Nate Shapiro passed away last week at age 88 in his native Chicago. A true light in the world has gone out. Nate was a life-long philanthropist, dedicated to the Jewish people, Israel and most of all, Ethiopian Jews. He worked tirelessly for the release of Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia during a harsh Marxist military regime, lobbied and advocated for the rescue from deplorable refugee camps in Sudan, and helped the community come down from Gondar to Addis Ababa in order for the Operation Solomon airlift to take place in May of 1991.
A modest man, Nate never would accept any credit for his activities or donations. Nate was President of the American Assocation for Ethiopian Jews from 1983 to 1993, but stayed out of the spotlight. “There is no I in AAEJ,” he would tell the staff, board and volunteers. “The focus is on Ethiopian Jews who need our help, not on any one of us.”
Nate co-founded Friends of Ethiopian Jews (FEJ) in 1998 to assist Ethiopian Jews in Israel to rise up the economic and educational ladders and become successful Israelis. He served as FEJ President until 2020.
Please read the following article by Nira Dayanim from ejewishphilanthropy.com, which was written in cooperation with Will Recant and Susan Pollack, both FEJ Board members who worked with Nate at the AAEJ for a decade, and Rachamim Elazar, Ethiopian Israeli leader who advised and worked closely with Nate in the struggle to help Ethiopian Jews full their “dream of two thousand years” and return to Zion.
The article in full, published January 11, 2025:
Nate Shapiro, philanthropist and activist who went the distance for Ethiopian Jewry, dies at 88.
As president of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, Shapiro played a key role in
Operation Solomon, believing that he had a duty to protect the Jews of Ethiopia.
Nate Shapiro.
By Nira Dayanim · January 10, 2025
COURTESY/FRIENDS OF ETHIOPIAN JEWS
Nathan “Nate” Shapiro, the Chicago-based philanthropist and activist who died on Dec. 31 at 88, wasa long-distance runner — in body and spirit.
According to those who knew him, Shapiro approached his life with his eye on the next mile:energetic, determined, humble and stoic — traits that were highlighted as he helmed the AmericanAssociation for Ethiopian Jews beginning in 1983, serving as president of the organization until itvoted unanimously to shutter its doors in 1993, with nearly $1 million in the bank, after OperationSolomon transported thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
“[Shapiro was] a marathon runner across the board,” William Recant, who served as AAEJ’sexecutive director starting in 1986, told eJP. “With [AAEJ] it was running uphill.”
Born in Chicago to Edna and Lester Shapiro in 1936, Shapiro was a dedicated Reform Jew. He studiedat Northwestern University, where he graduated fi rst in his class with a degree in economics, servedin the U.S. Army, worked in his family’s business before founding the Chicago brokerage fi rm SFInvestments in 1972.
In 1968, Shapiro founded the Edna and Lester Shapiro Foundation in his parents’ name. Thefoundation went on to donate several million dollars to various causes, among them, Chicago’sJewish Federation, the Israel ParaSport Center and AAEJ. Shapiro was also deeply involved inCongregation B’nai Torah in Highland Park, Ill. — where AAEJ was headquartered for a time.
He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Randy; his children Steve (Leslie) Shapiro, Danny (Anne)Shapiro and Lesley (Nate) Stillman; and 12 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Though none of his immediate family members were aff ected by the Holocaust, Shapiro was shapedby his awareness of it, acquaintanances said . In the 1970s, though there was a larger focus within theAmerican Jewish community on the Soviet Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain, after attending alecture about the plight of Ethiopian Jewry — tens of thousands of whom were trapped and barredfrom emigrating in the midst of a civil war by a Marxist regime —- Shapiro was hooked, Recant said.
“He took seriously ‘never again.’ He took seriously that a Jewish community in peril should not beignored or neglected,” Susan Pollack, who worked as AAEJ’s representative within Ethiopia, now president of the American Friends of Ethiopian Jews, told eJP. “He was very idealistic.”
