Ida Plaut’s son Steven z”l

A TRIBUTE TO A MENSCH

My son, Steven (z”l), passed away in January, after years of bravely fighting the “monster” disease, the name of which many people still have trouble saying.  The outpouring of condolence communication from friends, “fans” and strangers was genuinely surprising to me.  I knew he wrote well and published many articles on line and in print, but the level of his reach was gratifying.  Many of Steve’s friends were drawn to him as a commentator on the unpatriotic Israeli Left and they admired and shared his position on Israel’s political foibles.   I well understand how he came to the political position he reached in life and for the most part, I share it  This modest composition will deal with  Steve as humanist, as “mensch” par excellence.

  When Steve chose his field for a future career, he was asked “why the great effort to obtain a doctorate in the ‘dismal’ subject, Economics?  With a little more effort you can become a ‘real’ doctor (MD) and even make some money.“  His reply was sincere and serious: 
“Economics is also a science that helps people live better lives.”

He lived by that goal in his many years of university teaching and had many compliments on his style of lecturing, adding humor and keeping the students awake.  He reached the title of Professor at Haifa University, but to me “Mensch” was much more important.  Forgive a mother’s “kvelling” (pride, Yiddish) but the best example I can give you is a letter from a student.

First a little background.  Steve and his family loved to travel and they got to see a lot of the world.  For some reason, Budapest, Hungary,  held a particular appeal to him and drew him to its charms.  A highly regarded University is situated there and is called Central European University.  One of its founding principles in the Economics Department was to teach the value of the free market, i.e.  Capitalism, as opposed to Communism, from which so much of the world had suffered.  This has special appeal to students from the former Soviet bloc and the best among them vie for admission to C.E.U. Economics Dept.

This was “right up Steve’s alley”, so to speak.  He once wrote a slim book called “The Joy of Capitalism”  (unfortunately out of print now.)  For the last 11 years of his working life he taught (as Visiting Professor)  a semester at C.E.U. somehow fitting it into his teaching schedule in Israel. 

He was genuinely taken  by the eagerness-to-learn quality of the Eastern bloc students and their trepidation at facing the “horrors” of the capitalist Western world, about which they had been taught.  One of his efforts to help them learn and adjust to this new world was to hire a bus and take them touring around Budapest.  He was a good travel guide and a fine time was had by all.  He also invited them to tea in his faculty quarters, during which they had singalongs and lots of fun.

In the following letter you can see the affection he aroused in his students, who voted him “Best Professor at C.E.U.” each year.  This was written in 2015 as the disease began to make it more and more difficult for him to continue teaching, even though the oncologists were unrealistically optimistic about having found the “right treatment” this time.

I write this with tears and a broken heart, but with beautiful memories of a wonderful human being.  May his memory be a blessing to all of us who knew and loved him.

Ida Plaut

Netanya, Israel