Long-time JDC leader Ralph Goldman dies at 100

Ralph Goldman, a former leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and a central figure in Israel’s establishment, died Tuesday morning at his home in Jerusalem at the age of 100.

“Today, JDC Israel lost a leader whose contribution to the Jewish people, to the JDC and to the State of Israel is immeasurable,” JDC Israel CEO Yossi Tamir said in a statement.

Goldman, who celebrated his 100th birthday in September, served shortly after Israel’s establishment as its envoy to the United States and was a driving force in JDC’s activity behind the Iron Curtain after he joined that organization in 1969 and during his term as CEO from 1976 to 1988.

“It was necessary to prove to the prisoners of Zion that the Jewish people had not forgotten them,” Goldman said in 1979, addressing aid that the JDC, commonly known as the Joint, was providing to Jews who were trapped in the former Soviet Union after it began refusing to allow them to leave.

During Goldman’s tenure, the JDC was also influential in laying the groundwork for Operation Moses, which saw the rescue and transport to Israel of Ethiopian Jews in 1984.

“Aside from his contribution to the Jewish people and the State of Israel, Ralph was a tremendous influence on the formation of the Joint’s image as the world’s most significant Jewish humanitarian organization in history,” JDC Global CEO Alan Gil said. “Ralph Goldman worked all his life for the improvement of the quality of life of the weak in Israel’s society and the Jewish world, and always remembered to ask the question, ‘Why and in whose name are we doing this.’”

Born on September 1, 1914, in the town of Lechovitz in what is now Ukraine, Goldman immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 11. He studied history at Harvard University before moving temporarily to Israel, where in the late 1930s he participated in the establishment of Kibbutz Hanita in the Galilee.

JTA contributed to this report.