Lurie, head of the Jewish Museum San Francisco, presented the award at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.

In an acceptance speech, Burg said that while the Holocaust and subsequent building of the Jewish state were major forces binding Israel and world Jewry for the last half-century, the challenge of the new century will be to identify new links between the two.

"We are the single most important generation in the history of Judaism," he said. "We have a choice to be or not to be Jewish."

Lurie also received a special tribute — his oral history. The project of U.C. Berkeley's Bancroft Library, with JCEF funding, documents the JCF's history through the oral histories of its living past presidents and executives.