Nathan “Nate” Shapiro, the Chicago-based philanthropist and activist who died on Dec. 31 at 88, was a 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 American Association for Ethiopian Jews beginning in 1983, serving as president of the organization until it voted unanimously to shutter its doors in 1993, with nearly $1 million in the bank, after Operation Solomon transported thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. 

“[Shapiro was] a marathon runner across the board,” William Recant, who served as AAEJ’s executive 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 studied at Northwestern University, where he graduated first in his class with a degree in economics, served in the U.S. Army, worked in his family’s business before founding the Chicago brokerage firm SF Investments in 1972. 

In 1968, Shapiro founded the Edna and Lester Shapiro Foundation in his parents’ name. The foundation went on to donate several million dollars to various causes, among them, Chicago’s Jewish Federation, the Israel ParaSport Center and AAEJ. Shapiro was also deeply involved in Congregation 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 affected by the Holocaust, Shapiro was shaped by his awareness of it, acquaintanances said . In the 1970s, though there was a larger focus within the American Jewish community on the Soviet Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain, after attending a lecture about the plight of Ethiopian Jewry — tens of thousands of whom were trapped and barred from 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 be ignored 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 the organization, and, in 1983, president of the organization. A regular donor to political campaigns, his political contributions gave him access. 

As the organization’s work picked up in the years approaching Operation Solomon, Shapiro donated money out of his own pocket to make plans come to fruition, and quickly, though neither Recant, nor Shapiro’s son, Steve, could confirm exactly how much. Shapiro often donated tens of thousands at a time, 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 around the house as Shapiro and the AAEJ helped assemble the Congressional Caucus for Ethiopian Jewry in 1986, which had over 160 members, according to Shapiro’s son. As he operated within the upper echelons of the Chicago Jewish community, he enlisted support of many prominent Chicago Jewish philanthropists, including the Crown family and real estate mogul Judd Malkin — co-founder of JMB 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 lawmakers and philanthropists his father worked with. “No one ever really had to tell him what the right thing to do was. He just knew.” 

According to Recant, Shapiro noticed a gap in public attention and activism for Ethiopian Jewry, a gap 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,’ was repeated 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 their background, know that not everything is always being done.” 

According to Pollack, though Shapiro and the AAEJ were eventually able to garner the support of several influential Jewish Americans — Elie Wiesel among them — he recognized that influence would 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 the Ethiopian government,” Pollack told eJP.

Recant described Shapiro as a “strategic genius,” maintaining a steady push on both the U.S. and Israeli governments with whatever influence he had, even as negotiations stagnated at several points during his 10-year stint as AAEJ’s president — at the time, the AAEJ was often at odds with the Israeli government, which took a more restrained approach to the issue, an approach that was supported by many mainstream American Jewish institutions, including the federation system. “We were 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 from Minnesota 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 free passage, a majority was fundraised by the American Jewish community, the federation system at the forefront. Boschwitz recalled 100 phone calls between Shapiro and various combinations of State Department officials, congresspeople, Israeli politicians and activists in the years leading up to Operation Solomon and the AAEJ’s consequent dissolution. 

“I have known very few Nate Shapiros in my long life — people who would devote themselves to the Jewish 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 you say 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 his own role in Operation Solomon, detailed how Shapiro was willing to entertain creative approaches to facilitating the population’s escape from the territory. In an NPR article from 2013 about the Ethiopia-to-Israel migration program, Shapiro recalled the purchase of forged passports — in partnership 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 foreign governments to extract Jews, but only from Addis Ababa, as Gondar — where the majority of the community 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 the major Jewish organizations. We went to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. And we said, ‘Shouldn’t we try to bring all of the Jews to Addis so that they can get out?’ Everyone said, ‘It’s too risky. No, we won’t do it. We can’t do it.’ But [with] a wink and a nod… Michael Schneider, who was the CEO of the American 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 community from Gondar to Addis Ababa, but at great cost. “Nate said, ‘Money should never get in the way of saving Jewish lives,’” Recant recalled. “For a lot of projects at AAEJ, Nate was the backbone, the one who said ‘If we don’t have the money, if we can’t make it whole, I’ll make it whole at the end of the day.’ 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, Friends of Ethiopian Jews was founded to work directly with the community in Israel, providing funding and advice to Ethiopian-run nonprofits. Shapiro remained involved with FEJ well into his old age. Though he never traveled to Ethiopia, “the community came to him,” said Recant —- activists spending 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 of years, recalled a visit that Shapiro made to an absorption center in Israel. “Nate never showed that he was a rich person. When he came to Israel to meet with the newcomers, he embraced each and every one of us,” Elazar told eJP. “It all came from his deep belief, from his heart. He was a good father, and he 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 bring the 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. 

Recalling the period, Shapiro’s son, Steve, shared with eJP a story told at his father’s funeral. In the years before cellphones, Shapiro, a long-distance runner, would often run in half-mile loops around his Highland Park home so that he could look out for an open garage door — his wife Randy’s sign that 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 offers for media interviews. “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 and prime ministers of Israel, there’s no one like Nate. And no one knows him,” Recant told eJP. “I think it’s important for people to know that within the Jewish world we have such dignified and fine leaders. People who don’t need the limelight, but deserve it.”