Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Ruth Popkin, Ex-President of Hadassah and Jewish National Fund, Dies at 101

Ruth Popkin, who served as national president of Hadassah and the Jewish National Fund, has died.

Popkin died Friday at the age of 101.

She served as the 18th national president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, and was later named an honorary vice president of the organization. She also served as the national president of JNF from 1989 until 1993, and was a Century Council member.

Popkin also was a past member of the executive board of AIPAC, the cabinet of the American Zionist Movement, the board of directors of the United Israel Appeal and American Friends of Hebrew University. In 1987 she was the first woman elected as chair of the presidium and president of the World Zionist Congress.

The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in New York.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.