Longtime Hillel Foundation student leader and later volunteer supporter Diane A. Slater (nee Arbiture) died June 13 of glioblastoma. She was 41.
She was born in Milwaukee and graduated in 1978 from John Marshall High School. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Alverno College and earned an associate degree in accounting from Milwaukee Area Technical College.
While attending UWM, she became active in Hillel and was the first recipient of its Hillel House Award in 1983.
According to Allan Kwass, chairman of the board of directors for the Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee, “Although Diane’s most recent official service to Hillel was as a board member and treasurer, she was dedicated to Hillel for most of her life. As an active student leader, alumni volunteer and long-term board member, her Ahavat Yisrael shined.
“My most vivid memory is of her performing the mitzvah of building the sukkah annually with students and staff. But it will take the memories of hundreds of alumni and former staff to recall all the Shabbat meals, Purim celebrations, pro-Israel rallies, and UWM (information) tables which she organized and contributed to in every conceivable way. She did everything she could to make any program succeed.
“Hillel professionals and lay leaders use the terms ‘engagement’ and ‘empowerment’ to describe the goals of attracting Jewish students to Jewish life and helping them find their own role in our community. Diane did ‘engagement’ work with other Jewish students since her late teens…. Her involvement with Hillel engaged and empowered her contemporaries, including myself, and many students and alumni who have followed. This is only one way that her life and her memory are really a bracha, a blessing.”
In addition, she was past president of the Campus Organization for Israel.
Her husband, Dean Slater of Shorewood, noted, “Diane had a love of life that knew no limits. She loved her family without reservation and she was especially attached to Kibbutz Sasa, where she helped with landscaping — something she learned from her mother. She always knew how to make things grow, inside and outside, so beautifully.”
She also enjoyed music, having played first chair string bass in the All-City High School Orchestra. Also, she played the piano, recorder and guitar.
She worked as an accountant at AB Data and was Hillel’s volunteer accountant/bookkeeper.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by her parents, Edith and Gerald Arbiture of Milwaukee; in-laws Kerrie and Al Slater of Glendale; brothers Bill (Cindy) Arbiture of Concord, Wis., and Howard Arbiture of Marshall, Wis.; brothers-in-law Reed Slater of San Francisco, Todd (Michael Ross) of New York City, Greg (Joan) Slater of Wauwatosa, and Joel ( Steven Nelljinsten) Slater of The Hague, Holland; and sister-in-law Amy (David) Slater-Ovadia of Kfar Saba, Israel.
Rabbi Isaac Lerer officiated at the funeral on June 15. Burial was in Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery.
The family would appreciate memorials to the Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee.
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