doubts were evident in 1972. The Democratic nominee, George McGovern, was the most liberal major party candidate for president in modern times. Because of his third world sympathies, however, he was considered by the Jews as unreliable vis-à-vis Israel.... To many Jews, so attuned to every nuance relating to Israel’s needs, the liberals (thus the Dem- ocratic Party] [became] at best unreliable, and, at worst, a potential threat to Israel’s safety.”
Fisher recruited Democratic proselytes to the Nixon cause all across the country, and they, in turn, were enlisted to convert other Democrats. For instance, one of the most prominent converts was Louis Boyar, a Los Angeles real estate investor, who for years had contributed heavily to Democratic candidates. In 1972, though, based on the administra- tion’s massive assistance to Israel, Boyar was endorsing Nixon. Boyar invited forty of his wealthy Democratic friends to his Beverly Hills home for a private meeting to ask them to side with the president. Ac- cording to Fisher, when the gathering was over “all but a handful” had pledged contributions to the Nixon campaign.
Besides raising funds, Fisher was eager to reach a broader base of American Jewry. To do this, Fisher says, it was critical “to send signs” to Jewish America that their communal leaders were behind Nixon. Fisher saw to it that one of these salient signs was beamed over net- work news cameras on August 21, at the start of the Republican Na- tional Convention in Miami Beach. He arranged for Rabbi Herschel Schacter to deliver the RNC’s opening prayer.
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Schacter remembers: “Max really pushed for me to deliver the prayer at the first session of the convention. I was reluctant to do that, because I was not a Republican. I am still not a Republican. I did com- mit myself to support Nixon as vice chairman of Democrats for Nixon. But not this. Max said to me, ‘You have to do it. The president thinks highly of you. The people around the president think highly of you.’ So I went out and delivered the prayer.”
For Jewish America, the sign was unequivocal. Would an individ- ual like Schacter, a former chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, support a nominee who was not sensitive to the plight of Russian Jews? Would Schacter —the presiding head of the Religious Zionists of America —back a candidate who did not believe in a mil- itarily robust Israel?
Nixon easily won his party’s renomination, and by early Septem- ber Fisher was certain that the president would capture one-third of the Jewish vote. He predicted this remarkable shift in Jewish voting patterns to John Mitchell over Labor Day weekend, betting him “the best dinner either of us ever had” that his prediction would prove true. Fisher’s confidence was based on two categories of evidence — one statistical, the other anecdotal.
To Fisher, his mathematical proof was unassailable. He was in the process of raising $8 million for Nixon. While financial resources were vital for conducting campaign activities, Fisher felt that the funds also provided a reliable poll. He knew that in presidential campaigns mon- ey did not readily flow toward losers. McGovern was finding the finan - cial well in the Jewish community far drier than Humphrey had found it in 1968. (For example, Fisher spoke to one Jewish Democrat in Bal- timore, known for generous contributions to the Democratic Party. He told Fisher that when McGovern contacted him, he said that while he would not donate to or work for Nixon, he was “sitting this election out.”) Although only a minuscule percentage of Jews could afford to make large donations to the CRP, the number of contributors and the size of their contributions indicated that support for Nixon among Jews was unprecedented for a Republican presidential candidate. Fisher had raised $3.5 million for Nixon’s ‘68 race, and the president had won 16
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percent of the Jewish vote. Now that Fisher was more than doubling his fund-raising total, he believed that the percentage would rise ac- cordingly at the voting booths.
Fisher regarded his anecdotal evidence with skepticism, but it gave him a greater sense of personal satisfaction than the money he raised. One August morning, Fisher walked out of the Regency Hotel in New York City on his way to a meeting with John Mitchell. The door- man hailed him a cab and Fisher got into the back. The driver pulled into traffic. He was a bulky young man, in a white shirt and wearing a yarmulke, his long payos spilling past his shoulders. As he drove down Fifth Avenue, Fisher asked him where he was from.
“Brooklyn,” said the driver, adding that he was studying at a yeshi- va and driving a cab until he completed his education.
