Ralph I. Goldman, a former leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), died in Jerusalem on Tuesday aged 100.
Between 1976 and 1988, Goldman twice served as the JDC’s chief executive, and is credited for re-establishing JDC operations in the Soviet Union during the late 1970s.
Born in Ukraine in 1914, he moved to the United States as a small child, settling with his parents in Boston. A Zionist activist from an early age, he studied in Mandatory Palestine in the late 1930s. During the World War II, he served in the American army, assisting Jewish refugees in Germany. Following the war, Goldman served as an agent of the Hagana, procuring airplanes and ships for Jewish immigration from Europe and enlisting recruits for the pre-state defense force.
A close adviser of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Goldman became his personal representative in the nascent Jewish state’s consulate in New York, later heading a variety of Israeli initiatives in the United States.
Goldman’s son, David Ben-Rafael, who followed in his father’s footsteps by serving as an Israeli diplomat, was killed in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina.
In a death notice published in the ‘New York Times’ World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder and CEO Robert Singer called Goldman an “extraordinary leader” and said: “He had a lifelong commitment to serving the Jewish people. A proud Zionist, appointed by Ben Gurion as his liaison appointee to the American Jewish community, Ralph was deeply dedicated to the success of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and played a key role in its establishment during the war of independence. We will ever be inspired by his life's work. May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”
Goldman was laid to rest at the Har Hamenuhot Cemetery in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
