Not long after he took over as national director of the Anti Defamation League, Abraham Foxman was asked to fly to Geneva and head off an international crisis. It set the tone for what's happened since.June 1990. Nelson Mandela, newly released after 27 years in a South African prison, was headed to New York for an expected hero's welcome. A group ofJewish militants planned a rally, protesting Mandela's links to Moammar Khadafy and Yasir Arafat. Fearing a black Jewish flare up, civil rights leaders convinced a Jewish delegation to meet Mandela en route and hear him out. Some Jews warned, though, that the mission wouldn't help, as it consisted entirely of stock liberals.

Just before takeoff, Abe Foxman agreed to join the mission. A veteran ADL staffer, he had a reputation as a staunch opponent of racial pandering and an Israeli security hardliner. If he found Mandela kosher, the opposition would dissolve. Indeed, Mandela went on to a triumphal American reception that helped cement South Africa's peaceful transformation.

A decade later, it's hard to imagine the episode repeating itself the same way. Not that Foxman no longer shakes hands with former foes. No, he'saccepted apologies from Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson (for ananti Semitic song) and George W. Bush, for saying Jews can't enter heaven. Along the way, he's all but lost his hardline reputation. Lately Foxman is displaying his conciliatory side more and more. He's still a hardliner by temperament, particularly around Israel. But he seems increasingly concerned not just with how otherstreat Jews, but how Jews appear to treat others."If you want people to change their minds and hearts," he says, "We to have to be ready to accept it when they do change."

Last month he raised hackles by opposing isolation of Austria, after Joerg Haider's far right Freedom Party entered the government. 'Three quarters of the Austrian people didn't vote for him," Foxman says. "What are we telling them?"

And last year he caused shock waves by speaking out against what he saw asoveremphasis on Holocaust restitution. If things continued, he said, "thelast Holocaust soundbite of the 20th century could be about money. "Attitudes like that infuriate Foxman's onetime admirers on the fight. One militant group has a Web site called "Foxman's Follies," detailing the treasons of "Dishonest Abe." He's repeatedly attacked by supporters ofJonathan Pollard, the American Jew imprisoned for spying for Israel. Foxman refuses to lobby forPollard's release, insisting there's "no evidence that anti Semitism played arole" in Pollard's draconian life sentence. Some critics say Foxman has been"bought by the CIA."

Foxman says he's used to being attacked. Louis Farrakhan, David Duke andMatthew Hale of the World Church of the Creator routinely single him out as Public Enemy No. 1. Militia Web sites and chat groups brim with curses and threats. "I guess you can measure the seriousness and effectiveness of ADL by how much we're attacked," he says.

Attacks by fellow Jews are something else. "They hurt," Foxman says. "I would like to think we're a little different, but I guess we're not."After Yitzchak Rabin's assassination in 1995, Foxman helped push for a code of civility among Jewish groups. It was adopted in 1996 by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. So far it's been invoked once against Foxman. He had lashed out in 1998 against a rightist who was accusing the ADL of softness on Israel. Foxman was forced to apologize.

Born in Warsaw in 1940, Foxman was taken by his nanny and baptized at age 1,after his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His parents, leaders in VladimirJabotinsky's Zionist Revisionist movement, survived the war and retrieved him afterward by court order. In 1950 they moved to New York, where Abe attended a series of Orthodox day schools and joined a series of Zionist youth groups the right wing Betar, then the left wing Habonim, then the apolitical Young Judaea. "I wasn't bothered by the severities of the ideology," he recalls. He went to work for ADL in 1965, after receiving a law degree from New York University. His first case was suing Aramco, Company. A Jewish job applicant had been warned by thejob interviewer that he wouldn't fit in at Aramco.Ironically, Foxman recalls,"he was trying to be nice to him. But the youngman felt it was discrimition and came to ADL."Blunt speaking and unreflective, Foxmantimly tries to articulate a seamless philosophy. There are common threads, though. They start with support for Israel and opposition toanti Semitism. They'reframed by a rare pragmatism. He's always ready for a fight. He's usually ready to patch things up.

This month Foxman was quick to reject the pope's "apology" for Church sins,saying it should have mentioned the Holocaust. Later he reminded reporters that John Paul II had an "unparelled" record on Catholic Jewish relations. He's a firm supporter of the Israeli Palestinian peace process, reversingADLs staunchly pro Likud policies during the 1980s. Yet he defends Israel's West Bank settlements against Arab American efforts at economic boycott.

Consistent or not, his formulas have vast appeal. In 13 yearsas ADLs national director, he's turned the league, traditionally the biggest Jewish defense agency, into a colossus dwarfing every other Jewish advocacy group. Its $50 million budget is biggerthan the budgets of AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, theWorld Jewish Congress and the Sinion Wiesenthal Center combined. It runs diversity training for the CIA and the German government. Its intelligence on extremists often rivals the FBI's. Foxman himself has emerged as one of the only figures who can speak authoritatively for American Jewry and be sure that others Jewish and non Jewish are listening. He's one of just a handful of Jewish leadersrecognizable outside their own office suites.

That unique stature was thrown into sharp relief this week, as Foxman's ADLagreed to honor him with an unusual fundraising dinner, featuring Henry Kissinger as master of ceremonies and an all star speakers' list including CIA director, George Tenet and sex guru Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Celebrities aren't unusual at fancy Jewish dinners, of course. What's almost unheard of is a Jewish organization throwing a fancy dinner to honor one of its own employees."I'm a product of the worst and the best," he says. "The worst being anti Semitism at its nadir, which killed people, and the best being a woman who risked her life to save me."