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<\/a><\/p>\nAbe Foxman at an Anti-Defamation League event at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., May 8, 2014. (Michael Kovac\/WireImage\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Amid starkly growing polarization in the United States, Foxman was known for his willingness to call balls and strikes on all sides of the aisle, as well as hug across the chasm.<\/p>\n
The complexity of individuals \u2013 the truth that heroes could commit bad acts and that villains could at times be redeemed \u2013 was seared into Foxman from childhood.<\/p>\n
Foxman was born in Poland in 1940 and at 2 years old was left in the care of his Roman Catholic nanny in Vilnius, Lithuania, as his parents sought to escape the Germans. His nanny was his fierce protector and insulated him from the depredations of Nazis and their enablers, baptizing him and teaching him to handily hurl anti-Jewish epithets to fit in.<\/p>\n
When his parents returned after the war, she would not give him up: It took bitter encounters in courtrooms to restore him to his family, and to the Jewish people.<\/p>\n
Yet he could never hate her, he would often say later in life. \u201cShe risked her life,\u201d he told the New York Times in 1991. \u201cShe saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1950, four years after besting his nanny in the courts, Foxman\u2019s parents took him with them to New York. There he attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush followed by the City College of New York and New York University Law School.<\/p>\n
Foxman applied his exacting standards to himself, telling JTA in the same 2007 interview that he was haunted by the mistakes he had made, in one case lacerating a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment on Jerusalem only to find out the report\u2019s criticism of the Israeli police\u2019s use of excessive force in confronting rioters in 1990 on the Temple Mount Israel was correct. (He apologized to producer Don Hewitt and reporter Mike Wallace, and Hewitt replied \u201cAre you for real?\u201d)<\/p>\n
He also told JTA in the same interview that he anguished over one of his most controversial decisions \u2014 his refusal to describe the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915 as a \u201cgenocide\u201d \u2014 especially given the backlash his stance earned him from Jewish allies of the Armenian community.<\/p>\n
Foxman\u2019s reflex had been typical: defer to the Jewish community most vulnerable in a controversy, in this case the Turkish Jewish community, which feared retaliation. It was a decision that he also took at a time Turkey was one of Israel\u2019s closest regional allies and heavily pressured Israel to oppose any U.S. efforts to recognize the killings as genocide. But Foxman acknowledged in retrospect that he had caused others pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me it was very clear, there are moral imperatives here \u2014 the moral imperative to feel somebody else\u2019s pain, to recognize their anguish, and the moral imperative which is the safety and the security of the Jewish community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Once Foxman had enough of someone, he truly had enough \u2014 and his sharp wit would emerge.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy answer would be \u2018Thanks but no thanks,\u201d\u2019 Foxman told Reuters in 2004 when Gibson said he was contemplating a film about the Maccabees, the Jewish warrior class whose stunning victory over Greek colonists is the basis of the Hanukkah holiday. \u201cThe last thing we need in Jewish history is to convert our history into a Western. In his hands we may wind up losing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He came across at times as a curmudgeon. \u201cViral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet,\u201d a book he coauthored in 2013, tanked, and he told a JTA reporter he was not surprised: He was lambasting the social media machine that was shaping America, tilting at virtual windmills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe paradigms are changing,\u201d he said multiple times in an interview about the book.<\/p>\n
Thirteen years later, his distaste for the self-assuredness of tech leaders who reassured him all would be good seems prescient.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been talking to the geniuses at Palo Alto,\u201d Foxman said in the interview. \u201cWe have said to them, \u2018thanks but no thanks. You developed a technology that has some wonderful things but also has unintended consequences.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
When Foxman retired in 2015, antisemitism appeared by many measures to be at an all-time low in the United States. Foxman hesitated to take credit for any gains but said he had appreciated the chance to build a world animated by values very different from those that reigned during his childhood in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t take credit for it, but I\u2019m part of the effort \u2014 not only of the American Jewish community, but of decent people in this country, to fight it,\u201d Foxman told JTA at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo what extent did my experiences in the Shoah, the D.P. camps, my Catholicism have to do with that, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Foxman added. \u201cI have been very lucky. To get up every morning and to have an opportunity to try to make a difference in both fighting hate and building love \u2014 wow. I have been very privileged.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a retirement party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in 2015, Foxman received accolades from Obama administration officials as well as from Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist with whom he had repeatedly clashed on Israel policy. (Friedman revealed that Foxman had been his counselor at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, where a highlight each year was reenacting the Dreyfus Affair.)<\/p>\n
The party also drew an appearance by Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chief who had faced Foxman\u2019s wrath over the conspiracy musings of one-time Fox personality Beck. (Years later, Foxman would defend having awarded an honor to Fox\u2019s owner, Rupert Murdoch, even after Greenblatt said Murdoch was stoking hate with the network.)<\/p>\n
Foxman was gregarious, surprising interlocutors by ending official meetings with a hug, and referring to Jewish media reporters as \u201ctattele,\u201d Yiddish for \u201cgood boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin minutes of our first phone call I felt like family,\u201d United Nations envoy Samantha Power said at the Waldorf-Astoria sendoff, describing their first interaction in Obama\u2019s first term, when she was on the National Security Council. \u201cWe were yelling, interrupting one another and swearing. I think I almost ended this first phone call saying \u2018Love you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicole Mutchnik, chair of the ADL\u2019s board, referred to Foxman\u2019s famous warmth in a statement mourning his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbe Foxman helped build the modern liberal era of America. He was recognized across the globe as a great leader and passionate advocate for tolerance, a voice of the generation rebuilding in the shadow of the Shoah, and longtime advisor to American presidents and world leaders,\u201d she said. \u201cTo those of us who knew him, Abe was a warm friend, advisor, spirited antagonist and hugger \u2013 all over lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2020, five years after retiring from the ADL, Foxman did what once was unthinkable to him. He endorsed a presidential candidate, Joe Biden. He was appalled by what he saw as President Donald Trump\u2019s flirtations with bigotry and broadsides against democracy, the system that kept the United States from living the nightmare his parents had endured.<\/p>\n
He also did what he had for a lifetime been reluctant to do: invoke the Nazi era as a warning signal.<\/p>\n
\u201cGermany did have institutions and they did have democracy and it did fall apart so, yeah, it\u2019s not Germany, and it\u2019s not Nazism, but our antennas are quivering,\u201d Foxman told JTA weeks before the election.<\/p>\n
Foxman is survived by his wife Golda; his daughter Michelle and his son Ariel; and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n
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