I took a walk with Joel Fleishman, a scholar and mentor to philanthropists and nonprofit professionals who died last month at 90, every week for three years, and he left me the greatest inheritances: his way of thinking, his kindness, his master class on encouragement and his unsurpassed love for life. 

He possessed a certain JI, “Joel intelligence,” which was relational genius. Like a great rav (which he was), countless people would come to Joel for help solving their problems. However, I can never remember Joel giving direct advice on how to solve a problem. Instead, he would ask questions, seek to understand and then say something like, “Well, have you thought about talking to…” and proceed to name four or five very wise or famous people who you would have never in your wildest dreams thought about talking to, but could fix the problem. And then he would introduce you to them, and you would find yourself on the phone with a head of state or titan of business trying desperately to sound like you deserved to be on the call.

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Joel Fleishman attends the Harvard Business School of NY Social Enterprise Summit at the Harvard Club on Sept. 23, 2008

But the thing about Joel was he always believed you deserved to be on the call, regardless of whether or not you believed it too.

JI had two powerful superchargers: kindness and encouragement — and his emails epitomized both. In reading them again, I am struck by the way in which Joel leveraged every single message as though he were my life coach and personal cheerleader. No email or conversation was ever without a specific compliment, a kind word or expression of gratitude. Always concluding with an amplification of that kindness and care that extended beyond us: “Love to (whoever he knew you would see that day)! And Love, Joel.”

Joel was someone who made you feel like perhaps just for you, the whole world was created. When I would come to him with a new project or “Joel, what do you think about…?” he would always respond the same way: “Well, that’s just a TERRIFIC idea!” It didn’t matter if it was buying a comfy pair of socks or running for office, emailing a friend or taking on a new mitzvah. For the profound just as much as the mundane, Joel was my CEO – chief encouragement officer.

I have never seen so many grown men and women be so broken by a death that wasn’t a sudden tragedy than I did at his funeral. Every person seemed simply and profoundly shattered — and it is because we are. Joel was none of our fathers or grandfathers, but we continue to mourn him like one, because he felt like family to us all. Joel gave us all of the best parts of a precious family member: the unconditional love and encouragement, birthday phone calls, inscribed books and life-changing introductions. Yet with Joel, most of us lacked the obligation that comes with family. He simply gave and gave and gave, not expecting reciprocation, simply knowing that we would grow to merit these gifts later on.

I often wonder: Did Joel have magical powers to see greatness decades before it was manifested? Or did simply being tapped on the shoulder by Joel push us to become better? Was that feeling he so generously bestowed of being his favorite — and we all feel like that, don’t we? — a way to supercharge our own excellence, or did it actually transform our mediocrity? 

We will never know the truth, but the genius is in the formula, really, and that is Joel’s greatest legacy: to believe and trust in the power of people (and young people, especially), who wish to change the world. To see not greatness, because everyone can see that, but the potential of greatness, which he saw like the great Rabbi Yaakov Yitzak of Lublin.

Joel came to love me when most people simply believed I was just the wife of a successful businessman. I don’t come from a prominent family, I didn’t go to a top 10 school like Duke, and I am not an accomplished scholar of anything. I simply came with the deal. 

Joel could have chosen not to invest in me, to like me but not to champion me. Instead, Joel taught me about philanthropy, and I became a philanthropist. Joel taught me about public service, and I became a public servant. Joel taught me about observance, and I became more observant. 

He believed I could, and I became. Abracadabra. He forged these realities through JI – not by telling me how, but by introducing me to who, by asking me questions, by sheer force of love and belief. I am one of hundreds if not thousands of people who Joel believed in, and this is his deepest legacy: emunah, faith, belief — in Hashem, in ourselves, in each other, in the possibility of a better world. 

For a man whose thrice-daily liturgy was replete with mentions of death, Joel acted as though it has never occurred to him that he might die. Some might call a 90-year-old’s assumption that death was very far away naive or even arrogant, but to me, it is emblematic of Joel’s optimism and emunah, faith and belief. Why worry when the Ribbono Shel Olam (sovereign of the world) is in charge? Why not buy a brand-new car at age 89 (which he did)? Why retire at the peak of one’s knowledge (Retire? Never for Joel)? 

We need Joel’s emunah, encouragement and devotion to righteousness more than ever. In his absence, we must draw upon the inheritance of Joel’s wisdom, which has been bequeathed to so many of us. May that legacy continue to orchestrate the wayfinding of all who seek justice — and may we be so privileged as to be a stop on the journeys of those seekers, as Joel has so generously been the station of ours. 

Sophia Chitlik Abram is a Durham, N.C.-based philanthropist and newly elected North Carolina state senator.