ADL Regional Board Member, National Executive Committee Member, attorney and philanthropist Jeff Diamond discusses his career, community activism and why he believes ADL is “life insurance” for the Jewish people and others.

 

How did you first become involved in ADL? How are you involved now?

Over 27 years ago, I was asked to serve on the newly organized New Mexico Regional ADL Board. I have been Regional Board Chair for New Mexico and I serve on the National Executive Committee. I have recently joined the ADL Mountain States Regional Board, which now covers New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.

 

What do you do in your professional life?

I have been an attorney in private practice for 42 years and most of my practice has been in the field of personal injury law and social security disability. I am licensed as an attorney in New Mexico and Texas and I am Board Certified by the National Board of Social Security Disability Advocacy. I am the first board certified specialist in New Mexico and the second in Texas, but second in Texas does not count for anything!  I currently have offices in Carlsbad, Roswell, Albuquerque and in Texas, and I have 35 employees including 6 attorneys.

 

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

 I always wanted to be an attorney. My immigrant grandparents had the greatest respect for the law and American values and always reminded me of the special obligations I owed America and the American legal system, as well as the need to be vigilant to protect the rights and freedom of all people. This message was always reinforced by lessons about the Holocaust, the murders of scores of my family members in Europe, and how fortunate we were to be Americans.

 

Where were you born? From where do your ancestors hail?

I was born in Manhattan, N.Y. and raised in Lakewood, New Jersey. My maternal grandparents emigrated from the Polish side of Russia and Hungary. My paternal grandfather was from Russia and my grandmother was from England.

 

What’s your favorite holiday?

My favorite holiday is Passover because it is a celebration of G-d’s liberation of our people and a model for remembrance of life’s hardships as slaves. It is also a celebration of freedom for all people.

 

What’s your favorite food?

I love real Jewish, kosher food: any kind, but especially brisket, kugels and tzimmes.

 

What are you reading?

I am reading Roughing It by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain),  about his travels across the Western United States.

 

What’s a special place you have visited?

I studied for a year in Bologna, Italy, but my favorite place to visit is Israel. I had the good fortune to travel there on ADL missions on three separate occasions with my late wife, Evy, and Abe and Golda Foxman and the national leadership of ADL.

 

What’s one thing every person should know or experience?

Every person should visit Yad Vashem or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, or a Holocaust Memorial museum in one of our major cities. The lessons of the Holocaust must be learned by all men and women, so they understand the meaning of “Never Again” and fight for the respect, dignity, and human rights of all people.

 

What teacher or class stands out to you the most in your education and why?

One of my earliest Hebrew teachers was Adele Selinger, an Auschwitz survivor with a number on her arm. She inculcated in me strong Jewish values and the duty to always do the “right thing.”

 

What are you passionate about personally? What can’t you stop talking about?

My late wife, Evy, and I lost our son, Shannon J. Shaw, to melanoma. He was a wonderful son, husband, and father, and a brilliant young petroleum engineer who would not listen to his wife and mother about seeing a doctor for a nasty mole on his hip. We established a fund at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center in his memory to make the public aware of the dangers of unprotected exposure to the sun, and to provide medical care and cancer education to people living in medically underserved communities in New Mexico. We named our charity “Listen to Your Mom,” which was Shannon’s advice to his children.

 

Where can we find you when you’re not working?

I will usually be at a charitable meeting such as a New Mexico Cancer Council meeting where I am on the executive committee; Disability Rights New Mexico where I am on the board; or at a meeting of the Mayor’s Mental Health Council where I am chairman and trying to set up a long term residential center, Avalon Ranch, to treat and rehabilitate pregnant women and women with young children who are addicted to opioids.

 

What would be impossible for you to give up?

I could never give up my professional, political, and charitable pursuits.

 

If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

I would teach the subject of ethics and ethical responsibility in public life.

 

Tell me a story that immediately pops into your mind that was a defining or significant moment for you.

I obtained a summer internship in Washington, on my own, working for a U.S. Senator over the summer after my junior year in High School and for five years thereafter. I held in the very highest regard the values I came to admire, gazing at the Capitol, Supreme Court Building, White House, Lincoln Memorial and other sites important to our country.

 

If you are a legacy donor, why have you chosen to invest in ADL in this way?

Barry Curtis-Lusher was a role model for me and encouraged me to pledge a portion of my life insurance and to make, for me, significant annual gifts to ADL. ADL is life insurance for the Jewish people and all people in the world victimized by hate.

 

Why do you choose to make a financial investment in ADL?

Because we are the backstop for the foul balls thrown at the Jewish people and all the people in the world who experience hate and racism. We fearlessly stand up to the bullies of the world and demand that the weakest among us be treated with respect and dignity.