EULOGY FOR IRVING BERG

Delivered by Rabbi Jason Miller
March 23, 2009 / 27 Adar 5769

When Irv Berg took his final breath this past Saturday morning, it was only a couple hours before Jewish people in synagogues and temples throughout our community would hear the Torah reading about Betzalel. Who was Betzalel? He was the most well-known artist of our people. A highly gifted workman, Betzalel showed great skill and originality in engraving precious metals and stones, and in wood-carving. In the Book of Exodus, we read that he was a master-artisan, having many apprentices under him whom he instructed in the arts. According to tradition, he was chosen by God and endowed to direct the construction of the Tabernacle, the tent of meeting.

Family and friends, all of us here share something in common. We loved Irv Berg. And Irv Berg was our Betzalel. I can’t help but think that it is not mere coincidence that Irv died on the morning when our people fondly remember the gifts of the artist. A day when we pay homage to an individual who used his God-given artistic talent for the benefit of his community. Today, we honor our beloved chief artist Irv Berg, Yitzchak ben Moshe.

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Irving Berg was born in Detroit on September 3, 1921. He was the fifth child of Morris and Vitha Bergovsky’s seven children. He graduated from Central High School in 1939. In 1948 the family changed the name from Bergovsky to Berg, but as Harriet will tell you, “Irv always wanted to change it back because Yitzchak Bergovsky sounds much more like the name of a famous sculptor than Irv Berg.”

Sitting in his home last night I looked out the windows. I realized you could see everything that is the life of Irving Berg. I then went home and read the chapter on Harriet and Irv Berg in the Michigan Jewish Historical Society’s journal from 2000. I quickly realized I wasn’t the first to notice that Irv’s world – his history – is on full display outside his home.

Miriam Weisfeld wrote, “From his apartment window, sculptor Irving Berg enjoys a great view. He can point out where he was born, where he met his wife, where he earned his art education degree, and where his sculpture is exhibited. From the historic Park Shelton building in Detroit’s Cultural Center, Irving and his wife Harriet Berg, a dancer and choreographer, survey the city that nurtured their creative aspirations with a dynamic community of artists and educators in the 1940s and 1950s.” From the windows you can see the DIA and Wayne State, institutions indebted to Irv’s talent, insight, devotion and generosity.

Irv was studying art education at Wayne State University and entered the Army during his senior year. For three years he defended the country he loved. He was a true patriot. He fought during World War II in the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the infantry. While in Germany he was standing in the doorway of a house when an anti-tank shell was fired. It hit his knee and it shattered. He was rescued by German POWs who put him on a sled and dragged him to First Aid station after First Aid station. It was a miracle that they didn’t abandon him. It was a miracle that no one decided to amputate his leg. He was awarded the Purple Heart.

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Most people have their career and they have their hobbies. To Irv Berg there wasn’t that division. His work was his passion. He did what he loved. He served as the head of the art department at Central, which included the music department too. He then went to Cass Tech to direct their art department. Then he became a supervising teacher of art education at Wayne State. In recent years he served as a docent for the DIA.

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At twelve-years-old, Irv and his brother Leo went to Fresh Air Camp in Brighton. Like most kids, they went on scholarship. He fell in love with camp and during college returned as a singing waiter, and then, as the head of the waterfront he was in charge of the lifeguards and the canoeing program. After two years, camp sent him to aquatics school to master swimming. He was a cabin counselor too.

Later on, as a teacher, Irv was able to get out of Detroit for the summers. He took his family to B’nai Brith’s Starlight Camp in the Poconos. He led Arts and Crafts while Harriet danced. Both of them working with the campers and enjoying life. No camp had an end-of-the-summer art show like this camp. Every camper and staff member was involved in it. Irv made art more popular than baseball.

Beginning in 1978, the Berg family made Tamarack their summer home. Harriet, a world-renowned dancer and choreographer, instructed campers in dance while Irv worked with campers and counselors in Arts and Crafts to create wooden, metal, copper, bronze and stone sculptures. The Bergs were part of the fabric of camp during the next three decades.

Camp Maas director Michael Zaks, of blessed memory, invited Irv to camp because he wanted to create a permanent Jewish identity there. As Harriet Berg explains, “In the off-season, the Tamarack facility was rented out to non-Jewish groups and Michael wanted them to know it was a Jewish camp.” Irv’s dozens of sculptures, including several menorahs, adorn the acres of Camp Maas. Even in their retirement, the Bergs visit camp each summer, often checking on each sculpture in the Irving Berg Sculpture Garden to ensure they are in good shape.

Jonah Geller, Tamarack Camps executive director, noted that, “Irv and Harriet’s love and support of Camp Maas never dissipated, as evidenced by their initiating an arts endowment to ensure that the arts, including dance, continue to have a prominent place in the camp’s culture.”

Irv Berg’s lasting legacy of art at Camp Maas and the Butzel Conference Center includes a Holocaust memorial, a Wall of Hope (reminiscent of the Western Wall), a representation of the priestly blessing, and several sculptures inspired by stories in the Torah. The Bergs never went to synagogue, but the Jewish content of Irv’s life was at Camp. Friday night services, dancing after Shabbat dinner, Havdallah, Holocaust sculptures for Tisha B’Av observances.

Longtime Tamarack camper and staff member Jeff Arnoff said, “Irv’s spirit will always be, quite literally, a part of Tamarack. Our generation was privileged to see and help him build a strolling museum of memories and symbols meandering through camp, and we can only hope our kids will come to appreciate the meaning and beauty of each twisted, carved, molded and chiseled gem. If the grounds of Camp Maas were a birthday cake, clearly Irv’s work would be the candles.”

