Eulogy delivered today by Jason Isaacson, Director, AJC Office of Government and International Affairs, at the funeral service in Washington, D.C. for Bookie.

A TRIBUTE TO HYMAN BOOKBINDER

JULY 25, 2011

We’ve all been talking a lot about Bookie these last few days, reminiscing with friends and colleagues and relatives, reading the old clippings, thumbing through his books.  We’ve been sharing stories, jokes, feelings – and grief.  We’ve shared our love for Bookie – and our debt to Bookie, a debt that stretches so far beyond those of us here, a debt that is owed by a nation … by a people.

Of course, for many in this sanctuary and outside these walls – for Ida, for Amy and Ellen, for his grandchildren, for his and Ida’s extended families, for his countless admirers – talking about Bookie and loving Bookie isn’t a new phenomenon; he was the unifying core of a large universe, and he sustained us, and led us, and delighted us. 

I feel a particular debt to Bookie.  I come to work every day in an office – in fact, in a profession – that Bookie created.  Every morning, I pass the glass door to a large room on which, some 19 years ago, we stenciled, in gold, the words “Hyman Bookbinder Conference Center.”

The work that my American Jewish Committee colleagues and I do is work that Hyman Bookbinder pioneered, perfected, performed with grace and wit and integrity and passion, and with consummate, awe-inspiring effectiveness.  He was one man – with a wonderful secretary, Dottie Woodland, whom his successor David Harris, now AJC’s executive director, and then later I inherited – and with a very small team; but he did the work of many, he was creative and fearless and irresistible, and he helped shape the public debate in Washington through his two decades at AJC, as he had in the decades before – in the labor movement and in the federal government.

What a model Bookie set for all of us.  He had rock-solid convictions – in the pursuit of justice here and around the world; in equal rights, and real opportunity for the disadvantaged, the discriminated-against, the left-behind; he believed in the United States as a force for good – but a force that needed to be kept true to its ideals; he believed in a secure and robust and perfectable Israel, as the national homeland of the Jewish people and a democratic beacon to its region and to the world.

Tireless and stubborn, he married those convictions to a prodigious work ethic.  Charming, with a common touch, he opened doors and kept them open – and won arguments, and won supporters, and won friends.

Bookie invented a new form of ethnic advocacy – an advocacy for the Jewish people that was grounded in the common ideals and principles of Jewish scripture and the rabbinic tradition – and of American democracy.  In partnership with other great leaders and activists and intellectuals of AJC, and with counterparts in other ethnic organizations, he built coalitions that fought for human rights, that countered racism and all forms of bigotry, that championed the extension of civil rights protections, that sought to insure fairness in immigration procedures, that kept the social safety net from disintegrating, that strengthened the bonds between the United States and its ally Israel – and advanced the cause of Middle East peace.

In an era before computers and cell-phones, Bookie was a multi-tasker.  He wrote op-eds and he helped write legislation; he gave speeches to labor rallies and testimony to congressional committees; he toured the country debating Middle East issues with a retired U.S. Senator, and he advised other Senators and at least one Governor on the achievement of their presidential ambitions.  When interviewed, he was wise and pithy and memorable.  When there was a rally to address or a march to join for an important cause, he was game, he was stirring, he clasped the hands of the men and women at his side – and he marched.

The last few times I visited Bookie, he was full of curiosity about the work my colleagues and I were doing – and full of compliments.  He probed for and listened to my stories of political exchanges here and abroad – and tried to convince me that we were all doing so much more than he had ever done.  It wasn’t at all true.  But it was encouraging, if not quite believable, to hear the praise of a man so great, so accomplished, so important to the life of America, and to the life of the Jewish people.

Bookie was a mentor – to me and to generations of colleagues; David Harris, who succeeded him in Washington and revered him, cites him constantly as proof that one individual, driven and creative, can make a difference – can make history.

Bookie was an inspiration.  He was a model.  He was a privilege and a joy to know.  He left the world better than he found it – our challenge and our calling, and also our gift.  He was a friend – unique and irreplaceable.  And he will be missed.