Bernice S. Tannenbaum, a former president of Hadassah who played a leading role in the fight against a United Nations resolution in the 1980s equating Zionism with racism, died on April 6 at her home in Manhattan. She was 101.

Her death was confirmed by her granddaughter Ellen Salpeter.

Ms. Tannenbaum expanded Hadassah, also known as the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, by creating Hadassah International and by enlisting men as members, to focus mostly on the Hadassah Medical Organization.

In “It Takes a Dream: The Story of Hadassah” (1997), Marlin Levin wrote that Ms. Tannenbaum led a five-member delegation that met with President Ronald Reagan for 40 minutes over tea, coffee and cookies at the White House on Aug. 16, 1984, to lobby against the resolution linking Zionism and racism.

The United Nations adopted the resolution, defining Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” in 1975. A similar statement was included in an annex to a report to be considered at the final conference of the United Nations Decade for Women in 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya.