Tad Taube, a California-based businessman and philanthropist whose support has been influential in the growth and development of Jewish life and culture in his native Poland, has passed away, aged 94. He died Saturday (September 13) at his home in Silicon Valley, said an announcement by his wife Dianne.
Taube’s philanthropic activities embraced initiatives in the U.S., Israel, and Poland, where he was born in Krakow in 1931.
“Tad believed in the concept of Jewish Peoplehood, which views Judaism as a distinct civilization consisting of religion, culture, and history,” his biography on the Taube Philanthropies web site said.
Tad’s most challenging and perhaps rewarding journey into Jewish Peoplehood was in Poland, a nation he had left at age eight on the eve of the German invasion. Decades later, he returned to help restore Jewish life and culture in the post-Communist era. Tad established the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland (JHIP) and became the leading private benefactor of Warsaw’s acclaimed POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
In addition to the POLIN Museum, Taube supported a range of activities in Poland aimed at strengthening and supporting Jewish religious life, Jewish culture, scholarly research, and the recovery and appreciation of Jewish heritage.
“When many Jewish people come to Poland, they fly into Warsaw, go straight to Auschwitz, then want to get out,” he told JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber in an interview in 2004. “But until the war, Poland had the most prolific, culturally diverse, creative Jewish population anywhere, ever. We can’t afford to relegate those 3.5 million people to a postscript in history.”
The Taube Family Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture began operation in Poland in 2003 and supported a number of institutions, organizations, and activities, ranging from the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, to what is now called the Tad Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław.
In 2004, Taube was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the country’s second highest distinction for a foreigner.
The Warsaw-based Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning Foundation, established in 2009, today runs an array of educational programs and resources, including custom-designed Jewish heritage tours; TJHTalks, a monthly webinar series on Poland’s Jewish past and present; Majses, a family educational program; and Mi Dor Le Dor Europe, a pan-European Jewish heritage educational initiative. Its publications include a timeline of Jewish history in Poland and “Field Guides” to Jewish heritage in Warsaw, Krakow, Łódź, and Lublin.
May his soul be bound up in the bond of life! May his memory be a blessing!