Funderal services were held yesterday at Temple Emanu-EI here for Ira Guilden, a major supporter of Israel’s economic and cultural development, who died Sunday from a heart attack which occurred while visiting a friend in Manhattan, where Guilden also lived. An investment banker, he was 88.
Guilden was a founder and past president of the Israel Bond Organization. Since 1973 he had been chairman of the organization’s board of directors. He was founder and post president of Boys Town Jerusalem and chairman of Keren-Or, a charitable agency for blind children in Israel and the United States.
Guilden was active for many years in the American Jewish Congress, having served as chairman of its commission on international affairs. He also was active in the Development Corporation for Israel, and the National Council of the Foundation for the Jewish National Fund.
He served as a host at a 1971 dinner for then Premier Golda Meir and led 19,000 people in a 1973 memorial in Madison Square Garden for David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Premier.
Locally, Guilden served the Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Belfer Graduate School of Science of Yeshiva University of New York.
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