Jaques Kaswan Obituary

Jaques W. Kaswan

June 14, 1924 - January 28, 2015

Jaques passed away at his Berkeley home on January 28, age 90, mentally sharp and independent to the end.
He was born June 14, 1924 in Vienna, Austria. In 1936, as anti-Semitism intensified, Jaques and his mother left Vienna, spending two years in a small town in the mountains in Italy and then more years in refugee camps in France. Eventually, they immigrated to New York, where he worked in a hotel to support himself and his mother.
Drafted to fight in World War II, he joined the intelligence services where he made use of the language skills gained as a refugee. After the war, he joined his parents and brother, now reunited, in Los Angeles. In 1949, Jaques met and married the enduring love of his life, Ruth, with whom he shared 49 years of inseparable companionship until her death in 1999.
Although he never attended high school, Jaques earned a BA at night from UCLA and went on to earn a Masters degree from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in psychology from Washington University at St. Louis. He taught at Yale, UCLA, and Ohio State University. In 1977, he and Ruth founded the Urban Alternatives Group and published the magazine Humanizing City Life. He retired from OSU in 1979 and moved to California, where he developed cooperatives and on-going institutional structures to help them thrive and grow. In 1981 he co-founded the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation to establish housing cooperatives for low-income residents and in 1998 was instrumental in founding the Arizmendi bakery collectives now located throughout the Bay Area. Meanwhile, he continued scholarly writing on the centrality of cooperation, not just self-interest, as a basic human trait.
Jaques will be remembered by the many people whose lives he touched over the years, including his co-op collaborators and members of the Walnut House Cooperative where he lived for 35 years. He will be deeply missed by his daughter, Alice (Rick), his sons, Mark and Dan, and his grandchildren Zo?, Aaron, and Paul. We will be forever inspired by his perseverance in the face of adversity, his vision and initiative, his sense of decency and justice, his kindness and respect for all, and his sense of humor.
A memorial celebrating his life will be held March 14, 2-4 pm, at the All Souls Episcopal Parish in Berkeley.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by San Francisco Chronicle from Feb. 9 to Feb. 10, 2015.

Memories and Condolences
for Jaques Kaswan

6 Entries

Harold Feiger

February 3, 2021

Jacques and I co founded TNDC ( Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation) which has grown to be the most successful nonprofit housing corporation in SF.
JAQUES was my mentor and rabbi plus a super mensch that taught me so much about life. He is so missed even to this day.

March 10, 2015

Thanks for your phone call, Alice. I remember many conversations with Jaques, about many things but politics and the state of the country often manifested. He was a visionary who worked to right what he saw as wrongs--and there were many of those.

Jack Foley

Don Falk

March 10, 2015

I was greatly saddened to hear of Jacques' passing. Although I did not personally know him well, Jacques played an important part in TNDC's founding and early history. He exhibited the values and ideals that shaped TNDC, and we are grateful for his contribution. He will be missed.

February 27, 2015

Thirty-five years ago, Jaques was a pioneer in the development of housing cooperatives in Berkeley and the Bay Area. Later, he helped found the Arizmendi Bakery worker collectives. In helping people live and work cooperatively, Jaques was kind, keen, and persistent. We see his legacy all around. Thank you, dear friend Jaques, for your life and work.

Jack Sawyer, Ph.D., President
Parker Street Foundation
Berkeley, California

February 15, 2015

An amazing man who was my partner and mentor for many years as we gave birth to Tenderloin neighborhood devolpment corporation and other housing co-ops. In many ways a Jewish Saint of the first orderq

Deryck and Nadya Richardson

February 11, 2015

My wife Nadya and I have such warm and wonderful memories of Jaques. He was my doctoral dissertation advisor at The Ohio State University and was so monumentally helpful and kind that our oldest son, Deryck D'Arcy Jaques, is named partially after Jaques. Thus, he will always be remembered by us. What a lovely man he was!

Our deepest condolences to the family: you are, and will be, in our thoughts.

(My great friend, classmate, and one of my graduate school roommates, Jill Steinberg, was kind enough to call and let me know of Jaques' death.)
Deryck D. Richardson (Columbus, OH)

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