Shapiro, Judah Joseph, 1912-

Judah J. Shapiro (1912-1980)

Judah Joseph Shapiro was born in New York City on June 12, 1912. Throughout his life, Shapiro was a "leading Zionist organizer, theoretician and educator." 1 From 1954 to 1956, he was the director of the Department of Cultural and Educational Reconstruction of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. In 1956, he was appointed as the national director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations, a position he held until 1959. He had previously been associate national director of the foundations and had worked with the foundations at college campuses in New York and Boston from 1942 to 1948. From 1959 to 1965, he was executive officer and secretary of the board for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. In the spring on 1965, he was named as chairman of the Commission on Reorganization of the Zionist Movement in the United States, which led to the formation of the American Zionist Federation. From 1969 to 1976, he was a professor of contemporary Jewish thought at the Jewish Institute of Religion of Hebrew Union College. From 1971 to 1980, he wrote and broadcast the radio show Highlights and Background of the Jewish News, a program on Jewish affairs. The program was broadcast on the station WEVD, which was founded by the Socialist Party in honor of Eugene V. Debbs in 1927 and taken over by the Yiddish newspaper The Forward in 1932.

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