Shapiro started by supporting AAEJ with donations, later becoming a board member of theorganization, and, in 1983, president of the organization. A regular donor to political campaigns, hispolitical contributions gave him access. As the organization’s work picked up in the years approaching Operation Solomon, Shapiro donatedmoney out of his own pocket to make plans come to fruition, and quickly, though neither Recant, norShapiro’s son, Steve, could confi rm exactly how much. Shapiro often donated tens of thousands at atime, totalling at least $1 million over the years — though Recant suspects it was likely closer to $3 million.
Sens. Ted Kennedy, Alan Cranston, Paul Simon and Rudy Boschwitz became regular names aroundthe house as Shapiro and the AAEJ helped assemble the Congressional Caucus for Ethiopian Jewryin 1986, which had over 160 members, according to Shapiro’s son. As he operated within the upperechelons of the Chicago Jewish community, he enlisted support of many prominent Chicago Jewishphilanthropists, including the Crown family and real estate mogul Judd Malkin — co-founder ofJMB Realty —- who served on AAEJ’s board for a time.
“Just to name a few, and you know, there were many more,” Steve Shapiro told eJP of the lawmakersand philanthropists his father worked with. “No one ever really had to tell him what the right thingto do was. He just knew.”
According to Recant, Shapiro noticed a gap in public attention and activism for Ethiopian Jewry, agap that existed, in Recant’s perspective, because of Israel’s political approach to the community.“‘Trust us, we’re doing everything in our power to help the Ethiopian Jews come to Israel,’ wasrepeated from the time of Golda Meir [in the 1970s] all the way through Netanyahu in the mid-’90s,”Recant told eJP. “Many of us who were children of Holocaust survivors, or had the Holocaust in theirbackground, know that not everything is always being done.”
According to Pollack, though Shapiro and the AAEJ were eventually able to garner the support ofseveral infl uential Jewish Americans — Elie Wiesel among them — he recognized that infl uencewould not win over the Ethiopian government, but political pressure could. “So Nate undertook a strategy to get the U.S. government involved and get them to lobby theEthiopian government,” Pollack told eJP.
Recant described Shapiro as a “strategic genius,” maintaining a steady push on both the U.S. andIsraeli governments with whatever infl uence he had, even as negotiations stagnated at several pointsduring his 10-year stint as AAEJ’s president — at the time, the AAEJ was often at odds with theIsraeli government, which took a more restrained approach to the issue, an approach that wassupported by many mainstream American Jewish institutions, including the federation system. “Wewere a pariah of an organization. The establishment heard ‘Israel is doing everything in their power.And anything else will just get in the way’ — We got in the way,” he told eJP.
Still, much of Shapiro and the AAEJ’s work was done in partnership with the State Department,Congress, the Israeli consulate and at times the Mossad, according to Boschwitz, a Republican fromMinnesota who served in the Senate from 1978-91 And when Israel ultimately paid an emergency$35 million bribe to Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime to allow the 14,000 Ethiopian Jews freepassage, a majority was fundraised by the American Jewish community, the federation system at theforefront. Boschwitz recalled 100 phone calls between Shapiro and various combinations of StateDepartment offi cials, congresspeople, Israeli politicians and activists in the years leading up toOperation Solomon and the AAEJ’s consequent dissolution.
“I have known very few Nate Shapiros in my long life — people who would devote themselves to theJewish people so completely as Nate did. Fewer, if any, who achieved as much. There are now about 100,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Without Nate Shapiro the number would be far less… whatever yousay about Nate making things happen in creating Operation Solomon will not be enough,” Boschwitz told eJP.
Boschwitz, who was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by George H.W. Bush in 1991 for hisown role in Operation Solomon, detailed how Shapiro was willing to entertain creative approaches tofacilitating the population’s escape from the territory. In an NPR article from 2013 about theEthiopia-to-Israel migration program, Shapiro recalled the purchase of forged passports — inpartnership with the Mossad — to help Ethiopian Jewry escape Sudan in small numbers.
