Mark Axelrod related the followind during Chabad at Stanford’s memorial for Amir, March 29, 2004.
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Its amazing to me what a good listener Amir was – I’d see him at services; we’d talk about how hard our work was and how we need to do other things; and yet we had that conversation every week- it goes to show how many things were happening in his life at that time.
I wrote something last night for Amir:
In a world where it often seems that a lot of people don’t think for themselves, Amir made it very clear from the first time I met him that he was an independent thinker. Whether discussing Middle East politics, culinary preferences, or Jewish beliefs, he seldom presented a position that I had heard before. And he was not one to condescend either, hoping that any dialogue would be a mutual learning experience. To me, that is the essence of community, an environment in which thoughts are shared, accepted, and eventually improved for everyone’s benefit. But more importantly, Amir was always around to lighten up the day, always excited to see you, and always the familiar face you wanted to see. He was a great companion for sharing stories about camping trips, or school, or literature. And he was interested in whatever interested you, and excited to hear what was going on in your life. He was a truly thoughtful listener in a world of voices always trying to be heard.
I lamented, on a number of occasions, that we always seemed to be on different schedules — Amir would be at Chabad and I would go to the co-op. Or vice versa. And that brings up his amazing commitment to principled action. This is a guy who one time responded that he would be joining the Greenbergs for Shabbat dinner, and just couldn’t be persuaded to join the
rest of a crowd headed in the other direction after services. He made it clear that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to hang out and share dinner. It was that he had made a commitment to people who were counting on his presence, even if only as part of a big group. But that’s exactly the point, he wasn’t just one among the masses. The Greenbergs would have missed him if he didn’t come because he was absolutely one of a kind. And we did miss him in his absence that evening. And now we’ll all miss him together, I guess. So I think it is most appropriate that we have chosen to commemorate Amir’s life together here as a community, because he taught us all how important an individual contribution could be to the life of a community. And I hope we can take Amir as an example as we carry on in this community without him.