To ANNETTE, A WOMAN OF VALOR
Today’s Blog is dedicated to Annette Shapiro, z”l, who passed away this past Friday. Annette was, and to me, still is, a force to be reckoned with. She was the Grande Dame of Jewish LA and beyond. Her 78 year marriage to Leonard Shapiro is a marvel of love, of joy, of bearing unbearable sadness, and moving forward all the time.
While her accomplishments are too many for me to recount here, what I want to talk about is her soul, her energy that helped her family and so many of us, her ‘projects’, live lives so far beyond our dreams it still seems surreal. The love for her children, her extended family-about 150 strong- and the rest of us is too large to describe and through the pain of loss of parents, of relatives, of her son, David Shapiro, z”l, Annette kept on being a “professional volunteer”, a patron of the arts, a patron of the people. While Annette had her ‘professional self’ which she shared with everyone, which she taught to my wife, Harriet Rossetto, she had a personal self that exuded the same love for ‘her people’ that her ‘professional self’ exuded for everyone. When it comes to love, Annette was totally congruent.
I met Annette when she became President of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, the first woman to hold this position in the LA Jewish Community. She visited all the agencies that the Foundation awarded grants to and she came to Beit T’Shuvah down on Lake Street. What an experience, Annette was like blown away with the stories, with the recovery, and thought the building was a wreck, the neighborhood dangerous, all of which was true, and decided to have a resident whose parents were Holocaust survivors and she was a junkie come speak after hearing of ‘Lila’s’(not real name) experience of joy at her first Shabbat at BTS. That started a 30+year relationship that, for me, still goes on.
Annette was excited to learn my story, in fact Annette was a storyteller herself, she was a curious mind person-always interested in knowing another person’s thoughts, ideas and, when she felt necessary, “I have a suggestion” help for those she was talking to. Annette’s laugh was infectious, it was loud, it was joyful, it was heartfelt. Being a bit of a bull in the china shop, Annette always had a “suggestion” for how I could tone it down a little/actually a lot and we would laugh at my feeble attempts and agree that being me was more important than being political. Annette’s suggestions were like commandments for so many of us because they were delivered with the same love I find God has in the Torah/Bible and Annette was never judgmental in the years I was blessed to be in her orbit.
Annette wanted to see Beit T’Shuvah flourish and, when her Granddaughter needed our help, she called Harriet and we showed up. The first Shabbat Annette and Leonard attended was a trip. They hadn’t seen their granddaughter in a while, they were hurt and angry, Harriet did a session before Shabbat and then they experienced Shabbat under the Tent, with raucous singing, loud preaching(me) and gun shots noises filling the air. To say Annette was nervous, enthralled, bewildered, and excited is an understatement. Then, in a meeting where ‘normal people’, the Jewish Professional world was at, Annette announced that Addiction was a major disease in Jewish LA and, while her family member was not a drug addict, she had an addiction and it was Beit T’Shuvah that was helping her and the family. That did it, the rich and famous of Jewish LA began to trickle to our doors to get help in a Jewish framework for their kids, their spouses, their adult children. Annette and Warren Breslow began our Capital Campaign in 1998 and by 1999, they/we had raised $5million to renovate and inhabit a new facility in West LA where Beit T’Shuvah still is.
What Annette was to me is too hard to describe. She was a mentor, a wise elder, a friend, a confidant, a woman of valor. Annette taught me it was okay to be me, she had my back and when I was too far off the reservation, she would meet me, usually at Factors, and make her “suggestions” as to how I could fix it, change, etc. Annette and Leonard were regulars at Shabbat Services and Leonard would laugh and give Annette an elbow if he thought my sermon applied to her and they would laugh together. They were the example I have followed in my relationship with Harriet all these years. Annette was prim and proper and, when I told her she was “a stand-up broad”, Annette laughed, Leonard laughed and she hugged me saying it was the nicest compliment I could give her. Annette taught me/us to give more when adversity strikes, to do the next right thing a little more.
Annette Shapiro was my friend, while there was physical distance between us, while my action in Feb.2020 made it hard for their to be much conversation, spiritually we have always been connected and, speaking to her last week, telling her my/our love for her and the connection in our eyes validated this. Annette, forever grateful, forever loving, Mark