By Stacey Dresner

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – One of the most important Jewish values that Marji Lipshez-Shapiro recalls learning from her parents was the belief in fairness and justice. 

“I’ve just heard about fairness and justice all my life,” says Lipshez-Shapiro, deputy director of ADL Connecticut. “I was a huge fan of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and lived through their murders when I was in the seventh grade. That was my call to action – a tragedy happened and I had to be part of the solution.”

And Lipshez-Shapiro has most definitely been a part of the solution through her passionate, caring and unwavering fight against antisemitism, racism, bullying, homophobia, and hate in all forms. But now at 66, she has announced that she will be leaving the ADL after 32 years at the end of 2022. 

“I’m ready to leave but it’s bittersweet,” she says. 

On Nov. 1, she will receive the Irwin J. Hausman Civil Rights award at  “Fighting Hate for Good” ADL’s annual Torch of Liberty award dinner. Her award is named for the late Irwin Hausman, who was active and served on the state board of ADL Connecticut. 

Jeffrey Flaks, president and CEO of Hartford HealthCare, will receive the ADL’s Torch of Liberty Award.

Lipshez-Shapiro’s award will be presented to her by Dr. Kelley Page Jibrell. The two met 30 years ago when Jibrell’s mother worked at the ADL.

“Marji has this innate gift to instantly see the potential in young people and the untapped gifts of nearly everyone,” says Jibrell. “My mother loved working at the ADL, and I came to really know and respect the organization as well, as I would come by after school. Marji and I would have an opportunity to chat and I would pitch in to help from time to time. Ultimately, I became one of the diversity trainers for the A World of Difference program. So, we really became a part of the ADL family and Marji was my loving and dedicated mentor.”

Dr. Jibrell is the founder of Sachem Global, LLC., whose clients include the U.S. government, African diaspora organizations and start-up companies. She earned her BA in critical social thought and Spanish from Mount Holyoke College; her MBA in international business from Howard University; her PhD in African studies and her certificate in ministry and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

“Many years ago, Marji said she would like for me to speak at her retirement. In many ways, we understood that was how our journey together would manifest,” Dr. Jibrell says. “We also knew that due to Marji’s dedication to ADL, her rich Jewish faith and heritage, and commitment toward diversity, equity and inclusion that her retirement wouldn’t be anytime soon. But the seed was planted decades ago. I am deeply honored.”

Making a ‘World of Difference’

Born and raised in Hamden, Connecticut, Lipshez-Shapiro says her parents instilled in her strong Jewish values.

“Although I didn’t have a formal Jewish education, I did learn amazing Jewish values from my parents, which gave me the foundation for who I am,” she says. “Certainly tikkun olam was something that my parents were all about. Hearing that it’s the duty of every person to leave the world better than you found it, was a key foundation for me. Another one was the value of education. My mother always used to say that  as children we should ask questions, we should explore. And I’ve been an educator all of my life. That’s how I define myself.” 

Young Marji found her career path when she was just 12 years old. 

“I can distinctly remember in junior high that this girl told me her father was the dean of admissions at Yale,” Lipshez-Shapiro recalled. “My parents didn’t get to go to college, but Yale was everything because they grew up in New Haven. So I thought her father must be the most important person in the whole world. I asked “Where did he go to college?” She says, “Colgate.” And I came home and told my  parents, “I am going to Colgate.”

Lipshez-Shapiro did go to Colgate University and in fact was in one of the first coed classes of the formerly all male college. She majored in psychology. 

“Then I asked, ‘How do you become a dean?’ And nobody could tell me,” she recalled. “I found out there are these programs in higher education. So I went to Ohio State to study higher education.”

Her first job was as a residence hall director at Cornell University. 

When her mother became ill, she returned to Hamden and became Dean of Residence Life at Connecticut College. 

She soon entered the nonprofit world, working at organizations like the YMCA and Trinity Women’s Center. 

In 1990, she saw an ad seeking a part-time coordinator for a new  program the Connecticut office of the ADL was trying to begin called “World of Difference.” The program, created in 1985 by the late Leonard Zakim, a civil rights leader who served as director of the New England region of ADL, provided anti-bias educational materials for schools. It was used in major cities like New York and Boston before Connecticut ADL decided to bring it to Hartford and New Haven.

