“We don’t have a slow season in our business,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time. “What we deal with is words. We’ve learned that words have the power to kill, that words unchallenged, left in silence, words of bigotry, are part of our tradition.”

Foxman thrived for decades in a political culture where the establishment still mattered, and extremism was not considered a virtue. He granted absolution to figures as diverse as former President Jimmy Carter and right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck and as surprising as the fashion designer John Galliano.

Foxman also knew when to despair of reforming repeat offenders.

“When you say Mr. X engaged in antisemitism, the first time that they do it you can say it’s ignorance, it’s insensitivity,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2007, asked about his refusal to exonerate Hollywood star and director Mel Gibson. “But when you say to them that they are engaging in antisemitism when they say the Jews control the media and the Jews control universities, and when they repeat it the second time, the third time, and the fourth time, are you or are you not an antisemite?”

Foxman’s successor, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, lamented in a statement the passing of an “iconic Jewish leader.”

“America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice, a passionate advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, and a remarkable leader,” Greenblatt said.

Greenblatt’s announcement was followed by an outpouring of memories and tributes from leaders throughout the Jewish world and in Israel. “Abe Foxman was a mentor, a guide, and a towering presence in Jewish communal life. He showed a generation of leaders that fighting antisemitism demands clarity, courage, and the willingness to stand firm under pressure,” said William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in one such statement.

Amid starkly growing polarization in the United States, Foxman was known for his willingness to call balls and strikes on all sides of the aisle, as well as hug across the chasm.

The complexity of individuals – the truth that heroes could commit bad acts and that villains could at times be redeemed – was seared into Foxman from childhood.

Foxman was born in Poland in 1940 and at 2 years old was left in the care of his Roman Catholic nanny in Vilnius, Lithuania, as his parents sought to escape the Germans. His nanny was his fierce protector and insulated him from the depredations of Nazis and their enablers, baptizing him and teaching him to handily hurl anti-Jewish epithets to fit in.

When his parents returned after the war, she would not give him up: It took bitter encounters in courtrooms to restore him to his family, and to the Jewish people.

Yet he could never hate her, he would often say later in life. “She risked her life,” he told the New York Times in 1991. “She saved my life.”
In 1950, four years after besting his nanny in the courts, Foxman’s parents took him with them to New York. There he attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush followed by the City College of New York and New York University Law School.

Foxman applied his exacting standards to himself, telling JTA in the same 2007 interview that he was haunted by the mistakes he had made, in one case lacerating a 60 Minutes segment on Jerusalem only to find out the report’s criticism of the Israeli police’s use of excessive force in confronting rioters in 1990 on the Temple Mount Israel was correct. (He apologized to producer Don Hewitt and reporter Mike Wallace, and Hewitt replied, “Are you for real?”)

He also told JTA in the same interview that he anguished over one of his most controversial decisions — his refusal to describe the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915 as a “genocide” — especially given the backlash his stance earned him from Jewish allies of the Armenian community.

Foxman’s reflex had been typical: defer to the Jewish community most vulnerable in a controversy, in this case the Turkish Jewish community, which feared retaliation. It was a decision that he also took at a time Turkey was one of Israel’s closest regional allies and heavily pressured Israel to oppose any U.S. efforts to recognize the killings as genocide. But Foxman acknowledged in retrospect that he had caused others pain.

“To me it was very clear, there are moral imperatives here — the moral imperative to feel somebody else’s pain, to recognize their anguish, and the moral imperative which is the safety and the security of the Jewish community,” he said.

Once Foxman had enough of someone, he truly had enough — and his sharp wit would emerge.

“My answer would be ‘Thanks but no thanks,”’ Foxman told Reuters in 2004 when Gibson said he was contemplating a film about the Maccabees, the Jewish warrior class whose stunning victory over Greek colonists is the basis of the Hanukkah holiday. “The last thing we need in Jewish history is to convert our history into a Western. In his hands we may wind up losing.”

He came across at times as a curmudgeon. Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet, a book he coauthored in 2013, tanked, and he told a JTA reporter he was not surprised: He was lambasting the social media machine that was shaping America, tilting at virtual windmills.

