Jerry Benjamin, prominent Milwaukee Jewish leader, businessman, activist, dies at 67

Before Jerry Benjamin died May 11, he found himself at the center of history in seemingly countless instances.

Name it, and Benjamin had a hand in creating it — or advocating for it. He helped found the Lake Park Synagogue; he shepherded Milwaukee firm A.B. Data as it handled Barack Obama’s campaign mail and undertook a mission to find all Holocaust survivors; he led a strike outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv after the Kent State shootings; he wrote speeches for astronaut John Glenn.

The list goes on and on for the prominent Milwaukee Jewish community leader, activist, political consultant and businessman. Benjamin died at age 67 from complications stemming from a bone marrow transplant, his son Ariel said.

He was a renaissance man on a mission to help the less fortunate, Ariel said. To Benjamin, no feat was impossible.

“Limitation didn’t exist. Conceptually, it didn’t exist,” Ariel said. “He had a brilliant mind and the ability to get things done.”

Benjamin’s cousin Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee lawyer, recalled he was larger than life, commanding a room when he entered. His business partner, Chuck Pruitt, called him a force of nature.

“He lived more lives than 10 separate individuals would have,” Maistelman said. “He was a mover and shaker, but he was very humble about it all.”

Two people close to Benjamin described him as a mensch, the Yiddish term for a person with integrity. Ivy-League-educated, he consulted with presidents and top politicians — but from a Milwaukee home base. He wanted to do what he could to change the world, Ariel said, only working for causes in which he believed. Maistelman summed it up: Benjamin was a down-to-earth gentleman.

Born in 1951, Benjamin grew up in Ohio, attending Case Western Reserve University and later earning a master’s degree in education at Harvard University. In an early example of his drive to succeed, Benjamin as executive director of the Maimonides Day School outside Boston raised $1 million for the school in an auction filled with items celebrities donated to the cause, Ariel said. He had written to “every celebrity you could think of from 1978” asking for items.

Benjamin also co-founded the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education, a national Jewish educators’ conference still in operation today. His interest in education continued later in life, too — he served on the board for the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design for 13 years.

And Benjamin’s Jewish roots led him to leadership roles in Milwaukee’s Jewish community. He served as Lake Park Synagogue’s first president and as the president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.

All these positions meant Benjamin got to know hundreds of people. They all felt a personal connection to him, Ariel said. The family estimates they got more than 1,000 messages of condolence after Benjamin’s death.

“He had a way of causing everyone around him to feel like they were the most important person to him,” Ariel said.

As one of three managing directors at A.B. Data in Milwaukee, Benjamin was the “ideas guy,” partner Bruce Arbit said.

“Jerry was very much the anti-businessman,” Arbit said. “He didn’t think outside the box — he never saw the box.”

Benjamin along with his two partners at A.B. Data handled all mail for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and managed other nonprofits’ and politicians’ marketing. Notably, the company worked to identify the world’s Holocaust survivors and their families — who could be eligible for reparations through the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

Benjamin helmed the firm’s efforts to contact millions of people in hard-to-reach places around the world, including the Eastern European population of Roma, also known as Gypsies. It was the largest class-action case in history at its time around the turn of the millennium, Arbit said.

The company reported it reached more than 2.5 million people in 109 countries to inform them about the possibility they could receive money. Survivors, heirs and families ultimately received $306 million through the commission’s work.

The task was enormous, Benjamin’s business partners said, but he didn’t balk at the obstacles. For Benjamin, this was about helping right a wrong. 

His work with the commission — and the nonprofits and the candidates, and every cause he championed over his 67 years — embodied Benjamin’s entrepreneurial, problem-solving spirit and his giving heart.

His wide-reaching impact is partly why Benjamin’s family and partners are so devastated he’s gone.

“There will be countless organizations and institutions and people that have benefited from his advice and his big ideas that can no longer take advantage of that,” Maistelman said.

Benjamin is survived by his wife, Cindy; his sons, Ariel and Nadav; his brother, Sheldon; and his mother, Edith.

Contact Sophie Carson at (414) 223-5512 or scarson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SCarson_News.