Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, left, meets Shirley and Robert Max, 1988.
April 17, 2008
As he prepares to be honored by the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest for “a lifetime of generous deeds and professionalism,” Robert Max attributes his commitment to grim experience and survival as a soldier in World War II.
“After what I lived through in the military and somehow survived, I said to myself, ‘You remained alive. There must be a purpose for it,’” Max said recently. “Then you make choices and my choice was to be engaged in life in some constructive form. I wanted it to be focused mainly on things Jewish.”
Fittingly, the reminiscence came after a JHS board meeting at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, three weeks before he is to receive the organization’s 2008 Lasting Impressions Award on April 29.
The award recognizes his service as a past president of the organization, now celebrating its 18th anniversary (see sidebar below), as well as Max’s other contributions to Jewish life in the community.
Since 2002, when Max became president, the society has sent five of its programs on the road. They created opportunities for schools, libraries, and synagogues to host exhibitions on a variety of Jewish-oriented topics ranging from suburban supermarkets to Newark’s Yiddish theater to the evolution of the century-old Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.
“Bob is a man of vision. He is a creative thinker who really gets the idea that history plays a unifying force in the community,” said Linda Forgosh, the JHS’ curator and outreach director.
Along the way, Max has served as president of the NJ State Association of Jewish Federations, president of Temple Sinai in Summit, and president and cofounder of Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Summit.
Max said his involvement in JHS, like all of his community work, is “a continuation — another engagement in Jewish life. I look at every organization with a sense of what service it provides. This one preserves the history of the Jewish community.”
Max is acutely aware of his own history, and invokes it to explain the person he became.
“My experience in war changed my whole life,” Max said.
Born and raised in Newark, Max attended New York University, then transferred to Ohio University before postponing his studies to enlist in the Army.
As a 20-year-old private first class in the Sixth Armored Infantry Division, Max was taken prisoner by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was beaten savagely and force-marched through the winter to a forced labor camp.
Although he lost 45 pounds during 90 days in captivity, he and two army buddies summoned the strength to flee their Nazi captors. Once they reached safety, Max spent 10 months in a military hospital, where “I had an awful lot of time to think and seek a rationale for what’s it all about.”
Once he was discharged, he returned to Ohio University, where he joined the Hillel — becoming its president — and met his wife Shirley.
Pfc. Robert Max in the U.S. Army, 1944
Photos courtesy Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest
“Hillel gave me a taste of Jewish life, and after college, I sought out the UJA because I knew the necessity of it,” he said.
Almost every time he became active in an organization, Max was asked to be its chair.
It happened that way at the Jewish Historical Society. As president, he understood instinctively that the JHS had a “great product.”
“We took the society to a new level,” he said. “It had a very basic function in the community as a research and educational arm of [United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ]. Without it, I fear that so much great history over the decades would have been lost.”
But being a businessman as well as an activist, he understood that “you must look for new fields.”
So evolved the idea of traveling exhibits.
“I knew it would be valuable if we took our history out of the archives and brought it to the community,” said Max. “I knew there would be people in our community who would support it, and they did.”
Max has come up with another idea to expand support and interest for the society. It’s a project he calls “Legacy.”
His intention is to provide a kit to enable people to go decade by decade through their lives, and link key moments with major historical events.
“It is built on the foundation that the most important thing in the lives of our Jewish families in this area is the preservation of the history of their families,” he said. “It will be important to the Boomers and the X-generation and certainly their children to have some lineage to parents and grandparents. This program I have designed provides all the materials anyone will need to tell their family history and preserve it for future generations.”
The research will emerge as family histories, not only in print, but on CDs and DVDs, to be distributed to family members and placed on file in the JHS archives.
“The electronic component is going to engage the young people,” he explained. “We will ultimately have a portrait of the Jewish family in the MetroWest area.”
The ultimate beneficiaries are generations yet unborn, he said.
“It is really a drive toward maintaining a sense of Jewish identity and a reinforcement of Jewish continuity,” he said. “We will be introducing those unborn to their great-great-great-grandparents — not just to their families but to history, too. It will be a reflection of the times.”
18 going on 170
At the age of 83, Robert Max has a second bar mitzva in 2006 at Congregation Beth Hatikvah, the Reconstructionist synagogue he helped found.
This year marks the 18th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest by Saul Schwarz and Ruth and Jerome Fien. The goal of the society is to document and celebrate the 170-year history of the Jewish community that has expanded from its origins on Newark Bay as far west as the Delaware Water Gap. Its collections encompass material from Essex, Morris, Sussex, and portions of northern Union counties.
The society operates with support from membership dues, funding from United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, and the New Jersey Historical Commission, as well as from other private, family, and corporate foundations and individuals.
The society’s next major exhibition, still in development, will be “Weequahic Memoirs: Celebrating Newark’s Legendary Neighborhood.” The exhibit opens June 18 and runs through Aug. 27 at the Leon and Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange. It will reopen Sept. 9 and continue through Oct. 7 at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany.
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2008 Lasting Impressions Award Gala
The Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest’s 2008 Lasting Impressions Award Gala, honoring Robert Max, will be held at the Crystal Plaza in Livingston on Wednesday, April 29, at 6:30 p.m. Keynote speaker is June Walker, immediate past national president of Hadassah and current chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Tickets cost $180 and are available by calling Irene Segal at 973-929-2703.
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