Combining diplomacy with a centennial celebration, the American Jewish Committee played host on Nov. 2 to 85 foreign officials from 51 nations in a daylong presentation of its history.

From lunch at The Jewish Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to an evening cocktail party at its midtown headquarters, 80 AJC representatives — including five from New Jersey — shared their organization’s 100-year history of battling bigotry and fighting for human rights around the world.

Ilene Cowen of Convent Station, a past copresident of the Metro NJ AJC chapter, said she was “very impressed.” Seated at a lunch table beside Jurate Butkiene, wife of the Lithuanian consul general, Cowen said, “it couldn’t have been better for me. My father came from Lithuania.”

Although little was mentioned about Israel during the day, the diplomat’s wife said something “very interesting” to Cowen. “She said, ‘It’s not the Jews; it is Israel’ that bothered her. We talked about it honestly,” recalled Cowen. “It was a very interesting time.” Robert Cowen, who served with his wife as copresident, said the aim of such an event is to “build connections and bridges, and you never know when one of these guys might turn out to be a prime minister.”

Genie Reichman of South Orange said her contacts with foreign diplomats “would hopefully make America and American Jews look better to a lot of them. Jews are a part of America,” she said.

For much of the next hour, two speakers underscored that very point many times over.

David Harris, AJC’s executive director, presented a capsule history of his organization’s century of activism. It began “in response to attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe ,” said Harris. The first generation of AJC leaders said, “‘Wait a second. If we really want to defend the rights of Jews in Eastern Europe or elsewhere, shouldn’t we be fighting for universal human rights for all?’” That founding principle has underscored much of the AJC’s mission — through two world wars, the civil rights movement, starvation in Africa, and oppression of Jews and non-Jews alike in such places as the Soviet Union , said Harris.

Following him at the podium, former CBS News anchor Dan Rather narrated an archival video presentation of antiracist and pro-democratic media distributed by AJC over the course of decades, dating back before World War II. Quaint cartoons, comic books, radio broadcasts, and even a short film starring Frank Sinatra delighted the audience as Rather spoke of the organization’s ample recognition “of radio’s and television’s power to benefit society as consistently and effectively as has AJC from the 1930s to the present, fighting hate and anti-Semitism and opening doors throughout the community for all.”

Linda Kohl of Short Hills, president of AJC’s Metro NJ chapter, found the program “highly impressive, especially the video presentation, which told so much of our history.” Kim Pimley, an AJC member, called the event “the most important thing we can do as Jews, building relationships with other people of other faiths to ensure our survival.”

The foreign dignitaries also praised the gathering. “This is important for all those who are interested in history of the Jews all over the world,” said Mykola Kyrychenko, consul general of Ukraine. “Our history is closely connected with the history for Jewish people.” Basil Bryan, the Jamaican consul general, recognized a connection between “the dispersion of the Jewish people in parts of our Jamaican culture.” Citing his nation’s popular music, Bryan said lines from Psalm 137 were turned into a reggae song about “the waters of Babylon…where we remembered Zion.” “Some of what the Jewish people used as snippets of their tradition are also used in our Jamaican culture,” Bryan said. “We were both peoples in slavery and oppression who moved into a promised land.” After touring the museum’s Judaica collection, diplomats and AJC members boarded buses for a ride uptown to the Jewish Theological Seminary.