Hannah R. Stein, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women since 1959, died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital. She was 53 years old. Funeral services will be Friday at Riverside Chapel.
Miss Stein, who was born in Berlin and educated in England and Switzerland, had been national fund-raising director and assistant to the executive director of the Zionist Organization of America from 1953-59 and a member of its national executive council in 1960-62. She was a founder of Cherev L’et village in Israel.
Miss Stein’s interest in Israel’s welfare provided additional impetus to the funding and maintenance of the NCJW Center for Research in Education of the Disadvantaged at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the first permanent Israeli research institute to evaluate educational innovation and to participate in policy planning.
She first came to prominence as a young woman in 1943, when she was elected to a four-year term as president of the Zionist Youth of Great Britain. During her term she was responsible for the establishment of an agricultural settlement for Moroccan and East European youth in Palestine.
In addition to her many other activities, Miss Stein had been a member of the Secretariat of the World Confederation of General Zionists. a member of the executive council of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and a member of the national executive council of the Zionist Organization of America, In 1972, Miss Stein became the first woman elected to head the Social Service Division of the United Jewish Appeal drive.
She was member of the executive committee of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, a board member of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a life member of the National Council of Jewish Women, a member of Hadassah and active in numerous other organizations.
Rabbi Mordechai Kirshblum, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency’s immigration and absorption department was honored yesterday in jerusalem with life membership in the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel.
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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.