Figuring he could conduct a little informal polling, Fisher asked the driver who he was voting for in the presidential election.
“Nixon,” the driver announced proudly.
“Why’s that?” Fisher inquired.
“Because,” the driver explained, “Nixon has an ambassador to the Jews. Aman who takes care of us in Washington.”
“What’s his name?” Fisher asked.
“His name is Fisher,” the driver answered. “Max Fisher. He’s from Detroit.”
“I’m from Detroit,” Fisher said, barely containing a grin. “Do you know Max Fisher?” asked the driver.
“I am Max Fisher.”
At best, Fisher thought that the driver would smile or his eyes would widen or he would make some cordial gesture of surprise. Instead, in the midst of morning rush-hour on Fifth Avenue, with cars, cabs, bus- es and trucks swirling past, the driver slammed on his brakes. Traffic swerved around the rear of the taxi, horns blaring. The driver turned, gaping at his passenger.
“You’re Fisher?” he asked.
Fisher nodded. Ignoring the horns and the shouts to get moving, the driver uttered a prayer, beseeching God to grant Fisher good health and long life. Then he drove on. When Fisher reached Mitchell’s office at
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20 Broad Street, the driver refused to take any money from him. Fisher pressed, but the driver was adamant. Fisher thanked him and climbed out of the cab. As he walked toward the building, the driver called from his open window, “It was an honor to meet you, Max Fisher. I want you to know: I’m going to take the rest of the day off to pray.”
Fisher watched as the driver pulled out and the cab blended back into traffic.
***
Despite his optimism about the election, Fisher knew that following Election Day the Nixon administration and the Jewish community were going to clash over how to deal with the Russians on the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate. So Fisher scheduled a meeting between the president and Jewish leaders for late Tuesday afternoon, Sep- tember 26, at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was part campaign swing, part conflict management.
At 4:30 p.m., Fisher met with Nixon and Mitchell in the president’s suite. Fisher told the two men that Jewish support for the president would range from 30 to 35 percent. It was unlikely, Fisher said, that the president would garner more than that because the community was wrestling with its deep-seated habit of voting for Democrats. Nixon replied that he understood the problems Fisher faced.
“I know you’ve worked your butt off, Max,” Nixon said. “No one could have done any more.”
Fisher said that there was more that could be done. The Jewish com- munity could be made to feel comfortable at the White House. If the community were given more opportunities to fill jobs in the adminis - tration, then it would also tie them in to the Republican Party over the long term. Nixon acknowledged that Fisher had a point; he would try to do more.
Their conversation moved to Soviet Jewry. Nixon said that he “would do his utmost.” Yet he was still adamantly against embarrass- ing the Soviets with demonstrations and public-relations campaigns — neither approach would work, he insisted. Fisher agreed, but said
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it was an emotionally loaded topic for world Jewry. The Jews in Nazi Germany had pleaded for help, and few had answered them. The Jew- ish community was not going to allow that to happen to the Jews in Russia. Alabor camp or a concentration camp —it didn’t matter, they were the same thing.
At least, Fisher said, the community and the administration are in agreement on Israel. Nixon said that there was absolutely no question about his stance — there would be no imposed peace settlement and the Israelis would get as much military assistance as they required.
At a quarter to five, Nixon and Fisher walked to a hospitality suite where Jewish leaders from around the country were waiting. William Wexler was there, as were Herschel Schacter, Albert Spiegel, Gustav Levy — thirty-one in all. Nixon began by expressing his apprecia- tion for the leaders’ work in the campaign. He said that in his second administration the Jewish community would still have access to him. Max, he said, has been to the White House on many occasions and he will have an open door.
