By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Though Jack Spitzer’s heart made him so well-known and liked in Seattle and around the world, it is also what ended the local philanthropist’s life. Spitzer died at age 86 from cardiac arrest on July 31.
According to his son Rob, Spitzer suffered the heart attack two days earlier during a break in a fundraising meeting, and he never regained consciousness.
“In the days since he’s passed away I’ve been hearing from people on all corners of the earth who have been touched by him in many ways,” Rob said.
Jack Spitzer began his life of service as a teen as a member of B’nai B’rith’s Aleph Zadik Aleph youth organization. He won an award for most outstanding communal service by any AZA member anywhere in 1936, and then served as international president of the organization a few years later.
Forty years after that, Spitzer served as International President of B’nai B’rith, a position which among other accomplishments afforded him the honor of leading Israel’s first peace mission to Egypt — at the invitation of President Anwar Sadat.
He won the B’nai B’rith presidency in the most hotly contested election in the organization’s history. Yet when he ran for a second term, he won that contest unanimously.
“He just did a fantastic job, and everybody wanted to keep him there,” said Spitzer’s friend and colleague Merle Cohn. The two were friends since their years in AZA in the ‘30s.
People who knew Spitzer described him as warm and down to earth, and all agreed that when he set out to get something done, he would get it done.
“He was very personable, and I don’t know that he ever had an enemy,” said Cohn. “As hard as he worked, and as hard as he was political in the things that he did, as far as I was concerned he was very nice and very easy to get along with.”
“Unless,” he added, “you refused to do the work.”
Spitzer’s work touched all levels of the B’nai B’rith organization: he was a recipient of the Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty award nearly 30 years ago, and the Spitzer family sponsors the ADL’s Reducing Adolescence Prejudice Conference. Hillel’s three-day annual Spitzer Forum works to cultivate the talents of Jewish students interested in social justice work through political activism and grassroots organizing.
In the ‘70s, he and his wife Charlotte visited Ben-Gurion University of the Negev during a mission to Israel, where they saw that the school of social work was in danger of closing from lack of funds and a shortage of social workers in a region that desperately needed them.
“He and Charlotte saved the social work at Ben Gurion University from oblivion,” said Daphna Noily, Northwest regional director of American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The family put a lot of money and effort into rebuilding the school, which now has a successful program and will begin construction next year on a new facility that will bear Jack and Charlotte Spitzer’s names.
Spitzer spent his early years in New York, but after his father lost nearly everything in the stock market crash of 1929, the family to Southern California for a new start.
Spitzer spent his young adult life in the Los Angeles area, starting out as a professional for Jewish organizations, but eventually decided that he could do more to advance his desire for philanthropy by building his own fortune. People who knew him say that though he had amassed his fortune, he was not particularly interested in material goods.
After a very short-lived career in residential real estate, Spitzer turned to banking and development, and quickly became a mover in the savings and loan business. By 1972, he was running his own bank in Riverside, Calif., when his old friend Merle Cohn gave him a call.
“Security Savings and Loan bank came up for sale,” said Cohn, “and he bought it.”
Cohn couldn’t be prouder that it was his phone call that made the Spitzer name known in the Northwest.
“I was the one who was the responsible for him finding out that the bank was available and helped him buy it,” Cohn said. “And that was what brought him here.”
Upon his arrival in Seattle, Spitzer became heavily involved the local community. Ray Galante, former board president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, said Spitzer “was a very informed, aggressive, intelligent fundraiser, and connected with many people….The bottom line was that he always achieved emphatic results.”
Those results extended to both inside and outside the Jewish world. He sat on the boards of the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. An ardent supporter of the Democratic Party, Spitzer did extensive fundraising and had photos taken of him shaking hands with presidents dating back to the 1960s. He also led the recently dormant local chapter of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
Internationally, Spitzer co-founded Medical Education for South African Blacks and served the United Nations as a delegate for human rights. His travels, often with Charlotte at his side, included detailed itineraries to sites around the world where he had a meeting or engagement with his various causes.
“He was one of the most well-organized persons that I ever met, who absolutely made use of his time,” said Ray Galante.
Beyond supporting Jewish causes, the Spitzers supported the arts through gifts to institutions like the Wing Luke Asian Museum and the King County Library System. Earlier this year, he and Charlotte were honored with the first Presidents’ award from KCLS , where he attributed his inspiration for volunteerism to his wife.
“Charlotte was very much his partner in everything he did. The two of them would set the pace and set the example for everybody else to follow,” said Noily of Ben-Gurion University. She had some consolation, however, at the news of his death. “He probably died in the way that he would have wanted to go — actively engaged in a meeting, active up until the last minute, doing things, making things happen,” she said. “That was Jack.”
“We’ve lost a giant in our community, and Jack was unique amongst Jewish leaders in Seattle in that he truly cared about the national and international organizational scene,” said Barry Goren, President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. “This is really someone who devoted his life to doing tzedakah and good works, and he did it without sacrificing family.”
Goren knows. For the past two years, he and Spitzer’s son Rob, who just completed his term as Federation board president, worked together closely.
Days after his father’s passing, the younger Spitzer is still grieving.
“He just affected so many people besides his immediate family, it’s like the community is grieving,” he said.
Jack Spitzer leaves behind Charlotte, his wife of 63 years, daughter and son-in-law Jil Spitzer-Fox and Davis Fox, son and daughter-in-law Rob and Kathleen Spitzer, and seven grandchildren.
Remembrances can be made to B’nai B’rith Foundation of the U.S., 2020 K St. NW, 7th floor, Washington, D.C. 20006; or American Friends of Ben Gurion University, Re: Spitzer School of Social Work, 1430 Broadway, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018; or King County Library System Foundation, 960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah, WA 98027.