Robert Marx is no saint. His wife will tell you that, and the adversaries Marx has faced during his three-decade crusade for justice would surely agree. In fact, Marx himself readily admits it.
But those who know Rabbi Robert J. Marx well — including his wife, Ruth — do tend to describe him in biblical terms.
One friend retells this story from the Book of Isaiah:
The Lord appears to the prophet in search of a servant. He calls out to Isaiah, saying, “Whom shall I send? And who shall go for us?” Without hesitation, Isaiah replies, “Lo, here am I, send me.”
“I always think of Rabbi Marx as saying that,” says Don Benedict, the former executive director of the Community Renewal Society who met Marx in the early 1960s. “I see a picture of that prophet when I look at him.”
One might thus expect Marx to be an imposing presence, a man with booming voice, fiery eyes and flowing beard. Yet when the rabbi opens the door to his home, he is anything but intimidating. Marx’s stature among acquaintances is clearly not a measure of height; he stands perhaps 5-feet-8 in shoes. He has a beard, but it is snowy white and neatly clipped to reveal a broad smile and a lively face that belies the rabbi’s 71 years.
“Hello,” he says warmly, taking a visitor’s hand in both of his. “It is so nice to meet you.” He makes the sentiment sound genuine.
Though flattered by the comparison to Isaiah, Marx will insist he is no sacrificial servant. “You have to remember that I enjoy my life too,” he says. “I’m doing the things I love to do.”
To hear friends tell it, it is a good thing he does love his work. Marx, they say, is one of Chicago’s guardian angels.
But the rabbi probably has as much in common with the Guardian Angels who fight urban crime as he does with any winged beings. During his 36 years as a social activist in Chicago, Marx has been shot at, sued, sent into virtual exile and threatened with death.
What about this seemingly mild man could inspire such high praise while rousing such passionate opposition?
From his days as a civil rights leader marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to his more recent work with displaced residents of Cabrini-Green, Marx has frequently found himself embroiled in controversy. His life work has combined an unrelenting pursuit of justice with a belief that it is the Jewish people’s duty and destiny to help the powerless.
And he is, says Ruth Marx, tenacious in his work “if he thinks he’s right.”
“Bob is a quiet man, a gentleman,” says Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. “But he is also a tiger on social issues.” More than once he has raised the ire of the Jewish establishment.
Marx came to Chicago in 1962 from Ohio, sent to head the Great Lakes region of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Upon his arrival, he fell in with a passionate crowd of clergy active in the fight for civil rights. Two years later, with Lew Kreinberg, he formed Chicago’s Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.
Through his work with that organization and groups such as the Black Jewish Dialogue, which Marx founded, Marx is considered by many to be the Jewish leader most responsible for maintaining black-Jewish relations in Chicago.
The social activism of the ’60s wasn’t new to Marx. He had always believed that religion was more than study and prayer.
From his father, Marx says, “I learned that religion could be an exciting thing. It was a place where things could happen. Religion is not something you relegate to a Friday night. It’s not just about setting up a soup kitchen. I want to make it possible for soup kitchens not to exist.”
In Chicago, however, the approach Marx and other interfaith leaders in Chicago were taking toward civil rights didn’t seem to be working at first. “What I saw was a bunch of well-meaning white guys meeting together to improve the lot of black guys,” he says.
The movement needed to create partnerships, not followings, Marx came to believe. And the task, he decided, was uniquely suited to Jews because they are an “interstitial” people. That term literally means “between the parts,” or, as Marx puts it: “We’re not Christian, we’re not black. As a result, we are vulnerable.”
Historically, Marx says, powerful people have capitalized on Jews’ outsider status by making them into scapegoats, thus masking their own exploitation of the poor. “You don’t have power, but you have the appearance of power,” Marx explains. As a result, “Jews could be blamed for any social problem.”
Yet, just as Jews could be used to divide, Marx imagined they also had the potential to unify, acting much like the muscle between two ribs.
“They could be a prophetic voice talking about the interests of the poor instead of being a tool to exploit,” he says.
Attempting to put this idea into practice, Marx and Kreinberg created the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs to act as a bridge between Jews and low-income or minority communities and provide technical and organizational support to neighborhood groups. Most recently the council helped form the Coalition to Protect Public Housing in response to the planned demolition of Chicago’s housing projects. The coalition advocates affordable housing for displaced residents.
“People ask, `Why are these Jewish issues?’ And (Rabbi Marx) has sent the message to the Jewish community that these are issues that are centrally Jewish and that we as Jews have a responsibility to address,” says Jane Ramsey, the council’s current executive director.
“The JCUA deals with anti-Semitism,” Marx says, “by helping to solve the problems that give rise to anti-Semitism.”
But Marx quickly discovered that social activism could land him on the wrong side of the law — and of the Jewish establishment.
“He faced a lot of opposition from other rabbis because he was young and he was militant,” says Monsignor John J. Egan, a Catholic leader in civil rights who remains one of Marx’s closest friends.
The most controversial period for Marx came during the late 1960s in the West Side neighborhood of Lawndale, which was fighting the effects of white flight.
Scared by panic-peddling real estate agents, white families were leaving Lawndale en masse, selling their homes below value as they did. The houses were bought by speculators, many of whom were Jewish, and sold on contract to black families who had been refused loans from the bank. The contract sales required monthly payments with exorbitant interest rates. If one payment was late, the contract allowed the seller to foreclose.
The council joined with resident groups to protest and picket the sellers and banks. The confrontation escalated when sellers enforced the foreclosures with a court order and brought armed guards to move possessions into the street. Defying the court order, Marx and residents moved furniture back into the houses. A guard fired shots at the crowd.
Though no one was injured, for Marx it was the beginning of the backlash.
“The Jewish establishment were furious at me because (the sellers) were threatening to withdraw their contributions to Jewish organizations,” Marx says. In danger of losing its own funding, the Jewish Federation cut off funds to the council.
Marx and Egan were then sued for $1 million by the home sellers for defamation of character; the case was later thrown out of court.
Under pressure to leave the city and branded in some quarters as a traitor to the Jewish community, Marx accepted a promotion with the Union of Hebrew Congregations and moved to New York for two years. He returned to Chicago in 1973.
Within Chicago’s black community, however, Marx’s efforts had a different effect. The Lawndale fight proved to many African-Americans that the council was a loyal partner.
“Every major black leader in the city knows Rabbi Marx,” says Rev. Willie Barrow, chairman of the board at the Rainbow PUSH coalition. “Even when it wasn’t popular to advocate diversity he not only advocated it, he was diversity.”
Marx continued to stir emotions in 1984 when he reached out to PUSH leader Jesse Jackson after the then-presidential candidate’s “Hymie Town” remark. Ignoring more criticism, Marx also has dined with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, though he describes the meeting as disappointing.
To this day, Marx remains one of the most important figures in strengthening Jewish-black relations in Chicago.
“He is invaluable,” says B. Herbert Martin, pastor of the Progressive Community Church, 56 E. 48th St. “He was a voice of reason and understanding asking us not to destroy the relationship we had built. He’s the kind I would like to clone.”
There is no need to replace him just yet. Marx continues to serve full time as a member of the JCUA board and heads Congregation Hakafa of Glencoe.
“I have talked to him about retiring and he says, `Why? I am the happiest I’ve been because I’m doing more,’ ” says Ruth Marx. “I have never been able to get him to leave the phone on record. `Why must you answer it?’ I’ll ask. `Because someone might need me,’ he says.”