James N. Rosenberg, a leader in the international, civic, legal, literary and artistic spheres, died today in White Plains Hospital, White Plains, at the age of 95. A private funeral will be held on a date to be set. Mr. Rosenberg, who was born in Monongahela City (now part of Pittsburgh), lived in Scarsdale, N.Y. Mr. Rosenberg had been honorary chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee since 1940 and chairman of the Commission on Human Rights of the National Conference of Christians and Jews since 1946. In 1924, with the support of Felix M. Warburg and Julius Rosenwald, he created the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (Agro-Joint), which transferred 300,000 Jews from Russian ghettos to the Crimea and materially aided 80,000 non-Jewish peasants. In 1929, Mr. Rosenberg joined with Louis Marshall, Dr. Cyrus Adler and Mr. Warburg and other Zionist and non-Zionist leaders in establishing the Jewish Agency for Palestine at a conference in Zurich. He prepared the resolution, which was unanimously adopted, calling for the safeguarding of the rights of all inhabitants of Palestine while improving Jewish life there. Mr. Rosenberg was president of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, formed after the 1938 conference at Evian, France, to aid escapees from Nazi Germany.
In 1947 Mr. Rosenberg served as president of the United States Committee for a Genocide Convention. An 1898 graduate of Columbia Law School, Mr. Rosenberg was one of the oldest members of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the New York State Bar Association. Among Mr. Rosenberg’s numerous honors were a doctorate in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College. Cincinnati (the Reform Seminary), a Doctorate Honor is Causa from the University of Santo Domingo, the honorary chairmanship of the JDC, the honorary chairmanship of the Council of National Art in Jewish Life of the American Jewish Congress and the honorary chairmanship of the Jewish Heritage Foundation. He was a member of the Westchester Reform Temple. He was the author of four books and the co-author of a fifth, and wrote numerous essays. A crusader for world peace, Mr. Rosenberg helped establish World Brotherhood, now the Council on World Tensions, in 1948, and in 1962 founded the Hammarskjold Forums of the New York City Bar Association. For these and other efforts on behalf of peace, he received the Distinguished Service Award of the State University College at Plattsburgh in 1965. In 1949, while chairman of the NCCJ Human Rights Commission, he called on Secretary of State Dean Acheson to protest the persecution by Hungarian communists of Jozef Cardinal Mindszenty.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