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Irv was a great brother. To Saul, Esther, Shirley, Karl, Leo and Laura. His relationship with Leo was especially close and of great significance. Leo was only a year and five days younger. They were different in every imaginable way but it didn’t matter. They were so close – they spoke everyday and swam every Sunday morning. They took care of each other. When they went to the first day of cheder, Irv told the registrar that they were twins, but that he was six months older.

He played tennis with his brother as his doubles partner for forty years. They used the same can of three tennis balls for several years in a row. It became a long-standing family joke. The year a new can was introduced into the match, it was a big deal. They played in Oak Park, Huntington Woods and the Birmingham Tennis Club. After the match, they’d enjoy Temmy’s famous tuna fish sandwiches together or go out for a milkshake.

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Irv was a family man. During family get-togethers, he always made mention of the family’s deceased relatives to keep their memory alive. It was so important that the family was together. He always made the motzi. The family didn’t eat until Irv blessed the challah. One year on Rosh Hashanah at Barbara and Bill’s, Irv wasn’t there so Bill picked up the phone and put Irv on speaker to recite the blessing so everyone could eat. He didn’t treat his grandnieces and grandnephews as nieces and nephews. They were his like his grandchildren too.

His love extended to the extended family too. He welcomed his nephew Bill into the family and then made Bill’s family feel like part of the family when they moved from Buffalo. Beth’s family also felt so much a part of the Berg family because of Irv. Blood relations didn’t matter. Family was family.

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His children truly understood him and they respected him for who he was and what he stood for. Irv and Leslie would play music together for hours taking turns playing guitar. He taught her to play guitar at a young age. After dinner, Leslie remembers, Irv would put on music and she’d watch her parents spontaneously jitterbug around the home. Father and daughter would go for long walks where they would start marching as Irv called out the Army marching cadence.

Marty remembers always seeing his father with kids at camp. It was a different type of childhood being raised by artists. No television set and always exotic foods. It was the type of upbringing that Marty only began to appreciate later in life. His parents took him and his sister everywhere. To parties, dances, recitals, art galleries, the ballet.

They were always surrounded by interesting people and it was during some interesting times too. It was cool to have parents who were socially conscience. Marty was exposed to politics and social causes at a young age, being sent to New York to stay with artsy friends during the summer. Marty wrote poems about Dad’s sculptures. He realized early on that with parents like his, “life was going to be an extraordinary adventure.”

He adored his grandchildren Satch and Julie, and Jonas. He was a very active and close grandfather. They looked up to him and he doted on them. Jonas thought today’s funeral would be more appropriate at the lake where everyone could swim laps in memory of his grandfather. And of course Irv’s Talia. The photographs speak thousands of words. Irv bonded so quickly with his great-granddaughter Talia.

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Irv and Harriet were considered Jane Betsey Welling babies. They were the last of the students to be privileged to study under the incredible educator. He was with another girl at the time but that didn’t matter. He was in uniform and she offered him the coupons she saved for meat and sugar rations. He took her to see the Ballet Russe. It was love at first sight. Irv was so fond of Harriet’s parents, J.J. and Helen Warratt, and her sisters Adeleine and Marilyn of blessed memory.

They were made for each other. A pair of artists who reveled in each other’s craft. Together they created a beautiful family and together they contributed so much to our Jewish community. He would take her a cup of coffee in the morning. They would sit and read together. He would sit and kvell in the audience of her performances. As many of us stood around Irv’s bed this past Friday afternoon, one of Harriet’s dancers remembered how it didn’t matter how far from home they were performing, if Harriet forgot the music or the boom box to play the music, Irv didn’t have to be asked, he would zoom right back home to pick it up. He was there for her. And she for him.

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Irv Berg cherished his relationships with his friends. And these were long term friendships, friendships that began in the early days. He outlived many of his older friends, but he had young friends too. Especially from camp. One friend, PJ Cherrin, wrote the following about his friendship with the Bergs:

“Like many others, I got to know Harriet and Irv as a teenage staff member at Camp Tamarack. They were the eccentric grandparents of the camp, zooming around in their golf cart, living life to its fullest.  One summer, I helped Irv build the “Eternal Flame.”  I shlepped bags of concrete and pails of water for Irv, wanting to please him and be a part of history.

After working hours, Irv was always sure to approach me with some kind of news clipping he wanted me to read and discuss. Usually, it was about the Arab-Israeli conflict and I was surprised that Irv, a secular artist, held such hawkish views. Even years later, as we watched the Sunday morning news, Irv’s running editorial comments revealed his pride for the State of Israel and love for the Jewish people.

Harriet and Irv visited Israel when I was a student at Hebrew University. I took them for a visit to the Betzalel School of Art on the Mount Scopus campus, something they always remembered. Irv and Harriet have taught me that art teaches us about our humanity. Watching Irv talk about his own sculptures or describe the Diego Rivera mural to a group of students was to observe his passion for life, not just art.”

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And so we are here today to say goodbye to Irv Berg and to pay tribute to his lasting legacy. A man with an unbelievable passion for life and a lion’s share of God-given artistic talent, but a man with a poor sense of direction. A man with poor hearing, but a man who had healing hands. A lover of music and of nature, who loved his country and worked passionately for his beloved City of Detroit. A man who shunned the limelight, and who was a famous artist without being pretentious.

His family members said it best: “Irv Berg was bigger than life. The party started when Irv walked into the room. Everyone loved him.” Yehi Zichron Baruch. Irving Berg – family man, artist, educator, dancer, docent, Patriot, friend. May his memory be only for cherished blessings. Now and forever.

And let us say Amen.