My Remarks at my Dad’s – Seymour Leifer’s - Funeral
Friday, August 27th, 2010
17 Elul 5770
Date of Death: Thursday August 26th, 2010 – 16 Elul 5770
Thanks for joining us today in celebrating Dad’s legacy and
putting an incredible life into focus.
This effort requires a combination of detective work and the art of
the Talmudist. Dad was a man of very few words.
Most of us know Dad as a steadfast and quiet presence in our lives.
Yussie recently marveled how he once had a two hour visit with
Dad without Dad speaking a word, and Marcia is still recovering
from the first time I brought her home to Englewood for
Thanksgiving and the sum total of Dad’s words to her at the table
were, “pass the peas.” Dad was merely living out his motto of “see
more (Seymour) and say less.”
At the end of Dad’s life we had the luxury of knowing it was
coming – him for a few years, and us for a few months. Dad
approached this phase of his life with equanimity and the
determination to leave a mark on his family, friends and
colleagues. We participated in writing a Torah together, going on a
50th anniversary cruise, and Dad took our call to write a living will
very seriously.
This is the last note he gave me:
Alan & Marcia
As I prepare for the end, looking back on my life, I find that life
in general was good – good children, excellent in-law children,
great grandchildren.
1. A gratifying job for 42 years;
2. A great marriage for 52 years; and
3. Many loyal friends.
Dad was very conscious of the Jewish dictum – Tircha Dtziburah –
annoying the crowd by dragging out obvious points.
Good, excellent and great – Dad wasn’t very creative with his
superlatives, but when he did use them he meant it with all the
depth of his heart.
Let’s unpack some of what he left us – first his job.
Dad was a teenager during WWII when he got hold of his first
camera. In those days, to successfully operate a camera, you had to
be part mechanical engineer, part chemist and part artist. He
pursued his passion right away, getting a job with Berkey Photo
while he went to Brooklyn College.
In the 40’s 50’s and 60’s Berkey was a place for tough NYC Jews
who believed in the power of the snapshot, in the centrality of
family life and in the value that the ever-present family album can
bring to our lives. Life magazine once marveled at the attachment
we Americans put on our albums – people were constantly running
back into burning buildings in an attempt to retrieve their most
precious possession – the family album.
There was only one very big problem – Kodak was a market
behemoth that in the wake of WWII had crushed their German and
Japanese competitors and had achieved world dominance of the
business – a business where it now could dictate prices, market
shares and the pace of innovation.
Undeterred, Ben Berkey and his lieutenants crafted a decades long
insurgency campaign to bring more innovation, quicker service,
and lower prices to the American consumer.
It was an epic quest that left a huge mark on the world of
technology and innovation.
At first, it was marked by good old-fashioned business qualities –
unstinting hard work, giving more value than you were charging
for, and building alliances of unlikely bedfellows in pursuit of a
common good. Dad was part of a group that helped resurrect the
technologies the were laying dormant in Gemany and Japan after
the war, and he used them in order to build state of the art film
processing labs that could drive down unit costs and processing
time so that we could expect our most precious possessions – our
snapshots - to come back to us at a cost of pennies and in a matter
of hours.
Still, in those years Kodak was undaunted in using its market
power for its profit advantage and Berkey took to the courts. Every
corporate lawyer in America knows the David and Goliath story of
Berkey versus Kodak – a legacy of antitrust suits, injunctions,
decrees and settlements that went from 1954 through 1995, went
up to the Supreme Court, and set the stage for the AT&T and
Microsoft consent decrees that ushered in the world of digital and
wireless. Today 3 billion people carry around one of these – a
portable camera phone – a direct legacy of dad’s work during the
20th century.
Mind you, I would not have known any of this directly from Dad –
he was very compartmentalized and always wanted to protect us
kids from the roughness of the real world. I remember one day
nearly twenty years ago, a few years after he retired we were
vacationing in Hilton Head, the 2 of us taking a stroll together,
when we hear from above us a shout, “Seymour, how the hell are
you?” We looked up, and there on a terrace in the hotel above us
was an old union boss from the NYC plant. He invited us up for a
drink and I heard old war stories of when Dad and he sat across the
table ironing out new labor contracts in the age of mega inflation
and union prowess. I heard salty language, saw clear comraderie
and mutual affection from these two adversaries and learned what
they were able to accomplish together. I was 32 years old and I
saw a side of Dad I never knew. It was amazing to reflect on how a
quiet, shomer shabbos, kosher guy could succeed in that kind of
rough and tumble world.
What Dad made sure we saw were points 2 and 3 – a great
marriage for 52 years and many loyal friends.
Yussie, Rabbi Golden and Rabbi Gardenswartz, will reflect on the
incredible devotion Dad lavished on his family and community.
Let me just say that Karen and I were blessed in growing up in a
household that never saw an argument between husband and wife
(except for the one time when Mom and Dad couldn’t agree on
whether the air conditioning was too high or too low) and we were
witness to the unbelievable devotion Dad had to taking care of
Mom during her 5 year battle against her cancer. He was there at
every appointment and every treatment. Mom’s doctors marveled
to me that they had never seen such a devoted spouse.
There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.
During dad’s 42-year involvement in the photofinishing business,
he was responsible for the printing and delivering of something
like a billion snapshots that made their way into America’s family
albums. A billion snapshots would be worth a trillion words. That
might be why Dad was always so quiet. His life’s work at Berkey
Photo and the Leifer family spoke for itself.
Dad you are our hero and the pillar of our lives. We love you and
your life lessons will be emulated for the rest of our days.
