Stuart Eizenstat gets special honor

www.AASynagogue.org/tickets or call 404-355-5222

In 1987, Stuart Eizenstat started a special lecture series in his hometown of Atlanta as a way to honor his late father, Leo.

Since then, two U.S. presidents, four Nobel Peace Prize winners, two seated Supreme Court Justices and other political leaders and newsmakers have taken the stage at Ahavath Achim synagogue in Buckhead. The annual lecture series has grown into a major annual event in the Atlanta community.

“I have Atlanta flowing through my veins,” said Eizenstat, a Washington, D.C., lawyer currently serving as special adviser on Holocaust issues to Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in a phone interview. “I wanted a unique way to remember members of my family. I wanted to share something with the community which shaped me.”

But on Sunday, the spotlight will be on Eizenstat himself during a gala in his honor. Coined “Stu, Long Overdue,” the salute celebrates Eizenstat’s decades of public service and his enduring commitment to Ahavath Achim (often called AA synagogue), a conservative Jewish synagogue at the corner of Peachtree Battle and Northside Drive.

The tribute will include a special matinee performance by Broadway star Tovah Feldshuh. Accompanied by renowned composer and pianist Alex Rybeck, Feldshuh will perform her “Tovah: Out of Her Mind!,” her one-woman song and dance cabaret.

“Stu Eizenstat is one of Atlanta’s great treasures,” said Bobby Ezor, who is chairing the event. “I have been coming to the Eizenstat Lectures just about every year and they are a priceless gift to the Atlanta community. World famous speakers, always open to the public and free of charge.”

Ezor said he has been enriched by the experience of hearing luminaries in his synagogue’s intimate sanctuary, which holds a couple thousand people and where the speakers “are allowed to speak their mind without much restriction.”

On Sunday, the sanctuary will be transformed into a Broadway style theatre, complete with blacked-out windows, spotlights and a grand piano on stage.

Over the years, Eizenstat held many prominent appointments, including chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001).

At the age of eight months, Eizenstat, now 71, moved to the shady sidewalks and well-tended yards of Morningside, where he spent his childhood.

He walked to Morningside Elementary School or rode his bicycle. He played touch football in Lenox Park. For six or seven years, he belonged to the Devoted Sons of Israel, a social and cultural youth group. He was a shy, studious, serious boy.

An only child, he graduated from Grady High School. He was bookish and shy, and excelled in basketball.

Anti-Semitism was not uncommon in the South during this era, but Morningside was an insular world — a Jewish enclave of sorts. Eizenstat remembers only a couple of instances of overt discrimination, including once when his mother drove her son and a few friends to a private swimming club where they were greeted by a sign that read, “No Blacks, Jews or Dogs Allowed.”

Atlanta also was racially segregated in the 1940s and ’50s, when Eizenstat grew up.

As a youngster, he said, “Civil rights was not a big issue for me.”

That suddenly changed in college as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On a Sunday when his fraternity house kitchen was closed, Eizenstat and some friends were headed to a Howard Johnson’s for dinner and found their way blocked by a group of protesting black students from North Carolina A&T. That sit-in demonstration awakened “my civil rights consciousness,” he said.

“It was like a lifting of the veil over my eyes,” he added.

Soon he was signing petitions and boycotting restaurants that would not voluntarily desegregate.

Deeply influenced by experiences in his youth, Eizenstat said practicing law, public policy and being active in the Jewish community “has been the triangle of my life.”

As the Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-era issues during the Clinton administration, Eizenstat negotiated landmark agreements with the Swiss, Germans, Austrians and others covering the restitution of property, compensation payments to slave and forced laborers, recovery of looted art and bank accounts.

He also played a critical role in the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

He said his most interesting “job of all jobs” was working in the White House during the Carter administration, “where all of the problems come together.” He added, “It’s like a pressure cooker seven days a week, 14 hours a day but I loved it. You felt like you could make an impact.”

But when asked about his most satisfying work, he says, “Of all my accomplishments, I am most proud of my work in bringing justice to Holocaust survivors.”