By Robert C. Jones Jr.
UM News

President Donna E. Shalala and Maxine Schwartz display their UM pride after the President’s Medal ceremony at the Ibis House on September 28.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (October 1, 2014) – She handled all of the fundraising and public programming for the University of Miami’s Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies since its inception, raising millions of dollars and organizing lectures, conferences, and symposia.

But more than that, Maxine Schwartz helped build what UM President Donna E. Shalala described as “a sense of community within a larger community,” enhancing the role Jewish people and culture play in education, scholarship, public service, and community outreach.

On Sunday, in a ceremony attended by trustees, VIP guests, her daughter, grandson, and the matriarchal namesake of the center for which she tirelessly fundraised, Schwartz received the UM President’s Medal for her long and dedicated service to the University and beyond.

“Mazel tov and l’chaim,” Shalala said in presenting Schwartz with the medal, an honor the president has bestowed on only a select few during her tenure.

The medal came as a surprise to Schwartz, who recently retired after 16 years as director of development and outreach for the Miller Center. “To receive the President’s Medal from President Shalala’s own hands was the icing on the cake,” said Schwartz. “I left her house feeling very, very special.”

Schwartz started at UM in 1992, working in what was then called the Middle East Studies Institute. She helped secure the gift that made the Miller Center possible, and subsequently landed others that bolstered the center’s reputation, including the donation that named the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies. Most recently, she worked with UM Hillel leadership on fundraising efforts for the Braman Miller Center for Jewish Life, which will soon break ground on the Coral Gables campus.

“A legendary doyenne of philanthropic, educational, and humanitarian causes” is how Shalala described Schwartz, noting her longtime board membership on the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.

“Maxine was there from the beginning,” said Dr. Haim Shaked, founding director of the Miller Center and the Dr. M. Lee Pearce Chair in Middle East Peace Studies. “She played a vital role in helping to shape the center, including its physical layout, the development of donors, and its outreach activities. Intelligent, highly educated, and very energetic, she always projected a strong sense of commitment to what she did.”

Schwartz retired last May, stepping down after 22 years at UM to care for her terminally ill husband, Kenneth J. Schwartz, a longtime real estate executive who was active in the Jewish community. He passed away in late August at the age of 88.

During Sunday’s dinner reception in her honor, Maxine Schwartz often thought of her late husband, lamenting the fact he couldn’t be there to see her being honored. “He was such a fan of everything I’ve ever accomplished in life,” she said. “He would have loved this event more than anyone.”

She called the Miller Center a critically important Judaic studies institute located in the second largest Jewish community in the nation after New York. “We rank right up there. If you look over the list of people who have come to speak at the Miller Center over the last 14 years, you would be impressed with who they are. We’ve had them all—everybody who’s a big name in Middle East or Jewish studies,” said Schwartz, reeling off names such as Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel; American academic scholar of Judaism Jacob Neusner; noted historian Sir Martin Gilbert, and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. “We’re not as old as some of the other Jewish centers like the one at Harvard, but we carry our weight.”