Yehuda Rosenman Dead at 69

Funeral services were held Thursday for Yehuda Rosenman, an official of the American Jewish Committee, who died of brain cancer Tuesday at the age of 69. He was the director of the Department of Jewish Communal Affairs at the AJC from 1967 until last May.

Describing Rosenman’s leadership of what is regarded as one of the AJC’s most innovative programs, Theodore Ellenoff, president of the human relations organization, said that “his was a presence that illumined countless areas of American Jewish life.” Rosenman is credited with creating many significant national projects to improve the quality of Jewish life in America. One of these is the AJC’s William Petschek National Jewish Family Center, of which he was the coordinator since its founding in September 1979. The Center engages in research, organizes conferences and institutes, and provides training and other activities whose purpose it is to support the family in the United States.

Another is the AJC’s Academy for Jewish Studies Without Walls, launched in 1974, which enables those enrolled to pursue home study courses in various aspects of Jewish history, tradition, and culture.

Among other projects Rosenman initiated for the AJC were: an interdisciplinary colloquium on Jewish education and Jewish identity; a study on the effects of intermarriage; American-Israel educational programs on contemporary Jewish civilization; an annual seminar in Israel for American academicians; and a variety of publications on such subjects as concerns of Jewish youth, Israel-diaspora relations, Jewish day schools and discussion guides on issues of Jewish interest. In 1983, he initiated a series of publications and videotapes on Jewish perspectives on contemporary issues.

Born in Poland, Rosenman came to the United States in 1939. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pittsburgh in 1944, and a Master’s degree in social work there in 1946. Subsequently, he directed the training program for European students at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Thereafter, until he joined the American Jewish Committee, Rosenman was Consultant on Community Organization and Community Centers at the American Joint Distribution Committee’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. He also served as executive director of the Jewish Community Center of Baltimore, Md.