New Haven Independent

In 1998, when Murray suffered a stroke that left him afflicted with aphasia, it was a devastating loss for someone whose communicative abilities had been without peer. But even after the stroke, Murray has continued to grace New Haven with a plethora of events to bring the community closer together: for example, Murray brought the Harlem Boys Choir to Congregation B’nai Jacob to perform for an audience of 3,000 people, and he brought an exhibit about Jackie Robinson’s breaking the baseball color line to New Haven, which offered over 10,000 visitors the chance to reflect on prejudice and tolerance.

For the last decade, Marvin has taken over his brother’s old role, and his father’s before that, as the most public exponent of the Lender family. His contributions all tie closely to his roots: Since 1986, he has served on the board of trustees at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the major institution located in his old neighborhood, the Hill; from 2000 to 2006, he was the board chairman. Since 1992, he has served on the board at Syracuse University, his alma mater. He serves also on the board of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism, working to combat the prejudice his brothers faced in Poland. And he is chairman of the board of the Israel Policy Forum, using his connections in America and Israel to encourage political solutions to the strife in the Middle East. He has become the first Jewish member of the Proprietors of the New Haven Green. He also serves on the board of the Shubert Theater, where Murray learned so much about showmanship. In recent years, Marvin has served on the Israeli American Jewish Forum, New Haven Academy, the New Haven chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, the Governor’s Council of Economic Competitiveness and Technology, the Investment Committee of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Amistad America, Tel Aviv University’s American Council, Birthright International, United Jewish Communities, the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, and, and, and…

Conclusion

In lives distinguished by such extraordinary achievement, what may be most striking about the Lender story is that which did not change: the values instilled in the Lenders by their parents and their faith. Ask those who know the Lenders about them, and they will be the first to tell you how exceptional the Lender family is, but they will not name the activities that brought the family to international acclaim. Ask Jim Segaloff or Richard Berkowitz, who grew up with Marvin, and they will tell you that his wardrobe is better and he drives a fancier car, but that otherwise he is the same man he was forty years ago. Those best friends from Troup and Syracuse are still his best friends today. One secret to the Lenders’ success has been that not only did they not forget where they came from, but in some important respects they never really left in the first place.
Ask Camille Erba, the Lender’s Bagel Bakery bookkeeper, and she will tell you how, with four kids to raise on her own, she wasn’t able to take a vacation, but the Lenders arranged for her to spend a week in Florida. “Whenever I’m in their company and they introduce me to somebody new, they always say that I’m part of their family,” Mrs. Erba will tell you. “I can’t describe how good that makes me feel.”
Ask Sydney Perry about the Lenders’ work with the Holocaust Prejudice Reduction Education Program, and she’ll tell you how, every year:

Marvin invites teachers and administrators in the program into his personal home. He and Helaine entertain, and I think that connection that they have with personal ease and with such tremendous warmth is, for teachers in public schools who are not always valued to the degree that both the system and society should—the sense that Marvin makes the time, offers the hospitality, not only of a dinner, but of his home, and his person, really is tribute to the kind of man that I think that he is. I think all of them always feel, you know food is nice, and drink is maybe nicer, but the words that he shares with them, I suspect that they hold them close to themselves all through the year, about the kind of work that they do and why they do it. And that’s yet another example of his loyalties and constancies. It’s also testimony to the way that, if he commits himself to something, he follows through on it. The Lenders maintain constancy, fidelity, loyalty, and the deepest, deepest connections. I find that so remarkable and enviable and really something worthy of emulation.

Ask Doris Zelinsky about the Lenders’ community work, and she’ll tell you this to describe what “community” means to the Lenders:

In 1982, my husband and I lost a child to crib death. I was at the Lender office when I got the call that our son was ill and had been taken to the hospital, and I raced out. I had been waiting for a really important business meeting that we had been preparing for for months— somebody was flying in from Germany, there was a lot of money on the line— but I just ran out of the office. I was at Yale-New Haven Hospital, our son hung on for a couple of days, and two hours later Marvin showed up at Yale-New Haven, which I will never forget. The guys from Germany were waiting in the office, and Marvin had shown up.

The first thing he did was make sure that everyone understood that we had to be taken care of. He then stood with me in the hall and said, “What can I do? Do you have money? How can I help?” He stayed the whole day. I don’t know what happened with the German guys. He offered to take my mom home to meet my daughter who was coming home from school. He showed up again the next morning. I’m thinking, my G-d, he has a business to run! He only left when Murray flew back. Murray was in the Carolinas on a business call. Murray flew back from the Carolinas. Murray showed up with bagels and spreads from H. Lender’s, at the ICU. at Yale-New Haven. These are major doctors, ok? Murray pulled every doctor and ICU nurse out to teach them about bagels and schmear - he had a little party going on in the hallway of the ICU, which is just so Murray. So Marvin didn’t leave until Murray got there, and both of them, in their own very different ways, provided tremendous support.

It’s an indication that they had deep personal relationships with people, and they were very clear about what their values and priorities were. That business meeting they missed was extremely important, but you know what? It could wait. And that is a very important statement about who these people are fundamentally. Our life had just been ripped apart and these guys just were there. Marvin is looking for things to fix, he wants to drive my mother home; he’s the operational guy. Then Murray comes - he’s the salesman, what can he do to make people feel a tiny bit better? Murray was there with a pack from H. Lender’s all over the table, laid out these spreads, laid out these bagels in the pediatric ICU. This was not a happy place, but he was able to make it a little more humane. It was wonderful of them. To me that’s the most important story.

Indeed, ask Marvin about it and over a bagel (he still eats one every day - H&H, fresh, not frozen), and he might acknowledge with a shrug that he became “a big shit” at the UJA, but ask him about his wife, his children, his brother Murray, or his father, and there you will hear his pride, and his characteristic modesty:

I’m the last of the Lenders who can speak and tell the story, and that’s made me think a little bit, not that I haven’t thought about it before, but I am who I am because of my family. Because of Helaine too, and my kids have had a big influence on me. But it all starts with your family. And, you know, I don’t have any illusions: it’s an interesting story, the Lender family, but there are plenty of Lender families. We got lucky because we had a brand, a food consumer product and people knew about us.

Still, Marvin will acknowledge that there are lessons that can be learned from his family’s “interesting story.” Those lessons have been on display since, and even before, Harry Lender arrived in America in 1927: as Marvin puts it, “Do the best you can, but never forget where you came from, and never forget that you’ve got to give back.”

The Lenders have demonstrated hard work, innovation, and leadership in uncommon measure, but the faith and family values that drove them are familiar, and they were not acquired at the pinnacle of success. They were forged sleeping on top of an oven in Lublin, Poland, or standing in front of a sweltering oven for twenty-four hours at a time on Oak Street. They were rehearsed in the give-and-take of the basketball court, on the beaches at Woodmont, and in a cramped attic living quarters with no bathroom. They are Jewish values refined by being brought to bear on a polyglot block of Baldwin Street in New Haven. “I guess I go back again to ancestry,” Sam reflected once. “We all learned something and it never left us.”