Eulogy by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Sy Leifer
Shlomo Zalman Ben Tzvi
I last saw Sy on Wednesday afternoon, what would turn out
to be his last day of life. Alan and Marcia and I were visiting with
him in his room in the basement of Alan and Marcia’s home. We
were talking about the camera industry that was the work of his
life, and how it had changed with the advent of the digital camera;
how the industry was founded after World War II and is now a
shadow of its former self. It was a pleasant, lovely conversation,
and Sy was comfortable and engaged. At the end, I said that I
realized it was Elul, time for the blowing of the shofar, and that I
wanted to come back tomorrow to blow the shofar, that he should
tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah gedolah. He said that would be
good, and we even negotiated a time. Don’t come right after
minyan. Too early. Come at 10:00. That was Wednesday
afternoon, when I said good bye.
As it would turn out, Sy never heard that last sounding of the
shofar, because he died early Thursday morning.
I have been dwelling on this unfinished work, the sounding
of the shofar in Elul that we ran out of time for, and I realize that
while Sy did not hear the last sounding of the shofar, in fact, in
important ways his entire life embodied the sounding of the shofar.
The Rav, Joseph Soloveitchik, famously observed that the
agony and the glory of our human existence is encapsulated in the
four notes of the shofar.
Tekiah is long, strong, affirming, hopeful.
Shevarim, which means brokenness, connotes the very
brokenness that is in every life.
Teruah, the nine staccato sobs, are the crying, the weeping,
for our brokenness.
Tekiah gedolah is again a reaffirmation of length and strength
and life and hope.
The Rav noted that the sounding of the shofar needs to
include the shevarim and the teruah, the brokenness and and the
tears, because brokenness and tears are an ineluctable part of the
human condition. But the shofar sounding cannot begin or end
with it. It must begin in hope, with the tekiah, and it must end in
hope and in strength, with the tekiah gedolah. Sy Leifer’s
beautiful and important life has all the notes of Elul, all the sounds
of the shofar.
Yes, it is true, there was shevarim, and for that shevarim
there is teruah, there were brokenness and tears. Zyra’s illness and
passing were a source of brokenness for Sy. Sy would weep fresh
tears when he would think of his beloved’s illness and passing.
Shevarim. Teruah.
And there was shevarim and teruah in his own illness and
passing. We are nearing the end of summer. But for the Leifer
family the summer began in simcha, with Veronica’s Bat Mitzvah
on Memorial Day weekend. And I’ll never forget her Bat Mitzvah
party, on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, at the Boston
Harbor Hotel. It was a glorious, sparkling, sunny, perfect day.
And the party took place in a room with a view of the Boston
Harbor. And there was Sy, with a smile on his face on a sunny day
at a simcha, dancing while the band was playing, with his children
and grandchildren, all with smiles on their faces and joy in their
hearts, and that wasn’t even three months ago. Same summer, and
now we are here. Shevarim. Teruah.
OK. So there was shevarim. And Teruah. It is true. But that
was not the sound of his life. It was there, but that’s not what his
life was about. What his life was about was tekiah.
As Sy looked back at his life, and as he reflected on it with
his children and grandchildren, two numbers kept coming up: 52
and 42. He was very proud of 52 and 42. 52 was the number of
years he was married to Zyra. 42 was the number of years he
worked for Berkey Photo in its very incarnations and in the various
cities to which it send him and his family. 52 and 42. Sy Leifer was
a man of commitments that made it through the years, long and
strong and continuous, like the tekiah.
These two continuous commitments, 52 and 42, Zyra and the
family, and his work with Berkey Photo, came together, in part of
the narrative of his life, which is that the family moved around a
lot. I may be missing some of the cities, but at various points they
lived in Boston, in the San Francisco area, in the suburban
Washington DC Maryland area, in New Jersey, later of course in
Florida. But throughout all these moves, several truths were clear.
Family was wherever Sy was gathered with the people he
loved. What made a home a home was not the bricks and morter,
but the love inside. Home and hearth came from the heart and
were portable.
And wherever the family moved, Sy found a shul; and
became a shul regular; and supported the Jewish community by his
presence and his philanthropy; and became a chevra mensch; in all
of the cities that he lived in.
It was very important to Sy that he was a provider for his
family. It was important to him in his living, and it was important
to him in his dying, that he should leave his family provided for.
And he did, and that is beautiful and praiseworthy.
But what he really leaves his family is the Torah that is the
role modeling of his life, for his life role models what truly
matters. He teaches Alan and Marcia, and Karen and Yossi, he
teaches Jessica, Rebecca, Ben, and Veronica, and Robin and Este,
that what really matters are our commitments that make it through
the years. Sy was a multi millionaire in all the things that matter,
family and faith and loyalty and integrity and community, and that
is part of the true and abiding yerushah he leaves his loved ones.
The camera industry has changed. Kodah, Canon, Minolta are
shadows of their former selves. But hard work and loyalty and
commitment that Sy embodied never goes out of style.
And now, deep in Elul, in the summer that began with
Veronica’s Bat Mitzvah, and that ends with mourner’s kaddish, we
stare at life straight on, at all of its totality, and we are okay. We
are good. We are strong. Because of the legacy that Sy has left us.
52. Tekiah gedola. 42. Tekiah gedola. Family, work, yiddishkeit,
community, integrity, faithfulness, loyalty, home and hearth that
come from the heart, and that make it through the years. Tekiah
gedola. Length and strength and life. That is the meaning of Sy
Leifer’s life. That is his legacy. That is his soundtrack. That is
what we take with us, as we face a future without him, but with the
sounds of his shofar that will never die. Tehei nishmato…