An outstanding architect of the best in the community has been lost with the death of Marvin Klitsner last week.
He was a humanist who cared about people and deemed it his religious and moral duty to improve the world. A quintessential Jewish community leader with a sophisticated understanding of community, he applied wisdom to communal building. He studied problems and needs in a logical way, applying to them a fine mind, which helped create services for enrichment of a community.
Klitsner knew the past, envisioned the future, so that developments were the result of forethought. He planned carefully to create the future, improving always on the present, avoiding errors of the past.
In his profession — law — he was an outstanding figure. When one is close to a man, it is often difficult to comprehend his size. Here was a man of impressive stature, yet unconcerned with personal status or notice.
He knew the world of business for profit — the world of competition. He worked and lived in it.
He thrived as well in the community world of cooperation. There, he influenced people to do together what no one could do alone. There, he manifested interests he viewed as essential to the future, at the same time as he respected the interests of others.
He helped people to understand and respect other peoples’ interests, such mutual respect and concern being the essence of the good community. People were helped to understand that “no man is an island” — that no single institution or agency is either.
Some people believe the object in life is to reach a high place. Klitsner had as his objective helping others to move upward, never regarding others as lesser than himself.
He was a man of great dignity and added dignity to the offices he held, in keeping with the views of Aristotle: “Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.”
Student and teacher
Only insightful people could understand his influence, for he did not ever trumpet his work. He eschewed honors, being unconcerned with personal credit. His happiness came from doing right.
He believed as the prophet Micah (6:8): “The Lord requires of you only to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Arrogance was never Klitsner’s mark. He would have been repelled by deferential treatment of himself. Yet he was deferential to people of learning — a rabbi or a communal servant for whom he had respect.
During his tenure (1964-68) as president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation (then called the Milwaukee Jewish Welfare Fund), he worked to see to it that the community used its modest resources to make progress —to obtain Camp Interlaken; to obtain the site for the JCC Day Camp; to make advances in work with individuals and families, the sick and the well, the old and the young — in every field.
During the Six-Day War in 1967, a time of turbulence and distress and fear that Israel could be destroyed, he was one of the most convincing fund-raisers ever. Joining then-campaign chairman Julius Atkins, he pleaded for help for Israel with conviction, intelligence and love, all brought to bear.
A religious man, he believed in prayer, observed the Jewish rituals. Yet he had great respect for others who did not, provided that they did good deeds, sharing his Jewish ethics.
Inspired by Rabbi-philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, devoted to Rabbi David Shapiro of Milwaukee, Klitsner was himself a scholarly person who did not parade his scholarship. A life-long student, he was for many a teacher.
Klitsner loved Israel. At a propitious time, he fulfilled his dream of living there with his wife, children, 19 grandchildren and his now six great-grandchildren — all of them at home in Israel.
His family members, devoted to the Jewish people, were often workers within the Soviet Union before its dissolution, and in the states of the former Soviet Union ever since, keeping the flame of Judaism alive. He was happy in Israel and thrived with other Israelis.
People are fortunate to get to do what they love and be good at it. Klitsner was a wonderful son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather. We knew him as an eminent community leader, a tower of strength who enriched the community by his presence and his deeds.
The world and the Jewish community are better off because he lived. What a privilege it has been to know him as a staunch friend, for whom friendship was a condition as permanent as the oceans.
Sooner or later, each of us becomes memories. The way in which we conduct ourselves determines how we are remembered. The way in which Klitsner conducted himself makes for inspiring memories.
Melvin S. Zaret is executive vice president emeritus of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
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