In the late 1980s, Pollack and Recant recall, the Ethiopian government gave permission for foreigngovernments to extract Jews, but only from Addis Ababa, as Gondar — where the majority of thecommunity was located — was already cut off by the civil war. “We said, ‘OK. That means that any Jew who can make their way to Addis Ababa can get out,’ Recant told eJP. “We went to all of themajor Jewish organizations. We went to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. And we said, ‘Shouldn’t we tryto bring all of the Jews to Addis so that they can get out?’ Everyone said, ‘It’s too risky. No, we won’tdo it. We can’t do it.’ But [with] a wink and a nod… Michael Schneider, who was the CEO of theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, said: ‘We can’t do it. But yes, it should be done.”
So AAEJ took it upon itself to set up a transport program that moved nearly the entire communityfrom Gondar to Addis Ababa, but at great cost. “Nate said, ‘Money should never get in the way ofsaving Jewish lives,’” Recant recalled. “For a lot of projects at AAEJ, Nate was the backbone, the onewho said ‘If we don’t have the money, if we can’t make it whole, I’ll make it whole at the end of theday.’ To have that kind of support was integral to the success of the rescue of Ethiopian Jews”
Two years after the airlift that brought 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the AAEJ voted to disband,donating the remaining funds to organizations in Israel focused on resettlement. In its place, Friendsof Ethiopian Jews was founded to work directly with the community in Israel, providing funding andadvice to Ethiopian-run nonprofi ts. Shapiro remained involved with FEJ well into his old age.Though he never traveled to Ethiopia, “the community came to him,” said Recant —- activistsspending time at his home in Highland Park when in the U.S. for speaking tours.
Rachamim Elazar, an Ethiopian activist who worked with Shapiro and the AAEJ for a number ofyears, recalled a visit that Shapiro made to an absorption center in Israel. “Nate never showed that hewas a rich person. When he came to Israel to meet with the newcomers, he embraced each and everyone of us,” Elazar told eJP. “It all came from his deep belief, from his heart. He was a good father, andhe viewed each and every one of us as his child.”
Shapiro engaged in a sort of “quiet diplomacy,” according to Elazar, taking every opportunity to bringthe issue to the forefront and refusing to back down even when the AAEJ’s work was an uphill battle,and even when it took years.
Then-President of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews Nate Shapiro speaks during a visit to Israel,in an undated photograph. (AAEJ Archives Online, a project of Friends of Ethiopian Jews)
Recalling the period, Shapiro’s son, Steve, shared with eJP a story told at his father’s funeral. In theyears before cellphones, Shapiro, a long-distance runner, would often run in half-mile loops aroundhis Highland Park home so that he could look out for an open garage door — his wife Randy’s signthat he needed to come inside because someone important was on the line.
And though in Highland Park he was known for his work with AAEJ, just as he was for his running,Shapiro remained private about his work on the project, accepting relatively few off ers for mediainterviews. “He was very soft-spoken, very humble, very highly principled,” said Pollack.
“I’ve met with presidents, I’ve met with dignitaries, I’ve met with leaders of Jewish organizations andprime ministers of Israel, there’s no one like Nate. And no one knows him,” Recant told eJP. “I thinkit’s important for people to know that within the Jewish world we have such dignifi ed and fi neleaders. People who don’t need the limelight, but deserve it.”
BARUCH DAYAN EMET
Nate Shapiro, philanthropist and activist who went the distance for Ethiopian Jewry, dies at 88
As president of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, Shapiro played a key role in Operation
Solomon, believing that he had a duty to protect the Jews of Ethiopia
COURTESY/FRIENDS OF ETHIOPIAN JEWS
Nate Shapiro.
By Nira Dayanim · January 10, 2025