I feel honored to have known and learned from Abe Foxman for more than five decades.
Everyone called him Abe.
The best-known and arguably the most influential American Jewish leader of the last five decades, Abraham Foxman dealt with presidents, kings and ambassadors as he did with the fellow Jews he spent a lifetime trying to protect: as a mensch, connecting person to person, with passion and compassion.
“No chochmas,” as he would say, no nuances or shticks.
Some complained he lacked sophistication. Others loved him for being a straight shooter. Either way, he was an authentic, proud Jew and his greatest strength – and weakness – was that he took everything personally. With his combination of warmth, feistiness, smarts, humor and Yiddishe heart, he personified to many Americans – Jewish and Christian – not only the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) he represented for 50 years but the Jewish community.
For more than five decades, I had the honor of knowing, reporting on and often shmoozing with Abe, who died on Sunday at the age of 86. He was a mentor, friend, news source, and sometimes critic. Heralded now in praiseworthy media coverage that he would enjoy, he was often the first call for journalists looking for a Jewish response to the crisis of the moment because he was direct, accessible and highly quotable.
Contrary to the corporate model of some Jewish organizations, Abe didn’t hide his emotions; he wore his deep commitment to Judaism on his sleeve, often peppering his remarks with Yiddishisms. (He was the only major communal leader I knew who would call me “boychik” or “tahtele.”)
Abe was the last of a generation of national professional leaders who experienced the Holocaust first-hand. The issue of antisemitism was particularly poignant for him because it spoke to both his personal history and life’s work. Born in Vilna in the spring of 1940, he was left in the care of a Catholic nanny by his parents who feared for his life. Baptized as an infant and reclaimed by his parents after they survived the war, as a small child he was the center of a custody battle between the nanny who saved him and the parent he didn’t remember.
“As a hidden child,” he told me, “I didn’t know who or what I was.” He said that after he arrived in the US with his parents in 1950, he felt responsible to “work on behalf of the Jewish people and fight the antisemitism that almost destroyed me.” He said his father described him, at 10, as “the old man.”
Having survived the Holocaust, “how dare I be a pessimist?” he would ask. But for a self-declared optimist, he worried a great deal about the Jewish future. In a 2020 interview, he told me that throughout history, depending on the circumstances, the virus of antisemitism has lain dormant or become more virulent. “We’re living in an environment today that is more user-friendly to the virus,” he said, “a time of incivility, lack of tolerance, no respect for the truth. And with it comes politicization, polarization, frustration, anger, hate—all the elements that fuel the virus.”
“Antisemitism is being fed by religion, politics, economics, and social issues,” he added. The “firewalls” of protection that worked in the past — a common base of truth and facts, a shared consensus, fairness and accountability, a media that educates — “no longer have credibility. They’re gone,” Foxman said. “It’s like a perfect storm.”
And that was six years ago.
We first met sitting near each other in the back of shul in Teaneck, NJ, talking too much during Shabbat morning services. Over the years, I interviewed him about the issues of the day (many of them the same issues as today, like tense US-Israel relations, critical Arab-Israeli conflicts, and of course the dangers of antisemitism.) When he felt he was right he was willing to put up with outrage, like when he described Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, “The Passion of the Christ,” as antisemitic – a criticism that not only infuriated millions of Christians but surely helped the movie at the box-office. “To some extent, that’s true,” he told me at the time. “But I ask myself, did we have a choice? And at the end of the day, I believe the answer is no.”
In his job leading the ADL, Abe spoke truth to power on an almost daily basis, and across party lines. He called out President Obama for blaming Israel for the lack of progress in peace talks while giving the Palestinian leadership a pass, warned President Biden that he was sending “the wrong message to our friends and enemies” in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu, described President Trump as a “demagogue” who was a danger to America and American Jews, and came to view Netanyahu as a danger for his actions that have lost support for Israel among Americans, including Jews.
In one of his last, detailed interviews, Abe met with Michael Berenbaum and Gilbert Kahn, co-authors of “A Shattered World: Jews and Israel After October 7,” a book of essays that addresses the impact of the war on the Jewish future. It includes a Q and A transcript of their interview, during which Abe described a personal meeting he had with Netanyahu at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem that is quite revealing. He said Netanyahu initiated the 2023 meeting and urged his guest to “be straight” with him.
It can best be told in Abe’s own words:
“I said to him, ‘why did you have to give Smotrich and Ben-Gvir the positions you gave them?’” Abe asked. “You could have given them something else. He [Netanyahu] says, ‘I made a mistake. That’s it. … And Abe, I’ll fix it. You’ll see.’
“I said to him, ‘Bibi, I have known you for a long time. You’re not a racist. Now you’re a racist. Because now you embrace two racists in your government. You don’t challenge them. You don’t criticize them. … He said, ‘Abe, I’ll fix it. The argument is over. I made a mistake.’”
“I’m still waiting,” Abe concluded.
A final note: Abe was ahead of the curve on so many issues, including the ones he warned about when we spoke in June 2015, just before he retired after 50 years at the ADL. On the subject of antisemitism, he acknowledged in a soft voice, “I can’t promise my grandchildren that they won’t need the ADL. Prejudice and bigotry remain with us.”
Asked what keeps him up at night, he said the same thing that gave him comfort at the time: the US-Israel relationship.
“Israel is very fortunate it has the US as its primary ally, and we have developed strong bipartisan support in Washington. But what’s scary is that sense of dependence. There’s no one else to defend Israel politically, diplomatically and militarily. Israel has nowhere else to go, and we have to be super smart going forward.”
Indeed.
As the interview was winding down, he reminded me that even after he retired he would be available to continue our ongoing conversation. We shook hands and he said with a smile, “Call me.”
I wish I could now.