Tributes have poured in following the death at the age of 86 of Abraham Foxman, the American lawyer, activist and long-serving national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). To those who knew him, he was simply Abe. To most he was the face and moral voice of the fight against antisemitism, a man blessed with a natural ability to communicate effortlessly with presidents, diplomats, journalists or community members.
In a tribute, ADL Board chair Nicole Mutchnik praised him as an “outspoken, passionate and tireless advocate for the Jewish people and Israel” who had helped build the modern liberal era of America, and was a longtime adviser to US presidents and world leaders. On a personal level, Mutchnik found Abe to be “a warm friend, spirited antagonist and hugger – all over lunch”.
His work was recognised with many awards and honours from nonprofit groups, religious figures and statesmen, including the Interfaith Committee of Remembrance Lifetime Achievement Award and the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Leadership Award in 2002 from the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He was also named a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2006 by French president Jacques Chirac, the country’s highest civilian honour. And he received an honorary doctoral degree from Yeshiva University.
A child Holocaust survivor, Foxman could be scathing and trenchant, according to the JTA, when he saw antisemitism infiltrate the public arena. But he was equally ready to support public figures wishing to reverse their hostile attitudes toward Jews.
“If you don’t believe you can change people’s hearts and minds, why bother?” he told The New York Times in 2020. As the chief arbiter of what qualifies as antisemitism who offered absolution when he felt it was deserved, Foxman had been jocularly described as “the Jewish pope”.
Under his 28-year leadership ADL grew into a powerful watchdog offering anti-bias educational and training programmes, monitoring antisemitism internationally and advocating for anti-discrimination legislation. The movement became one of the most influential advocacy institutions in America. But it did not just happen during his leadership years. Foxman had spent his entire 50-year career with the organisation, developing his modus operandi.
World leaders saw him as an adviser, strategist, diplomat and most importantly – conscience, according to Laura Kam, president of Kam Global Strategies, who had worked for 17 years alongside the man she described in The Times of Israel as her mentor and friend, and “one of the great Jewish leaders of our time”.
In many ways Foxman’s human rights views made him something of a lone-wolf figure. In 2000 he protested against the Supreme Court ruling that the American boy scouts movement could exclude a scoutmaster because he was gay. This placed him in conflict with Jewish Orthodox groups who supported the ruling, although mainstream Jewish organisations agreed with him that it constituted discrimination.
The League issued a report the following year, stating: “We are stunned that in the year 2000 the Supreme Court could issue such a decision” which “effectively states that as long as an organisation avows an anti-homosexual position, it is free to discriminate against gay and lesbian Americans.”
He was also prepared to admit his own errors of judgment. In an interview with the JTA in 2007 he said he was haunted by his mistake in criticising a report that alleged the Israeli police had used excessive force against rioters on the Temple Mount in 1990, only to reflect later that he was wrong, and the actions of the Israeli police were correct.
Another mea culpa came later in the same interview over his controversial refusal to describe the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915 as a “genocide” – which aroused a backlash from the Armenian communities’ Jewish allies.
Foxman had been moved to protect the Turkish Jewish community from retaliation at a time when Turkey, which was a close ally of Israel, had pressured the Jewish state to oppose US efforts to mark the killings as genocide.
Foxman also provoked controversy over his wavering criticism of Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, because of its portrayal of Jews as collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Gibson denied the film was antisemitic.
During the pre-release period in September, 2003, he called Gibson “the portrait of an antisemite”. But the next day he retracted: “I’m not ready to say he’s an antisemite, but he entertains views that can only be described as antisemitic.” By November he declared: “I think he’s infected, seriously infected, with some very, very serious antisemitic views” and further endorsed his opinion in a letter to The National Review, published in March 2004, comparing the film to the Oberammergau Passion Play regularly performed in Bavaria, Germany from the mid 17th century and endorsed by the Nazis.
An intense lover of Israel, observers noted that he became more relaxed and casual there, even when meeting prime ministers and Palestinian leaders. He rebuffed critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza, claiming on X: “What is happening in Gaza is tragic. But it is not genocide. War is hell and inhumane, destructive and ugly. And nations must take all possible care to avoid civilian harm. And Israel has and is doing that. Having said this, Israel still needs to act with all deliberate speed and skill to provide maximum humanitarian aid to lessen the loss of innocent civilian lives.”
In 2021, he cancelled his subscription to The New York Times after it published front-page photos of dozens of Palestinian children it claimed had been killed by Israel in Gaza. “Today’s blood libel of Israel and the Jewish people is enough,” he said.
Foxman co-authored a book, Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet, but was not surprised at its poor reception. As he told a JTA reporter: he was “lambasting the social media machine that was shaping America, tilting at virtual windmills”.
Abraham Foxman was born Avraham Chanoch Hanach in Belarus to Polish Jews, Yelena and Iosif Fuksman, but with the rise of the Nazis, they fled, leaving their two-year-old son in the care of his Roman Catholic nanny, Bronislawa Kurpi in Vilnius, Lithuania. She became his fierce protector, baptising him and even teaching him to hurl antisemitic insults, to ensure he would fit in with other Polish children.
When his parents returned after the war, she refused to give him up. It took bitter courtroom battles to restore him to his family and religion, yet he acknowledged that she had saved his life, and could never hate her.
The family emigrated to the US in 1950. He graduated from the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York City, received a BA in political science from the City College of New York, graduating with honours in history. He gained degrees from the New York University School of Law, and worked as a graduate in Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and in international economics at The New School.
He was hired as a legal assistant by ADL in its international affairs division, later heading Middle Eastern affairs and finally international affairs.
When he retired in 2015, antisemitism in the US seemed at an all-time low. Foxman took no credit but reflected on the chance to build a world animated by values very different from those of his childhood in eastern Europe. He then became vice chair of the board of trustees at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, spearheading its battle against antisemitism.
In 2020 Foxman endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, appalled by what he regarded as US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the essence of democracy, which had protected the United States from his parents’ lived nightmare during the Holocaust.
Unwilling to evoke Germany’s Nazi history, he nevertheless told JTA just weeks before the election: “Germany did have institutions and they did have democracy and it did fall apart so, yeah, it’s not Germany, and it’s not Nazism, but our antennas are quivering.”
But shortly before his death Foxman expressed support for the US-Israel war on Iran, voicing his gratitude to both President Donald Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
He also warned about the rise in antisemitism on the right and left in America, and expressed fears about declining support for Israel in the US. He is survived by his wife Golda Bauman, their daughter Michelle, their son Ariel, and four grandchildren.
GLORIA TESSLER
Abraham H Foxman: born May 1, 1940. Died May 10, 2026
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