Morton Klein

Morton A. Klein is currently president of ZOA, The Zionist Organization of America.^[1]

ZOA

In 1993, while serving as the organization’s Philadelphia chapter president, he was elected national president.^[2]

The ZOA web site quotes the following from Klein's Encyclopaedia Judaica entry: "Klein revived a moribund Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in the 1990s and made it one of the most out-spoken organizations on the American Jewish scene." ^[3]

It has been noted that he has steered the organization "to the right".^[4][5]

Personal

He is a child of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany. He is an economist who served in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter Administrations. He has served as a biostatistician at UCLA School of Public Health and the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif. He has been a lecturer in mathematics and statistics at Temple University.^[6]

His father was a Satmar chasid, an Orthodox Rabbi with semicha (religious ordination) from Rabbi Teitelbaum.^[7] Mr. Klein said in a Jewish Press interview ^[8] regarding his father that "In Europe he had a long beard and black hat and was a rosh yeshiva in his early 20s. But he disagreed with the Satmars on Israel. My father loved Israel, so obviously this was transmitted to me."

Klein also suffers from Tourette syndrome.

External links

• The Zionist Organization of America - National President Morton klein

References

1. ^ http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/news_view.asp?newsID=834, which states in a footnote that "Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis."
2. ^ Popper, Nathaniel (2006-04-14). "ZOA Pressed by Former Officials Over Guard’s Pay – The Jewish Daily Forward". Forward.com. http://www.forward.com/articles/1227. Retrieved 2010-08-12. 
3. ^ "4819-ZOA Report FL08.p5" (PDF). http://www.zoa.org/media/user/documents/Publ/ZOAReportFall2008.pdf. Retrieved 2010-08-12. 
4. ^ he said in an interview here [1] "We're not right wing. Everybody else is just very far left."
5. ^ example: speech described here
6. ^ "National President Morton A. Klein". ZOA.org. 2010-12-14. http://www.zoa.org/content/klein.asp. Retrieved 2010-12-14. 
7. ^ "Morton Klein: Bibi Sent Wrong Message,Elliot Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter". Jewishpress.com. 2009-06-24. http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/39823. Retrieved 2010-08-12. 
8. ^ June 26, '09, p. 10

Persondata
Name	Klein, Morton
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Place of birth	Gunzberg, Germany
Date of death
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