JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

336 pounds (152.5 kg.), which at a bodyweight of 130 pounds
made him pound-for-pound the strongest man in the world,
a record that stood for nine years. He also won a silver medal
in the featherweight class (841.5 lbs. / 382.5 kg.). Berger was
inducted into the U.S. Weightlifters Hall of Fame in 1965 and
that same year started a program at the New York College of
Music to become a cantor.
[Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)]
BERGER, LILI (1916–1996), Yiddish author and essayist.
Born in Malkin, Poland, Berger settled in Paris in 1936, where
she married the Jewish Communist leader Louis Gronowski.
In 1949 she returned to Warsaw where she began publishing
articles and stories in both Yiddish and Polish, followed by
collections of literary criticism, short stories, and novels. In
1968 she resumed her literary activity in Paris. Many of her
articles and essays are personal recollections replete with historical
detail. Her award-winning fiction reflects the Polish
Jewish experience in the 20th century. Among her books are
Ekhos fun a Vaytn Nekhtn (“Echoes from Long Ago,” 1986);
Eseyen un Skitsn (“Essays and Sketches,” 1965); Fun Vayt un
Noent (“From Far and Near,” 1978); In Loyf fun Tsayt (“In the
Course of Time,” 1988); Oyf di Khvalyes fun Goyrl (“On the
Waves of Fate,” 1986).
Bibliography: B. Gryn, in: Morgn Frayhayt (July 16, 1967),
11; F. Forman et al. (eds.), Found Treasures (1994), 223–35, 353; B. Kagan,
Leksikon fun Yidishe Shraybers (1986), 104–5; L. Domankievich,
in: Tsukunft (May-June 1971), 202–4; P. Hyman and D. Ofer (eds.),
Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (CD-ROM,
2005).
[Vivian Felsen (2nd ed.)]
BERGER, MEIR (1901–1981), Mexican Jewish educator. Born
in Suwalki, Poland, he studied in a yeshivah and in a teachers’
seminar in Lithuania. Later he taught in a Hebrew school. He
immigrated to Mexico in 1924 and in the same year founded
the first modern Jewish school there: Colegio Israelita de
Mexico – Yiddishe Shul. This school imparted Jewish and
general knowledge and Berger was its principal until 1944. In
that year he was replaced by the educator Avraham *Golomb.
Berger participated in the establishment of the first Zionist
institutions in Mexico: in 1925 he was secretary of the Zionist
Organization and in 1926 he headed the local Keren Kayemet
le-Israel office. He was also the first editor of the Zionist periodical
Farn Folk and he published numerous essays and articles
in the Yiddish newspaper Der Veg.
[Efraim Zadoff (2nd ed.)]
BERGER, MEYER (1898–1959), U.S. journalist. During his
career on The New York Times (1928–59), he wrote frequently
on New York lore and life. In 1950 he won the Pulitzer Prize
for his report on the shooting of 13 persons by an insane war
veteran in New Jersey, and sent the prize money to the killer’s
mother. A collection of his writings was published as The
Eight Million (1942). Berger also wrote The Story of the New
York Times, 1851–1951.
berger, samuel R.
BERGER, SAMUEL R. (Sandy; 1945– ), U.S. foreign affairs
specialist. Born in Sharon, Conn., Sandy Berger, as he was usually
known, became national security adviser to President Bill
Clinton in his second term, serving from 1996 to 2001 as the
senior White House aide on all international issues. Berger
grew up in Millerton, N.Y., a rural community in dairy country.
He father died when he was eight and his mother ran a
struggling surplus clothing store. The Bergers stood apart
from the Millerton mainstream as Democrats in a very Republican
county and as Jews in an upper-income Republican
area. Berger took his religious training from a rabbi in a
nearby hospital for the mentally retarded. “Where I grew up
is very important to what I am,” he said. “My perspectives are
still more Millerton 1960 than Washington 2000. The smalltown
sense of community and social responsibility – that’s the
lasting imprint of Millerton on me.”
At Cornell University, from which he graduated in 1967,
he was active in student politics. He got a job as a student intern
in Washington for Representative Joseph Resnick. At
Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1971, he volunteered
in the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy
and then for Robert F. Kennedy. Four years later, in the presidential
campaign of George McGovern, he met Bill Clinton,
and they became friends.
Berger joined one of Washington’s premier law firms,
Hogan & Hartson, where he represented Japanese and other
clients and talked often with the firm’s most eminent figure,
former Senator J. William Fulbright. When Jimmy Carter was
elected president, Berger served as deputy director of the Policy
Planning Staff in the State Department, where he was involved
in a wide variety of international economic, security,
and foreign policy matters. During the 1980s Berger formed
an alliance with Pamela Harriman, the Washington social
doyenne, writing speeches for her and benefiting from her
wealth and connections. When Clinton lost a re-election bid
as governor of Arkansas, Berger persuaded Mrs. Harriman to
put him on the board of her political action committee, which
came to be a major fund-raising arm of the Democratic Party.
When Clinton ran for president in 1992, Berger joined him
as a senior foreign-policy adviser. After Clinton won, Berger
persuaded him to send Mrs. Harriman to Paris as ambassador.
Berger was offered the national security adviser’s job but
demurred on the grounds of limited experience, suggesting
Anthony Lake. Berger became Lake’s deputy and replaced him
after Clinton’s first term.
Intimately involved with all aspects of Clinton foreign
policy, Berger, considered the most influential foreign-policy
adviser since Henry A. *Kissinger, was at the nexus of the
Clinton strategy to end the war in Kosovo.
After leaving the White House, Berger served as chairman
of Stonebridge International, a Washington-based strategy
firm that he started to help build business relationships through
Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and also had a senior position
with *Lehman Brothers, the international investment firm.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
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