“The paradigms are changing,” he said multiple times in an interview about the book.

Thirteen years later, his distaste for the self-assuredness of tech leaders who reassured him all would be good seems prescient.

“We have been talking to the geniuses at Palo Alto,” Foxman said in the interview. “We have said to them, ‘thanks but no thanks. You developed a technology that has some wonderful things but also has unintended consequences.’ ”

When Foxman retired in 2015, antisemitism appeared by many measures to be at an all-time low in the United States. Foxman hesitated to take credit for any gains but said he had appreciated the chance to build a world animated by values very different from those that reigned during his childhood in Eastern Europe.

“I don’t take credit for it, but I’m part of the effort — not only of the American Jewish community, but of decent people in this country, to fight it,” Foxman told JTA at the time.

“To what extent did my experiences in the Shoah, the D.P. camps, my Catholicism have to do with that, I don’t know,” Foxman added. “I have been very lucky. To get up every morning and to have an opportunity to try to make a difference in both fighting hate and building love — wow. I have been very privileged.”

At a retirement party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in 2015, Foxman received accolades from Obama administration officials as well as from Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist with whom he had repeatedly clashed on Israel policy. (Friedman revealed that Foxman had been his counselor at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, where a highlight each year was reenacting the Dreyfus Affair.)

The party also drew an appearance by Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chief who had faced Foxman’s wrath over the conspiracy musings of one-time Fox personality Beck. (Years later, Foxman would defend having awarded an honor to Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, even after Greenblatt said Murdoch was stoking hate with the network.)

Foxman was gregarious, surprising interlocutors by ending official meetings with a hug, and referring to Jewish media reporters as “tattele,” Yiddish for “good boy.”

“Within minutes of our first phone call I felt like family,” United Nations envoy Samantha Power said at the Waldorf-Astoria sendoff, describing their first interaction in Obama’s first term, when she was on the National Security Council. “We were yelling, interrupting one another and swearing. I think I almost ended this first phone call saying, ‘Love you.’”

Nicole Mutchnik, chair of the ADL’s board, referred to Foxman’s famous warmth in a statement mourning his death.

“Abe Foxman helped build the modern liberal era of America. He was recognized across the globe as a great leader and passionate advocate for tolerance, a voice of the generation rebuilding in the shadow of the Shoah, and longtime advisor to American presidents and world leaders,” she said. “To those of us who knew him, Abe was a warm friend, advisor, spirited antagonist and hugger – all over lunch.”

In 2020, five years after retiring from the ADL, Foxman did what once was unthinkable to him. He endorsed a presidential candidate, Joe Biden. He was appalled by what he saw as President Donald Trump’s flirtations with bigotry and broadsides against democracy, the system that kept the United States from living the nightmare his parents had endured.

He also did what he had for a lifetime been reluctant to do: invoke the Nazi era as a warning signal.

“Germany did have institutions and they did have democracy and it did fall apart so, yeah, it’s not Germany, and it’s not Nazism, but our antennas are quivering,” Foxman told JTA weeks before the election.

Foxman is survived by his wife Golda; his daughter Michelle and his son Ariel; and four grandchildren.

 The scion of Yiddish theater and luminary of contemporary classical music had been diagnosed with a recurrence of brain cancer, and he knew his days were numbered.

 “We all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap,”” he said on his website after conducting Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with the San Francisco Symphony, one of several orchestras he led during his storied career. He signed off: “Life is precious.”

 Thomas died Wednesday, April 22 at his home in San Francisco, four days short of the one-year anniversary of that concert. He was 81.

 Among the many paying tribute to Thomas were those whose appreciation stretched back through his long career to his family roots in the thriving Yiddish theater scene of early 20th-century America.

 “The grandson of Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashevsky, Michael was born and raised in Los Angeles and made incalculable contributions, not only to the music world, but through performances, recordings and curation documenting his grandparents’ musical legacy,” writes UCLA’s Milken Archive of Jewish Music. “May his memory be a blessing.”

