Phil Blazer, creator and host of award-winning Jewish radio and television programs and pro-Israel activist, died Aug. 25 in Burbank. He was 76.
He was president of Blazer Communications and publisher of the national newspaper Israel Today.
Blazer was born on Feb. 12, 1944, in St. Paul, Minn., to David and Bernice Blazer. Disc jockey Wolfman Jack helped launch the broadcast career of Blazer, then 21, when the legendary DJ gave him a chance to host a show about Jewish culture and music at KULX in Minneapolis.
Blazer launched his Jewish multimedia group with his “Jewish Soul” radio program in 1965.
In 1973, Blazer urged his radio listeners to cut up their Standard Oil credit cards to protest the oil giant’s anti-Israel stance. Thousands mailed him enough cards to stuff numerous trash bags, which Blazer deposited at the company’s headquarters. The stunt made “The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite.”
The television show “Jewish Life With Phil Blazer” debuted in 1977.
In 1978, Blazer organized counter-protesters at a neo-Nazi march in Skokie, Ill., a heavily Jewish neighborhood in suburban Chicago, and lobbied legislators to include Holocaust education in schools. Before the fall of communism, Blazer helped a rabbi to smuggle a Torah into Leningrad despite the scrutiny of the KGB.
In 1985, Blazer appealed to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to rescue 1,000 Ethiopian Jews starving in Sudanese refugee camps after fleeing a genocidal dictator amid one of the worst famines of the 20th century. Blazer brokered a bipartisan appeal to President Ronald Reagan’s administration. Within 38 hours, all 100 senators had signed a letter urging a U.S. airlift. The secret mission was carried out by the CIA and U.S. Air Force on March 22, 1985.
Blazer organized celebrity visits to Israel, acting as an informal tour guide to Oscar-winners Ben Kingsley and Elizabeth Taylor; Oscar-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda and then-husband Tom Hayden, a California state senator and author; singer-dancer-actor Sammy Davis Jr.; and Emmy-winning actor Peter Strauss.
In 2006, Blazer launched Jewish Life Television Network (JLTV), which now reaches nearly 50 million homes in North America. He produced more than 2,000 TV programs, making him one of the industry’s most prolific TV producers. Blazer Communications also produced the International Jewish Film Festival.
The long-running “Main Street With Phil Blazer,” airing on JLTV, aired in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.
Former United States Congressman Henry Waxman, who became acquainted with Blazer while serving in Washington, D.C., said, “He made a difference in lives of people he didn’t know, whether they were Ethiopian Jews, Russian Soviet Jews, Israelis, or people here in the United States who were standing up against anti-Semitism.”
Waxman added, “And he didn’t look at these tasks as overwhelming. He saw them as important issues that he wanted to be involved in, to see change and to make that difference that was so important. There are so many people who don’t know about him, and may never know about him, but who owe him a great deal of gratitude for all the work he has done.”
Blazer is survived by his wife, Kathy; daughter Alyssa (Charles) Peretz; sons Mark (Tracy), Adam and David; 6 grandchildren; and sisters Candace (Robert) Fagan and Glorianne (Richard) Letterman.
A family service is planned for Aug. 27 and a memorial minyan will be held on Zoom at 7 p.m. from Aug. 27-Sept. 1, each night except Friday.
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