Mendel N. Fisher, honorary secretary and consultant of the Jewish National Fund of America, died yesterday after a long illness. He was 76 years old. He was also an honorary vice-president and member of the National Executive of the Zionist Organization of America, and a member of the Zionist Actions Committee, and also served on the National Executive Board of Bnai Zion.
He began his association with the JNF in the 1920s and served as its executive director for more than 25 years. During his leadership of the JNF, he travelled to hundreds of Jewish communities in all parts of the nation addressing them in support of the JNF program for the redemption and reclamation of the land of what was first Palestine, and later Israel. In Israel, he is known for the Mendel N. Fisher Student House at Ein Hod, an artist’s colony near Haifa, and for the Minnette Fisher School of Ceramics in the same settlement, named in memory of his first wife.
Mr. Fisher, who was born in 1898 in Russia, migrated with his family to Boston in his early youth. He attended Boston University and Harvard, and worked first as a journalist and in social service. He contributed widely to the Anglo-Jewish press, and for several years was a correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He was a familiar figure at most of the World Zionist Congresses held both in Israel and in Europe. Funeral services will be held Thursday at Gutterman’s Chapel.
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.