 Born in 1944 in Los Angeles, Thomas showed both promise in and devotion to classical music from an early age. After graduating from the University of Southern California, he conducted a wide range of symphonies around the world, including in Israel, and became known as an ambassador for classical music to the masses.

 He grew most associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he became assistant conductor in 1968, the San Francisco Symphony, and the New World Symphony in Miami, which he launched in 1987, with the help of the Israeli businessman Ted Arison, to aid young musicians.

 Thomas’ career suffered a setback after he was arrested in 1978 and charged with carrying drugs into the country from London.

 “People found out I was not the model of a nice Jewish boy,” he told the New York Times Magazine in 1995. “The event pushed me from wunderkind to desperado. It hurt, and I probably did not get some jobs I might have gotten, but hurt is important and instructive for a musician.”

 Despite the incident, Thomas continued touring and racking up roles, as well as recording albums. He earned 11 Grammys for recordings of orchestras he conducted.

 During his career, Tilson Thomas embraced his Jewish roots and identity through a diverse array of compositions including From the Diary of Anne Frank, commissioned in 1969 by UNICEF for the actress Audrey Hepburn.

 In 2018, he composed and conducted Grace, an 80th-birthday tribute to his mentor and colleague, Leonard Bernstein, another Jewish wunderkind to whom he was often compared. He conducted the narrated piece with the BSO, at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts.

 Thomas’ most well-known project with Jewish themes is The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. It’s an homage to his immigrant grandparents, Boris and Bessie, who, in the early years of the 20th century became trailblazing performers and producers of Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side.

 “My grandparents became megastars, in their new country. The Yiddish theatre was central to their lives,” Tilson Thomas wrote. The Thomashefskys, performed internationally, expressed Tilson Thomas’s pride in his Jewish roots, according to Joshua Jacobson, founder and artistic director of Zamir Chorale of Boston and a scholar of Jewish music.

 “He wasn’t hiding the fact that he is Jewish. In fact, he was doing programs about it,” Jacobson says.

 Thomas was preceded in death by his husband Joshua Robison, whom he met in a middle school orchestra program. The two became a couple in 1976 and were married in 2014. Robison died in February after a fall. He is also survived by his sister and nieces and nephews, according to a statement from his family.

 Goldschmied, who died April 5 at 82, following a battle with cancer in a hospital in Castelfranco Veneto, Italy, credited himself with founding or developing at least 50 brands, including Diesel, AG, Replay, Gap 1969, A Golde, and Goldsign.

 He was just an infant in 1944 when his Italian Jewish father was arrested by the Nazis.

 Goldschmied’s mother, Sofia, was in hiding with his sister at the time of his birth on Nov. 29, 1943, in Vico Canavese, Italy. The Nazis had invaded Italy just months earlier.

 His father, Livio, had joined the Italian resistance after the Nazis took over. When he tried to visit his wife, daughter, and newborn son, he was apprehended en route. One of six people with his last name deported by the Nazis via Milan’s central station, he was ultimately sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed several months later.

 According to a testimony made by a survivor to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust center, Livio was denounced by a midwife and received permission to visit his son briefly after his arrest. The testimony, which cannot be independently verified, said he had rejected an offer to move to the United States to work with the physicist Enrico Fermi because he would not have been able to bring his family, and had also declined an opportunity to escape from the train that took him to Auschwitz.

 Following the war, Goldschmied moved with his mother to Trieste. He later spent a stint pursuing skiing in the 1960s in Cortina, the ski resort in the Southern Alps.

 He did not speak readily about his family’s Holocaust history, and unlike his sister, he did not connect with his Jewish heritage. Diana was responsible for installing Stolpersteine, small memorials embedded in sidewalks documenting the Jews who lived at that address before the Holocaust, to commemorate their family members who were murdered.

 “Like my father, my brother was a man of great intelligence and extraordinary intuition,” Diana told the Italian-Jewish news outlet Moked. “However, he did not want to talk about our family history. I think memory was working inside him, though.”

 Goldschmied got his start in fashion in the 1970s, when he launched his shop, King’s Shop, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and started a denim line, Daily Blue.

