By ISI LEIBLER
11/30/2011 22:33
I recently had the fascinating experience of attending the 114th national anniversary dinner of the Zionist Organization of America in New York. Close to 800 participants (including 100 student activists) from throughout the US gathered at New York City’s Hyatt Hotel to pay tribute to ZOA leader Morton Klein and to participate in award ceremonies for charismatic and controversial author and TV personality Glenn Beck, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota).
Founded in 1897, ZOA is the oldest American Zionist organization. It has been headed by leaders of the caliber of Chief Justice Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Louis Lipkes, and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. In its heyday it was the most influential American lobbying group promoting the creation of a Jewish state and the key global Zionist fund-raising agency.
After the establishment of Israel, like most Zionist organizations, ZOA descended into rapid decline. After hovering for many years on the edge of bankruptcy, it was revived in the 1990s by Morton Klein, a child of Holocaust survivors who had served as an economist in the Nixon and Carter administrations and also worked closely as a biostatistician at the UCLA School of Public Health with Nobel laureate Linius Pauling.
Klein initially assumed the role of ZOA president without remuneration and invested much of his own personal savings into the ailing organization.
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=247661
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