Abraham Foxman obituary May 10, 2026
Abraham Foxman, the longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League who for decades was the last word in post-Holocaust Jewish fury and forgiveness, has died at 86.
Foxman, a child survivor of the Holocaust, could be scathing and trenchant when he identified antisemitism infiltrating the public arena. But he was also an address for public figures who sought to divest themselves of a reputation of hostility toward Jews. And he did not spare himself, regretting crusades on behalf of Israel and Jewish communities he eventually admitted were wrongheaded.
“If you don’t believe you can change people’s hearts and minds, why bother?” he told The New York Times in 2020, when a columnist sought insights from what she called the “pardoner of sins” about the entrenchment of an unforgiving cancel culture. “If you are not going to try and change hearts and minds, why are you in this business at all?”
Under Foxman’s leadership, the ADL transformed from a division of the Jewish organization B’nai Brith into a muscular juggernaut running anti-bias educational and training programs, monitoring antisemitism in the United States and around the world and advocating for anti-discrimination legislation out of an array of regional offices. Foxman himself became a chief arbiter of what qualified as antisemitism — and the granter of absolution when he felt it was warranted. Some jokingly called him “the Jewish pope.”
He joined the ADL as an assistant director of legal affairs in 1965 and rose through a series of positions, including head of Middle Eastern affairs and head of international affairs, before becoming national director in 1987.