The president spoke about the Middle East. He said that while he greatly admired the Israelis, the U.S. policy in the region of keeping Israel strong was in “our own national interest.” Nixon delved into the particulars of the policy for twenty minutes, the gist of which was that an independent Israel kept the Soviets out of the area and promoted stabili- ty. Next, Nixon went on to Soviet Jewry. He said that if he were to make a big speech predicating U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union on the Soviet’s willingness to grant exit visas to Jews, the results would be the opposite of what American Jews desired. No one would get out. The audience questioned the president on the Mideast, and on the issue of hiring quotas, which much of the Jewish community (and Nix- on) opposed, believing —as William Safire has noted —that for Jews “a quota is a sign on a closed door that says, ‘Stay in your place.’” The most pointed questions, though, focused on Soviet Jewry. The Russians had unexpectedly started to levy a stiff “exit tax” on Jewish emigra- tion, claiming that the tax reimbursed the state for the emigrants’ edu- cation. In all likelihood, the tax was a Soviet bid at reconciliation with Egyptian President Sadat, who had ordered Soviet military personnel
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out of Egypt. The tax was the Russians’ promise to the Arabs that they would severely restrict emigration to Israel. Repeatedly, the audience asked the president what he intended to do about these ransoms.
“I’m concerned about Soviet Jewry,” Nixon said. “But a superpower like Russia can’t allow another country to dictate its internal policies. I’ve had much experience dealing with the Soviets. This sort of thing must be dealt with quietly. And that’s what I am doing — Kissinger constantly mentions it to them. We’re getting results. Between 1968 and 1971, only 15,000 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate. This year over 35,000 will leave. I ask you to trust me.”
The president’s assurances were attacked the next day in the press by two leaders who did not attend the Waldorf-Astoria meeting and who were not supporting Nixon’s re-election —Rabbi Arthur J. Hertz- berg, president of the American Jewish Congress, and Harold Ostroff, president of the Workmen’s Circle.
Rabbi Hertzberg said: “The abhorrence our government feels over the persecution of Soviet Jewry is consoling but ineffective as long as it finds no expression in practical action. We do not see it as confron - tation for the president to make clear both to the American people and to the Soviet leadership that the United States will not grant major economic benefits to the Soviet Union while that country continues to blackmail Russian Jews seeking to emigrate.”
Ostroff stated that he was “shocked” at the view that pressures on the Soviet Union to eliminate exit fees on Jewish citizens constitute unwarranted harsh confrontation and that the issue is not worthy of public debate. Voicing additional “shock” at the administration’s op- position to withholding favored-nation treatment until the ransom demands are withdrawn, Ostroff claimed that “gains for Soviet Jews have surely been abetted by vigorous public activities on their behalf.” Concerned that the debate would get out of hand prior to the election, Fisher moved to answer the critics. He phoned Louis Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, in Israel. Several days later, the na- tional Anglo-Jewish press in the United States was carrying a story that quoted Pincus as saying that Jews should “bless President Nixon for the manner in which he deals with the issue of Soviet Jewry.”
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Forty-eight hours after the Waldorf-Astoria meeting, Fisher threw himself back into the campaign. He spoke at the Radisson South Hotel in Minneapolis. On October 1, he repeated his pitch at a Jewish com- munity center in Norfolk. On October 6, he hosted a cocktail party at the Stouffer’s Inn in Cincinnati. On October 10, he spoke at a rally in Silver Springs, Maryland, and nine days later, he addressed a private dinner in Dayton.
As Fisher plugged away, the president was cutting a deal with Sen- ator Scoop Jackson that would become the flash point between the administration and the Jewish community during Nixon’s second term. On October 3, in the White House, Nixon and Soviet Foreign Min- ister Andrei A. Gromyko signed documents implementing two pacts limiting the use of nuclear arms. (The agreements had been hammered out during Nixon’s May Summit in the Soviet Union.) After the sign- ing, Nixon strolled through the Rose Garden for forty-five minutes with Senator Jackson. As an anti-Soviet hard-liner, Jackson had ob- jected to the pacts, calling the interim agreement a “bum deal” because it permitted the Soviets heavier throw weights in missiles. Now, in the Rose Garden, Nixon and Jackson discussed trade agreements with the Soviet Union.
