Seymour Fromer (October 3, 1922 – October 25, 2009) was an American co-founder of the

Judah L. Magnes Museum The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, formerly known as the Judah L. Magnes Museum from 1961 until its reopening in 2012, is a museum of Jewish history, art, and culture in Berkeley, California. The museum, which was founded in 1961 by Se ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. Fromer co-founded the museum, which houses 11,000

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

artifacts, one of the largest collections in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, with his wife,

Rebecca Fromer Rebecca Camhi Fromer (January 16, 1927 – January 1, 2012) was an American playwright, historian and poet. Fromer co-founded the Judah L. Magnes Museum of Berkeley, California, in 1961 with her husband, Seymour Fromer. The museum, which is now ca ...

, in a Berkeley

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word '' manse'' originally defined a property l ...

in 1962. He remained the director the Judah L. Magnes Museum until his retirement in 1998. Fromer was born in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

on October 3, 1922. He attended both

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

for his education. He worked as a school administrator in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, before moving to the

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

area in the 1950s. He later moved to

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. A true maverick and visionary, Seymour (in partnership with his spouse Rebecca Camhi Fromer) dedicated his life to retrieving and preserving the art and artifacts of Jewish daily life, culture, and religion. Among the numerous artists and artisans whose careers and projects he helped launch and whose crafts he helped preserve: -Deborah Kaufman, who birthed the first Jewish Film Festival; -Vivian Kleiman, a Peabody Award-winning producer of the first professional documentary film on the Jewish Diaspora ('' Routes of Exile: A Moroccan Jewish Odyssey); '' -Lev Liberman and his band, The Klezmorim, the world's first

Klezmer revival Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...

band; -David Moss who revived the art of Hebrew calligraphy and contemporary Ketubah design; -Victor Ries, a Jewish metalsmith and silversmith whose work includes the entrance gate to the original Magnes Museum property; -Janet _____(?), who helped preserve the art of Jewish Yemenite silver jewelry making. Among the projects that Seymour and Rebecca created: -cataloguing the treasure trove of Yiddish records salvaged from dumpsters; -collecting libraries of Yiddish books from the homes of Jewish chicken farmers in Petaluma, CA (among them Yiddish translations of Marx); -retrieving Judaica poised to be discarded as Jewish life in various countries was diminishing, among them Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, India, and Central Europe, Seymour Fromer died at his home in

, on October 25, 2009, at the age of 87. He was survived by his wife, Rebecca Camhi Fromer, their daughter, Mira Z. Amiras, and two grandchildren. Rebecca Fromer died in January 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fromer, Seymour 1922 births 2009 deaths Museum founders 20th-century American Jews Brooklyn College alumni People from Berkeley, California People from the Bronx Columbia University alumni 20th-century American philanthropists 21st-century American Jews