“They had $18,000 and a dream, and I took it,” Lipshez-Shapiro recalls. “I was hired to basically start knocking on doors and school districts and saying we have this program for teachers.”

In 1995, under the umbrella of World of Difference, Lipshez-Shapiro created “Names Can Really Hurt Us,” an anti-bullying program which works with middle school and high school students. More than 350,000 teens have since participated in this program.

Soon Lipshez-Shapiro became education director at ADL, leading all of the organization’s educational programming. This included “Confronting Anti-Semitism” now called Words to Action.

“That’s done in synagogues, primarily to empower Jewish families to learn and know how to respond effectively to antisemitism. Now that program has started to grow to talk about antisemitism to [non-Jews] which is what everyone wants but it’s not easy to do,” she says. “People ask, ‘Well aren’t you educating everyone else about antisemitism?’ Well, we’d sure like to, but schools do not invite us in for that…Most of the time I get interest in learning about antisemitism at a school when there has been an incident.” 

In the 2005, Lipshez-Shapiro began heading “Echoes and Reflections,” ADL’s Holocaust education program, created by the ADL in conjunction with Yad Vashem and the Shoah Foundation.

“I had no background in Holocaust education, and so I became obsessed with this. I studied and studied.  Sydney Perry, who was at the Jewish Federation in New Haven gave me an opportunity to go on the March of the Living with 60 kids and that really upped my ante learning about the Holocaust, by being at death camps and processing that with kids.”

Lipshez-Shapiro has now trained about 1,500 teachers in Connecticut on this “Echoes and Reflections program, and has for years has brought Holocaust survivors into schools to share their stories with students.

For 15 years Lipshez-Shapiro has also worked one day a week on the ADL’s National Education staff, then was made interim executive director for six months until former director Steven Ginsberg was hired for the position. For the past few years she has served as deputy director, tasked with working with the board of directors, something she loves. “So I expanded beyond education, kind of using my insights about education, working with the board and working with donors.”

Whether with teachers, students or board members and donors, Lipshez-Shapiro has been all about relationships.

“I always say my superpower is relationship building. Now it’s kind of called emotional intelligence and engagement. When I was two years old, I told my mother I wanted to meet every person in the world. And ADL really helped me to do that. I love communicating with people, from ages five to 100. I work with people from elderly Holocaust survivors to young kids. I listen to them. So that’s my superpower – relationships – across age, across race, across religion.”

Lipshez-Shapiro still leads a Jewish-Muslim women’s group in New Haven which was supposed to last for three sessions. The women have now been in the group for eight years. She has also done Jewish-Latino work in her bid to build bridges.

“I’ve stayed in touch with a number of students that I’ve met, some of whom are now in their mid-30s and older and they will tell you that the “Names Can Really Hurt Us” program, especially if they were on a panel and shared their stories, is life changing. I literally have dozens and dozens of people that will tell me their stories about being impacted by ADL.”

Some of those stories will be a part of the “The Marji Lipshez Shapiro Stories of Hope Archive,” a digital video library established by the ADL in honor of Lipshez-Shapiro and Torch of Liberty honoree Jeffrey Flaks.

The archive will feature the video testimonies of students, parents, educators, ADL staff and volunteers and community members who have been impacted by the work of ADL – and many of those stories will undoubtedly be about the relationships that have been forged by Lipshez-Shapiro.

“I’m so grateful and so lucky that the ADL has been the vehicle for me to have this opportunity and to impact others.”

Marji, who lives in Guilford with her photographer husband, Harold Shapiro, stresses that she may be leaving the ADL but that she is not retiring – “Rather than retiring, I am reimagining the rest of my life.”

She wants to write a book about ‘aging with gusto,” and continue some of the work she does coaching people to help them find “legacy and purpose” in their lives.

She adds that she was not looking for another full-time job but that she was recently contacted by Tik Tok, which wants to recruit her for a senior management position.

“I says, ‘God, I need a new adventure’ and a week later they reached out to me on LinkedIn,” she says. “It came out of the blue. I was not thinking about another full-time job and I’m still not sure about it, but even if I don’t take it, it shows you can be a role model at age 67 to think about a career at Tik Tok!”

MAIN PHOTO: Marji Lipshez-Shapiro