 “That first production was going to a fabric store in my hometown, buying crazy fabrics for a very high price and going through manufacturing with my tailor,” Goldschmied told Women’s Wear Daily in 2023. “The product was extremely expensive, and in some way, I created a premium denim by accident.”

 In 1981, Goldschmied went on to found the Genius Group, a collective that backed emerging labels like Diesel, Replay, and Goldie.

 Among Goldschmied’s innovations throughout his career were the development of the stonewash technique, experimenting with Tencel fibers, creating super-stretch denim and pioneering sustainable production methods as early as the 1990s.

 “He was the architect of a global staple,” Mariette Hoitink, the co-founder of House of Denim, told Women’s Wear Daily. “Adriano didn’t just design jeans; he orchestrated the greatest transformation in the history of apparel. He was the singular force who elevated denim from rugged workwear into a global fashion staple.”

 Goldschmied is survived by his wife, Michela; his daughters Sara, Marta, and Glenda; two grandchildren; and his sister.

 “Adriano and I led very separate lives,” Diana told Moked. “I rediscovered my Jewish identity. He took a different path, but everyone carries the past within them.”

 Why should we, as Americans commemorate Yom HaZikaron?  We have our own Memorial Day and few of us have relatives that served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), let alone perished while in service.

 Yom HaZikaron is observed the day before the Israeli Independence Day.  In Israel it is a big deal, as almost everyone in the country served in the IDF and most also know or are related to someone who died in service of Israel.  The observation is quite stark and moving. The day starts with a one-minute siren at 8 pm, with a two-minute siren at 11 am, the following day. Drivers stop their cars on the road, wherever they are, to show reverence.  Public entertainment is closed, flags are at half-mast, and memorial services are held, with the main ceremony at Mount Herzl, the Israeli equivalent to Arlington Cemetery. The atmosphere is a deeply somber National Day of Mourning.

 This last December, Yom HaZikaron was brought home to Tidewater, with the passing of one of our own.  Just two days before his discharge from the IDF, Sargent Ari Goldberg z”l was tragically killed in an accident.  

 Ari was born while I was stationed in San Diego, California, with my wife Chava and two young children.  He was the middle child between Peter, Leah, Zev, and Zipporah. Ari grew up in Virginia, our Navy family moving to Tidewater when he was 10 years old.  He attended Toras Chaim Day School in Portsmouth, Blair Middle School for one year, and Maury High School, graduating class of 2020.  While attending Maury, he also attended Tidewater Tech where he earned certification in carpentry. Always industrious, he received his welding certificate from Tidewater Community College. A true son of Tidewater.  

 In 2022, Sargent Ari Goldberg z”l went to Israel for a year at Mechinat Ruach HaNegev. He arrived in Israel with a desire to connect with the Jewish people’s homeland and then fell deeply in love with all that Israel stood for.  During that year, he chose to make Aliyah and move to Dimona – a city that embraced him as their very own.  Following October 7, Sargent Ari Goldberg z”l saw his duty and enlisted in the IDF as a combat soldier in the Israeli Combat Engineering Corps, as missing out on the action in defense of the Jewish people and homeland was not an option for him.  He served multiple tours in Lebanon and Gaza as his unit’s designated marksman.  In fact, he was responsible for blowing up many of the tunnels, buildings, and private homes of terrorists from which Hamas and Hezbolah conducted their terror operations.

 The best description of Ari comes from his adopted Israeli family, the Fischs: “A creative and original soul who was always learning, always searching, and always pushing his own limits. He loved bringing people together, hosting friends, and preparing food and drinks with his own hands. His door was always open and his smile was always wide. Ari loved people deeply. He was warm, generous, and full of life, always welcoming others and ready to help anyone who needed it. He believed with all his heart in friendship, community, and caring for those around him, and he lived his life in a way that made everyone who met him feel at home.”  This was echoed by his family, friends, and fellow soldiers.

 Ari was also an inspiration to his family, with his younger brother Zev enlisting in the IDF and his younger sister Zipporah joining the US Navy.  His older brother Peter also served a tour in the US Air Force.