Back in May, Nixon had delayed signing such agreements with So- viet General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev. The public explanation for the delay was that Congress maintained that before any economic con- siderations were extended to the Soviets, they had to repay a portion of their lend-lease debt from the Second World War. Privately and per- haps more important, Henry Kissinger insisted that trade with Moscow be linked to Soviet help in ending the war in Vietnam. Gromyko agreed to both points, and Nixon was prepared to bestow most-favored-nation status on the Soviet Union.
Jackson thought that the United States was being too generous with the Russians. The senator wanted to link MFN status to the issue of the Soviet exit tax on Jewish emigrants. Jackson told Nixon that he was planning to introduce an amendment that would deny MFN status to any Communist country that restricted emigration. Jackson then offered Nixon a deal. The senator said that he would neither turn
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his amendment into a campaign issue, nor press the 92nd Congress to vote on it, if Nixon would release the Republican senators who re- fused to co-sponsor the amendment without Nixon’s approval. Nixon cut the deal.
On October 4, Jackson brought his amendment before the Senate. It had seventy-two co-sponsors. (Six days later, Representative Charles A. Vanik, a Democrat from Ohio, introduced a similar amendment in the House. ) Initially, Brezhnev responded by hardening his stance. Kissinger continued to talk privately with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly F. Dobrynin, about the matter. Within weeks, the Soviets granted hundreds of exemptions to the exit tax, and allowed 4,500 Jews —the most yet —to emigrate in October.
Nixon rewarded the Soviets by signing a comprehensive trade agreement and pledging to seek congressional approval for their MFN status. When the Kremlin promised to pay $722 million of the lend- lease debt, Nixon authorized Export Import Bank credits for the Soviet Union, and the Russians used the loans to purchase American grain.
***
Richard Nixon won his 1972 election against George McGovern by 18 million popular votes — the widest margin in American history. (Nixon beat McGovern by 513 votes in the Electoral College, second only to FDR’s triumph in 1936 over Alfred M. Landon, who lost in the Electoral College by 515 votes.) Fisher was pleased about the Jewish turnout for the president — which some said reached 42 percent be- cause, as he told John Mitchell, he felt “for the first time that the Jew - ish community voted on issues rather than tradition.” Repeating what he had said at the Waldorf-Astoria in September, Fisher told Mitchell that it was “tremendously important that we build on this [support] and not let it disappear. This means that [the administration] must be able to relate to this constituency and let them know they are welcome at the White House.”
Nixon was impressed by his level of support in the community, and surprised. “We really soared among Jewish voters in ‘72,” Nixon says.
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“And my support would not have been as strong had Max not been involved. Max is a good politician. But it isn’t just Max, see, he’s a got a network. He’s got a guy in Ohio; he’s got guys in California and New York and Illinois. I call it ‘the Fisher Mafia, the gang.’”
A week after Nixon’s second inauguration, the Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris. However, the situation in the Middle East was deteriorating, momentarily quieting the debate over Soviet Jewry. Beginning in late February 1973, the administration tried to broker a deal between Egypt and Israel. Hafez Ismail, a chief adviser to Egyptian President Sadat, visited Washington, followed by Golda Meir. The Egyptians were still demanding that Israel withdraw from the conquered territories in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, a concession that Meir and her Cabinet had repeatedly rejected. The Nixon administration’s strategy was to arm Israel in order to win its trust for a future peace process. So the Israeli prime minister was promised more weapons.
On March 1, a dinner was held in Meir’s honor at the White House. With the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem on an even keel, it was a happy occasion. Fisher later told the president that “the Jewish leadership was thrilled at being invited,” and that the “hon- or was one of the highlights of their lives.” During dinner, Fisher sat talking with Nixon and Meir. As he had after the 1968 election, the president offered Fisher an ambassadorship or a spot in his adminis- tration. Fisher said thank you and declined. He explained that he was assisting John Ehrlichman on some energy matters. (By summer, an acute energy shortage would have American motorists lining up at the gas pumps, and in the fall, an Arab oil embargo would compound the shortage.) Fisher added that he would be willing to lend a hand on any other projects that Nixon thought worthwhile, but he preferred work- ing in an unofficial capacity.
