Abraham Foxman, longtime ADL leader and antisemitism fighter, dies at 86

Abraham H. Foxman, who turned the Anti-Defamation League into one of the nation’s most influential watchdogs on antisemitism and prejudice, died Sunday at 86.

Foxman served as the ADL’s national director from 1987 to 2015 and remained national director emeritus until his death. The organization said he was born in 1940 and survived the Holocaust after his Polish Catholic nanny hid him by having him baptized as a Catholic to conceal his Jewish identity. That wartime rescue shaped a life spent confronting bigotry in public and in private, often at the highest levels of American and international power.

During nearly three decades leading the ADL, Foxman became one of the most visible Jewish advocates in the United States. He counseled presidents, diplomats, chief executives and celebrities over antisemitic incidents, pressed prominent figures on offensive remarks and representations, and at times accepted apologies on behalf of the Jewish community. He also served on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive and national director, called Foxman an “iconic Jewish leader” and said America and the Jewish people had lost “a moral voice” and “a passionate advocate” for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog mourned him as a “passionate Zionist, humanist, and friend.” Together, their tributes captured Foxman’s unusual reach: he was at once a communal defender, a political broker and a public conscience.

Foxman’s death leaves behind an ADL he helped remold from a civil-rights watchdog into a national force in debates over antisemitism, hate speech and political power. That legacy now lands in a harsher landscape, where hatred spreads faster, movements organize online and public institutions are under constant pressure to respond. The funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City and will be livestreamed, a final marker of how widely his influence stretched.