c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Rabbi Moshe Sherer, a leading figure within Orthodox Judaism who for the past 35 years served as president of Agudath Israel of America, has died from complications of leukemia. He was 76.

Sherer was buried Monday (May 18) _ one day after his death in New York _ following a funeral service in Brooklyn’s Borough Park area that attracted an estimated 20,000 people. Among the mourners were New York Gov. George E. Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.”The rabbi was one of those figures who really transcends the leadership of a particular religious community,”said Pataki.”He was a wonderful leader of the Orthodox Jewish community, but more than that he was a spiritual and political leader for all of us in New York and in America.” Speaking at Agudath Israel’s annual dinner, held in New York just hours after Sherer’s death, Vice President Al Gore eulogized Sherer as”a remarkable force for the understanding and respect and growth of Orthodox Jewry over the past 50 years.” The presence of Gore at the dinner and that of Pataki and Giuliani at the funeral service attested to Sherer’s success in forging Agudath Israel into an influential political force advocating the religious and civil rights of Orthodox Judaism’s right-wing.

Agudath Israel, a struggling organization when Sherer took over the group’s leadership in 1963, today has”tens of thousands of members and supporters”nationwide, according to spokesman Avi Shafran. In addition to its political activism, Agudath Israel is also an educational organization and provides assistance to threatened Jewish communities worldwide.

A political activist in a community that generally concerned itself almost exclusively with religious scholarship and observance, Sherer was instrumental in gaining a hearing for Orthodox Jewish viewpoints in Congress and the White House.

Under his direction, Agudath Israel’s staunchly traditionalist positions often were in sharp contrast to the generally more liberal views expressed by much of the American Jewish establishment on such hot-button political issues as school vouchers, abortion and gay rights.

His fierce opposition to Reform, Conservative and other non-Orthodox movements within Judaism also put him conflict with the majority of the Jewish establishment. In this regard, Sherer spoke out frequently against non-Orthodox demands to gain official religious parity in Israel with that nation’s reigning Orthodoxy.

Sherer’s leadership of the U.S. branch of the international Agudath Israel movement coincided with a burst of growth within Orthodox Judaism, which had been all but written off following the devastation of its adherents in the Holocaust.

Although still accounting for less than 10 percent of America’s 5.9 million Jews, Orthodoxy has become generally more outwardly assertive in recent years, contributing to Sherer’s organizing successes.

At the same time, Agudath Israel under the Brooklyn-born Sherer remained equally committed to Jewish education. Last fall, some 70,000 Orthodox Jews nationwide participated in the Agudath Israel-sponsored”Siyum HaShas of Daf Yomi,”a religious service marking completion of nearly 7 1/2 years of daily study of the Talmud, Judaism’s authoritative body of law.”Despite all the prophecies of doom and gloom for the Orthodox community,”Sherer said in an interview at that time,”we are here, we are flourishing and we expect to keep growing.”

DEA END RIFKIN