When it comes to celebrities, it’s hard to find one more beloved than Michael J. Fox.

Even when he plays unlikeable characters, he’s just so, well, loveable — from the Wall Street-obsessed smart aleck son on Family Ties to the manipulative lawyer on The Good Wife . But Fox is perhaps most cherished and respected for his off-screen role as courageous humanitarian, who’s transformed his struggles and hardship into something beautiful — into a blessing. In Judaism, we call him — quite simply — a mensch.

Fox headlined the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago’s Vanguard Dinner on behalf of the 2016 Jewish United Fund Annual Campaign on Thursday evening, Nov. 5, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

‘It is up to us’

The Vanguard Dinner, attended by more than 700 people this year, launched the 2016 JUF Annual Campaign, which helps protect, sustain and enrich the Jewish community, especially at this critical juncture for the Jewish people. Steve Miller, who co-chaired the dinner with his wife Diane, remarked how global Jewry continues to battle many of the perennial threats to Jewish life and Jewish lives, threats like Holocaust denial, escalating global anti-Semitism, and accelerating terror attacks against Israel.

It’s up to the Jewish community, Miller said, to take action. “We have learned that we cannot be complacent. We have learned that if we are not vigilant, history can repeat itself in horrific ways. We have learned that it is up to us,” he said. “One of the lessons of Back to the Future is that if we act now, we can impact the future and make it brighter.”

The 2016 Vanguard dinner was chaired by Diane & Steve Miller, and vice chaired by Erica & Michael Fishman and Devra & Gregg Shutan; Harry J. Seigle is the 2016 General Campaign Chair.

Abby Seitz, JUF’s Hillel/Israel Education Center Intern and a student at Columbia College in Chicago, led the guests in the blessing over the challah.

Devra Shutan, volunteer, donor, and recipient of the benefits of JUF programming, addressed the growing culture of hatred toward Jews around the world–even here at home.

She recounted that recently some boys on an opposing middle school basketball team hurled anti-Jewish epithets at her son and other Jewish players on the Highland Park team. “What can be done? How do we stand up to hatred?” she asked the audience. “…We have to stand together with strength and pride. This is our time to prioritize our Jewish community and utilize all possible resources to keep it strong…We are living in a period of Jewish history that is the most critical my generation has faced, and we are the ones who will determine its course.”

She asked the guests to support JUF and recognized a generous donor who will be matching campaign gift funds in 2016.

‘Why I’m Here’

Then Fox, introduced by Michael Fishman, was greeted to the stage with a standing ovation. He told the audience how comfortable he was, feeling like ” mishpacha ” (family), as his wife of 27 years, actress Tracy Pollan, and their four children (a 26-year-old son, 20-year-old twin daughters, and a 14-year-old daughter) are all Jewish. Fox and Pollan, who met on the set of Family Ties , married under a chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) and all of their children have celebrated their bar and bat mitzvahs. Fox said he too is “happily” immersed himself in Jewish life.

Fox, who played the beloved Marty McFly in the Back to the Future franchise, made the rounds this fall on the media circuit, via Doc’s DeLorean Time Machine, to celebrate Back to the Future II, set in the fall of 2015. Chicagoans hoped one particular premonition made in the movie — that the Cubs would win the World Series in 2015 — would come true, but, alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

Back in the past, Fox’s life started modestly. A working class, hockey-loving kid from Ontario, Canada, he dropped out of school to try and make it in Hollywood. “Being a poor, starving actor,” Fox recalled, “is a lot more fun in retrospect.” He said his first apartment in Los Angeles was a dump, so tiny that he’d wash the dishes in the shower.

But in the mid-’80s, his career exploded, and suddenly, his face was plastered everywhere — even on a lunchbox.

Fox was living out the lifestyles of the rich and famous, playing celebrity hockey with his idol Bobby Orr, watching the world premiere of Back to the Future alongside Princess Diana, driving fancy cars, and partying hard. “I was Justin Bieber, before he was Bieber,” Fox recalled.

But then, Tracy played him a song as a cautionary tale. She asked him to listen to a James Taylor tune called “That’s Why I’m Here,” which warns not to lose sight of what matters most in life. “She had genuine concerns about my role as life of the party,” Fox said, getting emotional. “Her insight probably saved my life.”

And, in 1991, Fox had yet another wakeup call when, at just 29, he was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease (PD)–a chronic degenerative neurological movement disorder. His doctor told Fox he only had 10 years left to act because of the speed of the disease’s progression. Fox said he felt like he was waiting for a bus to hit him, but didn’t know when.

He waited seven years to go public with his illness.

In 2000, he launched The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson’s Research, the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s drug development in the world–which has funded over half a billion dollars in Parkinson’s research. The Foundation has galvanized the search for a cure to the disease that currently affects at least an estimated five million people worldwide.

Several JUF affiliated agencies including JCC, CJE SeniorLife, and the Center for Jewish Genetics provide programming and services related to Parkinson’s disease. About 10 percent of PD is genetic, and the MJFF is currently sponsoring a landmark study worldwide. The Center for Jewish Genetics and MJFF are collaborating this month to help identify local candidates through a family history initiative, and will discuss connections between Jewish heritage and PD at a program in the spring.

All those years ago, Fox’s doctor made one wrong prediction about the future: the actor’s screen career didn’t end. In fact, in recent years, despite his illness, Fox has reemerged as a TV star, playing memorable characters on hit shows like Boston Legal , Scrubs , Curb Your Enthusiasm , and The Good Wife . “I could play anyone,” he joked, “as long as they have Parkinson’s.”

But it was a role the comedian Dennis Leary asked Fox to play on Leary’s show Rescue Me that stands out most in Fox’s mind. The character was “Dwight,” an alcoholic, pill-popping, sex-addicted misanthrope. And here’s the kicker — he’s a paraplegic. “You want me to play a paraplegic?” Fox asked Leary. “You do understand this guy can’t move … and I can’t stop moving?” But, soon, Fox understood Leary’s motivation. Though their afflictions are different, Fox could relate to Dwight. “I wasn’t Dwight, but I know Dwight,” he said. “I know about loss. I know about life rearranged, purpose reexamined, and the chaos of fate…If I had spent my time wallowing, I could have easily been Dwight. I often say Parkinson’s is a gift and some people are skeptical about that. The truth is it’s the gift that keeps taking, but it’s a gift.”

Even Fox has a rare pessimistic moment. In fact, when he missed a deadline while writing his book, Always Looking Up , he complained to his wife, “I’m never going to finish my book about optimism.”

Maybe not always, but most of the time Fox “looks up,” thanks, in part, to a stranger in Africa. He once read an article about a pregnant woman in Mozambique, whose village was hit by a massive flood. In labor, with the waters flooding past, the woman grabbed for a tree branch in desperation. “She sat in the tree and delivered her baby,” he said. So whenever any of Fox’s children complain to their dad about an “urgent” problem that’s really not so urgent, he tells them, “A lady had a baby in a tree. What do you got?”

The Vanguard Dinner was sponsored in part by a grant from the Manfred & Fern Steinfeld Campaign Events Fund and our generous corporate partners; DLA Piper, Greenberg Traurig, and Kirkland & Ellis, and GCM Grosvenor.