Marc Lieberman
BornJuly 7, 1949
Baltimore, Maryland
DiedAugust 2, 2021(2021-08-02) (aged 72)
San Francisco, California

Marc Frank Lieberman (July 7, 1949 – August 2, 2021) was an American ophthalmologist and humanitarian.[1]

Biography

He was born Marc Frank Lieberman on July 7, 1949, in Baltimore,[2] in a Reform Jewish household.[3] Both his brother and an uncle became rabbis while his father was an ear-nose-and-throat doctor.[3]

Lieberman attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon where he majored in religion and studied pre-Biblical Canaanite languages.[3] After college he lived in Israel for a time where he married an Israeli woman, Alicia Friedman,[2] and had a son.[3] He took pre-med classes at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[2] Upon returning to the United States, Lieberman attended Johns Hopkins University[3] and became an ophthalmologist with a focus on glaucoma[3] with a practice in San Francisco.[2]

In 1982, Lieberman met Nancy Garfield at a yoga class and she introduced him to the Buddhist community of the Bay Area.[2] Lieberman and Garfield would eventually marry.[2]

Lieberman considered himself a Jubu[4] and was a leader in the lay Buddhist community in the Bay Area.[2]

When the Dalai Lama was going to visit the United States in 1989 he desired to learn more about Judaism.[2] A friend of Lieberman in the office of California Democratic Representative Tom Lantos reached out and asked Lieberman to assist.[2] Lieberman was instrumental in arranging an historic dialogue between Jewish leaders and the Dalai Lama[4] putting together what he termed a "dream team" of rabbis and Jewish scholars for the one-day meeting.[2] The following year, Lieberman accompanied eight other members of the "dream team" to Dharmsala for a four-day discussion of the two faiths.[2][5] One member of the group, Rodger Kamenetz, went on to author The Jew in the Lotus about the discussions.[2]

Lieberman was also part of the group which invited monastics to found a monastery in California which eventually became Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.[6]

In 1995, Lieberman founded the nonprofit Tibet Vision Project to help restore sight to Tibetans with blindness.[3] Lieberman traveled to Tibet twice a year to run mobile eye camps[7] and by 2005 had trained 20 Tibetan surgeons and restored sight to more than 2,000 people.[3] Within 20 years, the Tibet Vision Project had restored sight to over 5,000 people.[2]

In 2006, a documentary about his work entitled Visioning Tibet was released.[2]

On August 2, 2021, Lierberman died from prostate cancer.[6][2]

References

  1. ↑ Bennion, Jackie. "Interview With Dr. Marc Lieberman". Frontline. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Risen, Clay (August 8, 2021). "Marc Lieberman, Who Brought Jews and Buddhists Together, Dies at 72". The New York Times. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Yollin, Patricia (February 4, 2005). "PROFILE: Marc Lieberman / Doctor gives Tibetans gift of sight / He's working to end cataract blindness in their country". The San Francisco Gate. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  4. 1 2 Sahagun, Louis (May 2, 2006). "At One With Dual Devotion". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  5. ↑ "The Jew in the Lotus Movie Project". Snow Lion. March 6, 2017. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  6. 1 2 "Dr Marc F Lieberman -- July 7, 1949 - August 2, 2021". Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery. August 7, 2021. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  7. ↑ Solotaroff, Isaac (September 20, 2007). "Tibet: Eye Camp - Restoring vision at the top of the world". Frontline. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
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