Secret of Abe Foxman’s Success
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Abraham Foxman will retire next year after 50 years at of 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 . . .
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