(JTA) — Alan Pollack, a leading activist for Israel, has died.

Pollack died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment on April 18. He was 77.

He was a leading Zionist activist from the 1960s to the 1980s, serving as president of the Labor Zionist Alliance and as a member of the World Zionist Organization Executive and the Jewish Agency Board of Governors. Pollack lived in Israel during part of the 1970s and ’80s.

He also supported the Jewish National Fund, Israel Bonds and the Soviet Jewry movement, according to The New York Jewish Week.

Pollack joined the JTA board in 1979.

Pollack, who was an art collector, taught Russian history at Columbia University, retiring a decade ago.

In 1967 he helped found American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, an organization that is no longer in existence.