Lenhoff, Howard

Howard Maer Lenhoff was born in 1929 in North Adams, Massachusetts to Charles and Goldie Rubin Lenhoff. He received his undergraduate degree from Coe College in 1950 and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1955. By 1970 Lenhoff was a professor of biology at University of California Irvine (UCI), where he would remain for the next three decades, residing in Costa Mesa, California. Between 1968 and 1974, Lenhoff spent time in Israel as a visiting fellow and professor at the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University and Technion Israel Institute of Technology. In the early 1970s he co-founded the UCI Judaic studies program, and he was involved in the Hillel Advisory Council of Orange County, the Jewish Federation Council of Orange County, State of Israel Bonds, American Professors for Peace in the Middle East and United Jewish Appeal.

Howard Lenhoff’s interest in Ethiopian Jews began in Israel in the spring of 1974, when he met Rahamim Elazar, an Ethiopian Jewish student who had recently immigrated to Israel. Following that meeting, Lenhoff became active in the American Association for American Jews, which was also incorporated that same year as a non-profit merger of the former American Pro-Falasha Committee and the Friends of Beta-Israel (Falasha) Community in Ethiopia. Lenhoff served as western regional director and national vice president while Graenum Berger was president. Lenhoff was then elected president in September 1978 and held the position until his resignation in July 1982.

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