Abraham Foxman will retire next year after 50 years at the Anti-Defamation League. The news could have been worse. It could have been that he died a second time — or been kidnapped a third.
It was 14 years ago that he died. After a holiday dinner at his home in New Jersey, he went to bed early and expired in his sleep. His wife Golda noticed it immediately and raced to fetch his security detail, who revived him with a defibrillator, and he soon had bypass surgery.
People predicted Foxman would retire then, but he stayed for another generation in the struggle against anti-Semitism and racial and other discrimination. He has some detractors, but in my view he’s what the Japanese call a living national treasure.
The first meal we had together was in the early 1990s at a small dinner party at Ed Koch’s apartment. Bob Herbert, then with the Daily News, and a few others were there. That’s where I first heard the story of how, as a tot in Europe, Foxman had been litigated over once and kidnapped twice.
The war had trapped his family in Vilnius, Lithuana, where his Catholic nanny offered to take care of little Abe so his parents could hide. They ended up being apart for most of four years, during which the nanny protected him . . . and had him baptized. At the end of the war, his parents had to go to court to win legal custody.
The nanny followed the family and kidnapped young Abe. His parents then kidnapped him back, and finally got him to America. That’s a slightly over-simplified version, but not much.
“No wonder he was kidnapped so many times,” my wife exclaimed as we got in the car after dinner.
“What makes you say that?” I asked her.
“Because,” she said, “he’s the most lovable person. They all fell in love with him, even as an infant, and you can still see it. He just has an incredible quality.”
It’s hard to think of many figures in public life of whom this is such a central feature of their personality. It is the underestimated element of the Foxman method. The handshake is not for him. He hugs almost everyone he deals with.
Foxman was 10 when he reached New York. He went to the Yeshiva of Flatbush and then to City College, NYU law school, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the New School. Then he made his career at the Anti-Defamation League.
Although Foxman has written a half dozen or more books, he doesn’t really intellectualize things. He’s like a cop on a beat. One sign of bigotry, and out comes the rhetorical or legal nightstick. Thwack.
And when, on occasion, he makes an error, he admits it.
This happened in the summer of 1991, when he — and a number of others — were slow to perceive the Crown Heights riot for the pogrom that it was. When that became clear, he called a press conference to apologize.
Over the years he has been excoriated from the right (he brought the ADL into the struggle for gay rights and supports the peace process) and the left (he has no truck with the anti-Zionists). Yet he won so many battles that by the late 1990s some wondered whether the ADL was still needed.
I’m thinking in particular of an evening at the Waldorf , where Foxman raised $6 million in a single banquet. It was there that one of the richest and smartest men in New York turned to me and said, “Look at this. Our struggle is over. We won. We don’t need the ADL anymore. Soon it’ll all be gone.”
I slid my glasses down on the end of my nose and peered at my crony with a look of incredulity. 9/11 was but a year and a half in the future. Foxman was already at work on his next book, which included a warning about the rise of jihadi anti-Semitism.
Once war was upon us, who could retire? And is Foxman any less needed now, in this season of boycott, divestment and sanctions, even on our best campuses? He says he’s going try to continue to have a voice.
No doubt we’ll need him. My own view is that it’s a never-ending struggle. This would be a good time for President Obama to give him the Medal of Freedom. Oh, and one for Golda, too.