Aviad Yaffe, the Director General of the Jewish Agency, died of a heart attack Thursday. He was 54. He was appointed to the post earlier this year succeeding Moshe Rivlin who, after 11 years in the job, was named world chairman of the Jewish National Fund. Yaffe suffered a major heart attack last year, but Jewish Agency Board of Governors Chairman Max Fisher, in announcing Yaffe’s appointment, said he had seen Yaffe’s medical record and was advised by experts that he would be fit to take on the work.
Yaffe was born in Rehovot and brought up in Jerusalem. He fought in the pre-State Haganah and then entered the diplomatic service. From 1958 to 1962 he was Consul General in New York City. A close confidant of Premier Levi Eshkol, he served as director of the Premier’s bureau from 1965 to when Eshkol died.
An accomplished fund-raiser with world-wide connections, Yaffe next went to work for Pinhas Sapir as manager of the “Sapir Fund” which is responsible for many educational and welfare projects in Israel. In 1972, Yaffe entered the Knesset and quickly gained respect and popularity there, becoming, under the Rabin government, faction whip of the Labor Alignment.
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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.
