Remembering Stuart Schoffman

With the passing of Stuart Schoffman, who died Nov. 7 in Jerusalem at age 74, the Jewish world lost a great mind and a kind and generous spirit. He had the finest Jewish and secular education (Yeshivah of Flatbush, Harvard, and Yale); a classically liberal worldview; prodigious talent as an essayist, editor, and translator of Hebrew literature; and a poetic sensibility.

Born in New York in 1947 to Hebraist scholars and Zionists, he grew up with the State of Israel and became one of the finest translators of its prominent writers.

For more than a decade his visceral and thought-provoking JUF News column, “The View from Jerusalem,” animated Israel’s talkative and diverse people; dished up a taste of her culture; and explained her dichotomies and complexities.

“The white light of Tel Aviv, especially on a spring day neither hot nor humid, struck me as hopeful, full of promise, very different from the nostalgic golden glow of Jerusalem. Like the sun and the moon, both lights are necessary to the soul,” Stuart wrote in “The House on Bialik Street,” his April 2009 column.

“The poet’s words, the artist’s works, the snapshots of times gone by, the mélange of bold buildings on Bialik and its neighboring streets, all conspired, on that sunny eve of Israel’s somber Memorial Day, to transport me to a fresh frame of mind. Gone for the afternoon were politics and diplomacy, theology and theodicy, drama and destiny. What remained, in the white light of Tel Aviv, was a memory of what never quite was, but might have been–and might still turn out to be.”

When I came to JUF News (now Jewish Chicago) as editor in 1994, Michael Kotzin of blessed memory introduced me to Stuart and invited him to write the column. We all were cut of the same Zionist cloth, but Stuart had made aliyah (moved to Israel) and stayed. He and his wife, Roberta Fahn Schoffman, their children, Rafi and Dani, and the dog (a German Shepherd named Lizzie) lived in the German Colony.

“The best Jewish neighborhood in the world,” he called it. His wit was wry.

We became friends. The relationship did more for me than for him, I’m sure, as I learned much from him (though he appreciated my turning him onto Turkish music). I would bring students from JUF’s Write On for Israel program to Stuart’s home for a dose of his wisdom and his spirit.

When he stayed with me in Evanston and I with him in Jerusalem, we took long walks and talked. What makes people and places tick was foremost on his mind, especially the relationship of Jews to Israel.

He often opened talks to visiting American Jews with ” Ze lo Amerika! ” (“This is not America!”); the notion that Israel should mirror their own experiences and aspirations rankled him.

“After 61 years, we pursue simple dreams of untroubled independence, as if they were born yesterday,” he wrote in that 2009 column.

When Stuart began writing for JUF News , he faced a near-fatal struggle with cancer and endured arduous treatment and long stretches of isolation. He never missed a column, never showed self-pity, and kept his eyes on the big picture. He made sense of the world, and the world–especially Israel–made more sense because­ of him. A building block of reason has been knocked from the foundation, and I feel the loss.

“How are you coping? How do you spend your time? You’ve managed to travel? I wish you could park your camper in our driveway. Been too long, and who knows how much longer,” Stuart wrote to me at Rosh Hashanah last year.

I knew you a long time, my friend. But not long enough.

Aaron B. Cohen, a writer based in Evanston, was executive editor of JUF News from 1994-2011.