When Greer Fay Cashman and I went to interview Isi Leibler in his Jerusalem home on Ahad Ha’am Street on February 21 for the cover story of The Jerusalem Report, his health was failing, but his mind was as sharp as ever.
As we sat with Isi, his wife, Naomi, and his son Jonathan in his study, where I had frequently visited him, I thought of my father and grandfather. Isi, who died at the age of 86 on Tuesday, was the classic Jewish father and grandfather, tough and loving, with acute moral clarity, deep religious conviction and fervent faith in the future of Israel and the Jewish people.
That’s why we chose to call the story, “A believer in miracles,” recalling David Ben-Gurion’s famous line, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles. “
We could not pretend to cover the wide scope of Leibler’s life, as Suzanne D. Rutland did in her new book, Lone Voice: The Wars of Isi Leibler, but rather concentrate on his essence.
Isi told us he still regarded the realization of the centuries-old dream of the Jewish people as a modern-day miracle.
“If there’s one thing that runs through my mind all the time, it’s the fact that from the outset, the very day when Israel was declared – and when the Russians and Americans, who were engaged in the Cold War, both agreed on the State of Israel – it was the beginning of a series of miracles, which to my mind have continued to this very day,” he said.
The Belgium-born, Australian-Israeli businessman served in a series of leadership roles, including with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the World Jewish Congress. He played a key role in exposing corruption in the Claims Conference and Israel’s establishment of diplomatic relations with India and China, before making aliyah with Naomi in 1999.
But we chose to focus our interview on his legacy of drawing world attention to the global Soviet Jewry movement. Not only did he personally campaign on behalf of refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion (whom he credited with changing the course of Jewish history), he also persuaded Australian prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke to be the first to advocate for their cause at the United Nations.
WHEN I asked him who his hero was, Isi said, without hesitating, Natan Sharansky, who he said was his hero before they met and became friends. Sharansky and his comrades were, he said, “the miracle that to my mind brought about not only a revolution in Jewish life and a critical contribution to the long-term values in Israel, but helped to bring about the fall of the Russian totalitarian empire. And to me, that is as great a miracle as any.”
After our interview, I called Sharansky’s assistant, Larissa Ruthman, who accompanied him to pay what would be his last visit to the Leiblers’ book-lined home on March 9, and we published a lovely photograph she took of the two men. It is a marvelous memory.
Bar-Ilan University, to which Isi donated his precious Jewish library, presented him with an honorary doctorate in 2016 for being “an ardent advocate of the State of Israel and world statesman” and for his tireless efforts to address the challenges facing the Jewish nation at every historic crossroad: from freeing Soviet Jewry to combating BDS.
Growing up in the shadow of the Shoah, he considered himself fortunate to be a part of Israel’s miraculous success story. As he told us at the end of his interview, “In my twilight years, I look back and say I’ve been privileged to live through one of the most tumultuous and rewarding periods in Jewish history, starting off with the darkest time we’ve ever encountered.
“And I’m looking forward to my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren inheriting a much better world.”