SILVERMAN, IRA

SILVERMAN, IRA (1945–1991), U.S. Jewish leader. Before his untimely death at the age of 46 from a parasite that he contracted when he visited China, Ira Silverman held some of the most important posts in American Jewish leadership. A native of Rockville Centre, New York, he was a graduate of Harvard University (B.A. 1966) with an M.A. in International Affairs from Princeton University (1968). Among the positions that Silverman held was the presidency of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1981–86). He was the first non-rabbi and as of 2006 the last to head the Seminary. He succeeded Ira Eisenstein, who had been the founding president and was to bring the institution from the generation of Mordecai Kaplan and his disciples to a new and younger generation. He was succeeded by Arthur Green, a distinguished scholar of Ḥasidism. From the RRC he went on to become the director of the 92nd Street Y (1986–88), the crown jewel of the Y system, which was seeking to reinvigorate the Judaic contact of its many programs. He then returned to the American Jewish Committee where he had previously served as national program director, this time as its executive vice president (1988–90), where he was expected to bring sought after stability to it leadership in the post-Burt Gold era of the Committee. Illness beset him after a visit to China and in 1990 it became clear that he could not carry on the demands of his office. He remained at the AJC and director of the Institute on Human Relations until his death. Earlier in his career he was the director of federal government relations of the Association of American Universities, a Washington correspondent for The Jerusalem Post and Yedioth Aharonoth, a Tel Aviv newspaper. He was also the first director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Planning and Research, which was founded by the Synagogue Council of America. To each of these positions Silverman brought a deep Jewish commitment, which expressed itself in a commitment to social justice and human rights, which was at the core of his Judaism and shaped by its values. (Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)