 Ari passed away on December 30, 2025, during Asara B’Tevet, Fast of 10th Tevet, commemorating the siege of Jerusalem. He was laid to rest in Soldiers Cemetery in Dimona, the city he loved.  The impact of his loss was felt throughout all of Israel.  We received calls from President Isaac Herzog and Ambassador Mike Huckabee.  Members of the Israeli Cabinet and Knesset came to Dimona to pay a shivah call.  The Chief Rabbi and Mayor of Dimona were keynote speakers at Sargent Ari Goldberg z”l’s funeral – all calling Ari a hero of Israel.

 Sargent Ari Goldberg z”l, a boy from Tidewater, truly cast a giant shadow.

 In Ari’s memory, his family, his adopted Israeli family and friends, and fellow soldiers are building a home in Dimona for Lone Soldiers (American and foreign soldiers fighting for Israel).  It will be a place where they can rest, feel they belong, host friends, and experience real moments of home, family, and community, just like Ari did for others.  Ari told his brother that he dreamed of buying a bigger house with more rooms so he could host more people.  We are committed to making his dream come true.  To create a place where the warmth and belonging that Ari shared with everyone around him will be felt.

The home will be called “Lev Ari,” the “Heart of Ari,” or “Heart of a lion” which Ari also had, in memory of the brave soldier Sargent Ari Malachi Goldberg, z”l. 

 One Home. One Heart. One Family.

Reba Karp held the distinction of sitting in the editor’s chair at United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, editing this, and other publications, longer than anyone else. Reba passed away on March 17 after providing this community with more than three decades worth of newspapers – an enduring archive of life in Jewish Tidewater – until her retirement in 2004.

Reba was as creative and talented as she was driven and determined to do more – producing Renewal, a quarterly magazine and To Life, a book featuring testimonials of area Holocaust survivors, all while publishing paper after paper. She also found time to write her own books – novels and historical volumes.

Working for the Jewish community was personal for Reba. She travelled to Israel several times and took various other trips to Jewish sites throughout the world.  While not religious, she was committed to Israel, to calling out antisemitism, and to preserving the messages of the Holocaust and its survivors, especially those in Tidewater. 

“Her leadership made sure that antisemitism was fought and the diverse aspects of Judaism were heightened and celebrated,” recalls Harry Graber, former executive vice president of United Jewish Federation of Tidewater.  

 “Reba was a robust and gifted professional whose leadership while editor was creative, visionary, and diligent,” he says.

Reba annually entered and won Press competitions, both with Virginia Press Women and the American Jewish Press Association. 

“Reba was one of a kind,” muses her old colleague and long-time friend Betsy Karotkin.

To call Reba, “one of a kind” is a lovely understatement.  Until just a couple of years ago, Reba drove a Corvette, with her VET GAL license plate moving to each new model she purchased. At the same time, she wore flowy dresses, and jewelry made from crystals and geodes. She spoke about her dreams and their meanings and predictions, along with the teachings of Edgar Caysee, the clairvoyant.

When I began my turn in Reba’s chair, she offered up lots of advice. Lots. And lots.  In fact, she called with more just several months ago.  Her suggestions usually made good sense, and plenty of them I follow to this day. 

 Along with her advice, Reba also ranted – as she did in our last call. She was funny, feisty, intelligent, foul-mouthed, and absolute in her convictions. The combination made for a fun conversation or interesting lunch. . .though she was very particular about choosing a restaurant.

 I’m still sitting in Reba’s chair, and the desk drawers still house her things. Some may call me crazy for not replacing the chair or not tossing her notes, but it’s really been out of respect for the extraordinary editor, and for the past 21 years, editor emeritus, that Reba was.    

 At her retirement, the late Hal Sacks, who was the paper’s book review editor and long-time friend of Reba’s wrote: 

Ode to the Queen

Here’s to Reba whose heavenly muse

Gave us three decades of the Jewish News;

Deadlines would beckon, arrive with a whoosh,

Reba delivered with a little shmoosh;

As we from this fair eve in September

Your great works will ere remember.

Reba made certain Jewish Tidewater will always remember.