Abe Foxman, Former ADL National Director, Dies at 86

Abraham Foxman died on May 9, 2026 at age 86. He will be buried on May 12 in New York. Foxman was born in 1940 in Baranovichi, now in Belarus. He survived the Holocaust as a child after his parents placed him with a Polish Catholic nanny who baptized him and raised him as Henryk Stanisław Kurpi until the end of the war.

He immigrated to the United States in 1950 at age 10. He graduated from the Yeshiva of Flatbush, City College of New York and NYU School of Law. Foxman joined the Anti-Defamation League in 1965 and served as its national director from 1987 until 2015.

The journalist Zvika Klein met Foxman regularly at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem, often on the ninth-floor lounge overlooking the Old City walls. They were scheduled to meet on October 27, 2025, but the meeting was postponed due to Foxman's health. The rescheduled meeting never occurred.

Foxman told Klein in a 2014 interview that if the State of Israel defines who is an Orthodox rabbi, it is likely they would not recognize him and his children as Jews. In November 2022 he said that if Israel ceases to be an open democracy, he would not be able to support it.

He described 2015 as the worst year for European Jews since the war and said ADL staff would not be retiring soon. campuses. In later years Foxman sent direct messages to Klein, including after columns in February and March 2025. In September 2024 he wrote that he was troubled by events around them and devastated about what was happening in Israel.

Foxman met with three popes and was received in the White House under presidents of both parties. He spoke for American Jewry during a period when stable Jewish institutions, civic pluralism and broad support for Israel were more common. Those conditions have since changed.