Sylvia Hassenfeld

Sylvia Hassenfeld, born Sylvia Grace Kay in Philadelphia in 1920, was described by one biographer as one of the most significant leaders of twentieth-century American Jewry. From 1988 to 1992 she was the first woman president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In that office she created the International Development Program, which sent charter flights of injured survivors of the 1988 Armenian earthquake to Israel — the first time in the JDC's history that it offered crisis aid to non-Jews. She oversaw the organisation's return to the former Soviet Union as it collapsed, the rescue from besieged Sarajevo of Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Jews alike, and, in May 1991, Operation Solomon, which airlifted more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in thirty-six hours. She had chaired the women's division of the United Jewish Appeal, was vice-chair of the Jerusalem Foundation, sat on the boards of the Jewish Agency, the Israel Museum and Brandeis University, and led the Hassenfeld Foundation. Her husband Merrill and her sons Stephen and Alan each ran Hasbro; the three of them are in this directory too.