Jeff Rosen June 9, 1958 – March 17, 2009
Jeff was a warm, loving and generous man. His life centered on his family and friends, whom he adored. Melissa was the love of his life and soulmate for 33 years. He loved his work; it was important to him to help others pursue justice. He was passionate about music and sports. Go Giants!! Some of Jeff’s favorite times were spent in the green chairs at Tuolumne Family Camp, rocking out at concerts, visiting family and friends around the country, getting together for sing-alongs, and participating in activities with his children. Jeff touched all of our lives in so many ways. He will remain in our hearts always.
“River gonna to take me,
sing me sweet and sleepy,
sing me sweet and sleepy
all the way back home.
It’s a far gone lullaby,
sung many years ago.
Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.
Goin’ home, goin’ home, by the waterside I will rest my bones,
listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul.”
sing me sweet and sleepy,
sing me sweet and sleepy
all the way back home.
It’s a far gone lullaby,
sung many years ago.
Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.
Goin’ home, goin’ home, by the waterside I will rest my bones,
listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul.”
From "Brokedown Palace"
-- Hunter/Garcia
-- Hunter/Garcia
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JOEL MIGDAL'S EULOGY TO JEFF AT THE FUNERAL
Jeff was our parents’ first grandchild, the first of the third generation of the Migdal-Rosen families. And he was the first of our nieces and nephews, playing a very special role, as a person midway between our generation and that of his brothers and cousins. Jeff was only 13 years younger than I and, for us, he was simultaneously someone to dote on, the trailblazer for his brothers and cousins, and a peer.
We doted on him from the moment he was born. All his little tricks as a child became family lore. When he was two years old, for example, Yudi taught him to say that it was 8 o’clock whenever he asked, “Jeff, what time is it?” When friends were around at 8 o’clock, Yudi would casually ask Jeff what time it was. Jeff, of course, astounded them all with his genius for getting it right.
We thought everything Jeff did was brilliant. When he was four years old, he taught himself to read by watching a TV program encouraging literacy for immigrants. When we came to visit, he proudly showed us how he read. His first words were "emergency room" and "help wanted." Dick and Jane came later.
When Jeff was seven years old, Ayala and Yudi had a chance to go to Israel for three weeks - and Mickey and Penina agreed to babysit. Most of the time he and Barry were quite adorable, but getting them to sleep at night was quite a project. One night Penina and Mickey had been through the whole works - the drinks of water, the four stories, the hugs and kisses, and finally they flopped down on the couch. Suddenly there was a call from the bedroom. "We have sand in our beds.” Who knew where it came from, but there it was. When his parents returned, Jeff was quite proud of his negotiating skills. He complained to his parents, "Just when I got used to dealing with them, they decide to leave.”
Later, Jeff blazed the trail for his brothers. What was "outrageous” behavior when he was a teenager and young adult quickly became the norm for Barry and Danny. He grew up in a time of cultural change, and it was he who brought in music to the Rosen household that, at least initially, shocked Yudi’s classical tastes. He dragged his parents into the counter-culture of the 1970s in other ways too, although they were usually brought in kicking and screaming.
As a teenager, he and the rest of the family visited Israel when Marcy and I were living there. Somehow, I convinced Ayala that it would be entirely safe for him to take Jeff on a research outing in the West Bank. After a day of interviewing Palestinians in dusty villages, Jeff, my Arab assistant, and I sat in a café in Ramallah so that they could review the day’s events. Shrill Arabic music was blaring from a loudspeaker, and my Arab assistant complained to the café owner to change it. To Jeff and me, the new song the café owner put on was absolutely indistinguishable from the previous one, and Jeff said to the assistant, “I have to agree with you, this is really awful music.” The assistant was shocked, “No,” he protested, “this song is really good.” For me, that memorable day with Jeff was a kind of transition, from Jeff the little boy to the grown-up Jeff.
Once he met Melissa and they forged a life of their own, he truly became a peer. We followed his law career avidly and, through the cases he fought, he taught us about a dimension of life we otherwise rarely saw. If anything could animate Jeff, it was retelling one of those legal stories. He had a passion for these cases, a passion rooted in his very strong sense of what separated right and wrong. He was not the kind of person who could argue either side of an issue easily. Rather, he saw himself representing people who were wronged and could not always defend themselves. This strong moral sense permeated his whole life and seeped through his entire family, including us.
In fact, we always knew Jeff would be a lawyer. He had such a strong sense of justice, even when he was a child. Like the time he organized a general boycott by his Hebrew school friends to protest the fact that the teacher kept calling them "vilde chaye" (wild beasts).
It wasn’t only the law that animated him. He loved all forms of popular culture. For example, he got the whole family to watch Seinfeld, and we all—well, almost all—became Seinfeld aficionados because of him. The only thing he could not convince us to do was root for his beloved Yankees and Giants. Like the rest of the family, Jeff loved sports and helped Sammy and Emmy develop their own love of sports.
But it wasn't a one way street. True, Jeff taught us lots of things about popular culture and more, but from us he got his staunch liberalism (which made him fit so well into Berkeley) and our love of family. For all of us the Passover Seders were the highlight of the year. They went way beyond the story of the liberation from Egypt. They meant that our whole family would gather for several days to be together, to catch up, to complain about the difficulties of the holiday - and mainly to enjoy each other's company. We'll miss that special time with Jeff very much.
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