Nixon turned to Meir and said: “You know, Golda, I’ve offered Max any job he wants, but he won’t take one.”
Meir looked at Fisher. She understood that trading his influence out - side the administration for a minor role inside it was not a good deal —a fact that would be underscored for Meir six months later when the
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Yom Kippur War broke out. Now, over dinner, she laughed and said to Nixon: “That’s Max’s problem. He’s lazy.”
The warm feelings between the White House and the organized Jewish community lasted until the end of the month. On March 30, Fisher represented the Jewish Agency at a State Department ceremony. Although Fisher disagreed with much of American Jewry over pub- licly attacking the Kremlin, he did agree that the Soviet Jews who es- caped to Israel would need help. And so in 1972, Fisher had gone to his old friend, Jacob Javits, and discussed how the Jews emigrating from Russia to Israel might receive a financial boost from the United States. Javits, along with Senator Muskie of Maine and Democratic Congress- man Jonathan B. Bingham of New York, sponsored the eventual leg- islation, which provided $50 million of resettlement aid. The money was to be given through a contract between the State Department and the United Israel Appeal, who would then pass the funds to the Jewish Agency. The money would go toward the maintenance of Soviet Jews in transit, the operation of Israeli absorption centers, and for housing, language training, and vocational and professional education.
The bill passed, and on March 30, the first $31 million installment was formally turned over in the Thomas Jefferson Room at the State Department. Frank Kellogg, special assistant to the secretary of state, signed for the United States; Mel Dubinsky and Gottlieb Hammer for the UIA; and Fisher for the Jewish Agency. Because the agreement was free of any of the political acrimony that accompanied the fracas over Soviet Jewry, the mood at the signing was upbeat, with plenty of handshaking, back-clapping, and even a memorable quip by Senator Muskie: When Fisher bent to sign for the $31 million, Muskie, obvi- ously aware of Fisher’s business success, said: “That’s the smallest check Max has signed this year.”
Not quite true, but Fisher smiled at the sentiment.
***
By spring, the conflict over Soviet Jewry escalated into a full-scale political war. Nixon recalled in RN that he got caught between “the
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liberals and the American Zionists [who] had decided that now was the time to challenge the Soviet Union’s highly restrictive emigration policies ... [and] the conservatives, who had traditionally opposed détente because it challenged their ideological opposition to contacts with Communist countries. Myrequest in April 1973 for congressional authority to grant most-favored-nation trade status to the Soviet Union became the rallying point for both groups.”
Blocking the path to Soviet MFN status was the Jackson- Vanik amendment, which a majority of American Jewish leaders supported. Fisher invited Senator Jackson to his apartment in Palm Beach and tried to dissuade him from pushing his amendment through Congress. They argued back and forth. Fisher concluded that nothing would deter the senator. Among other grievances Jackson had against the Soviets, he cited their assistance to the North Vietnamese as one of the primary reasons for the fighting in Southeast Asia. In a last-ditch attempt to learn if Jackson could be convinced to back off, Fisher asked: “How many Jews a year do the Soviets have to let go before you’d vote for granting them MFN status?”
Without a trace of irony, Jackson replied: “About 100,000.”
His reply effectively ended their discussion, and the clamor to adopt Jackson-Vanik heightened, much to the discomfiture of Nixon and Soviet authorities, who hoped that if they issued 2,500 exit visas per month, Congress would relinquish its objection to the trade bill. “Jackson-Vanik was a mistake,” says Nixon. “At the time, if some- one wanted to do the Russians in, I was all for it. But Jackson-Vanik was not going to do the job. The year I entered office [1969], less than 600 Jews were allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union. In 1973, that amount had gone over 34,000, which was not exceeded until [1979 and not again until 1989]. We were able to do that by leaning on the Soviets —in private. I would say to the Russians: ‘I know your ar- gument against my talking about freedom for Soviet Jews; you say it’s an internal matter. But I need support in Congress for the arms-control agreement, for trade agreements. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but it would be useful if you could be more liberal in your emigration policy.’This is called linkage. I let the Soviets know that if they wanted
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