Morton Klein

Early life and career

Klein is a child of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany. He is an economist who served in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter Administrations. He has served as a biostatistician at UCLA School of Public Health and the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif. He has been a lecturer in mathematics and statistics at Temple University.

Today, Klein is member of the International Board of Governors of the Ariel University Center of Samaria.

His father was a Satmar chasid, an Orthodox Rabbi with semicha from Moshe Teitelbaum. Klein said in a Jewish Press interview regarding his father that "In Europe he had a long beard and black hat and was a rosh yeshiva in his early 20s. But he disagreed with the Satmars on Israel. My father loved Israel, so obviously this was transmitted to me."

Zionist Organization of America

In 1993, while serving as the organization’s Philadelphia chapter president, Klein was elected national president.

The ZOA web site quotes the following from Klein's Encyclopaedia Judaica entry: "Klein revived a moribund Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in the 1990s and made it one of the most outspoken organizations on the American Jewish scene." After the Obama administration abstained from using its veto power to block United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which stated that Israeli Settlement in the West Bank is a 'flagrant' violation of international law, Klein called Obama "a Jew-hating antisemite.”

Klein has stated his belief that the U.S. should engage in religious profiling of Muslims. “In an era in which the vast majority of terrorism is committed by Muslims, in order to protect American citizens, we should adopt the same profiling policies as Israel and be more thorough in vetting Muslims,” he told the Forward. Klein said he would also support profiling of Jews under certain circumstances. “If most terror were committed by Jews I would support profiling Jews.”

In February 2012, the ZOA lost its tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service after it failed to file tax returns for three years. The ZOA regained its status in May 2013. Klein said it was a technical "glitch." During the years that the ZOA failed to file tax returns, The Forward reported that Klein's salary increased 38%. In 2014, Steven Goldberg, a Los Angeles attorney and national vice-president of the ZOA, launched a challenge to Klein's presidency, alleging that Klein was mismanaging the ZOA and personally profiting. Klein was later reelected president with 93% of the vote.

Personal

Klein has Tourette syndrome.