Moshe Decter, Jewish activist, dies

Moshe Decter, an activist who organized the first U.S. conference on Soviet Jewry in 1963, died last week at age 85.Decter held several influential positions in organized Jewish life and campaigned tirelessly for Soviet Jewry both through his work and his articles. He was political editor of the Voice of America in the early 1950s and managing editor of the New Leader in the late 1950s, when he began writing and publishing articles about Soviet Jewry.He later served as executive secretary of the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews and director of research at the American Jewish Congress. In the 1980s, he was editor of the Near East Report and an adviser to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. In the 1990s, he was a project director at Israel Bonds.Decter died of congestive heart failure last week in Manhattan, according to his son Joshua.