June Jacobs, who has died aged 88, had a wonderful facility for combining an interest in, and a commitment to, causes both inside and outside the Jewish community – not always an easy balancing act.

Through voluntary involvement in a variety of communal organisations she rapidly rose to take up leadership positions. Her activities included mobilising support for Jews in the Soviet Union, working for justice for Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East, defending the rights of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK, and working for equality for women throughout the world.

I first met June in the late 1970s when I had returned to the UK after a short trip to visit refuseniks in Leningrad. I missed the last train to my home in Leeds and, stranded with little money, a missing suitcase and no close contacts in London, I telephoned June to ask if I could come and wait in her house until I could continue my journey. A bout of flu meant that wait became three days under June’s care, while she rushed around attending to her myriad activities, always returning in time for my daily dose of paracetamol and chicken soup.

That unexpected time spent with June gave me the opportunity to enlist her support in developing the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, support which she maintained throughout her life, including by hosting our Black/Asian/Jewish breakfast group.

As a campaigner for social justice in Israel she helped to establish the New Israel Fund in the UK in 1992. A proponent of the importance of dialogue, she was an executive member of the initially clandestine Council for Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue, and was also foreign affairs spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews. In that role she raised both eyebrows and hackles within the Jewish community by meeting the UK representative to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Bassam Abu Sharif, in 1989. Subsequently she met the PLO leader Yasser Arafat through the International Centre for Peace in the Middle East, and was able to dismiss any criticism with the pragmatic argument that “it was just the right thing to do: how else can we attempt to bring peace if we don’t talk?”

Born in London to Louis Caller, a furniture maker, and his wife, Lily (nee Balkind), June was evacuated to the US as a young teenager during the second world war. After leaving Westonbirt school in Gloucestershire she married Basil Jacobs, a businessman then proprietor of an art gallery, in 1950 after they had met at Brady’s boys club in the East End of London, where they were both volunteers. Basil died in 1973.

June had a close and loving family, as well as a wide range of friends both in the UK and abroad. We all benefited from her kindness, her hospitality (particularly her legendary homemade cheesecake), her formidable intellect and her wicked sense of humour.

She is survived by her children, Nick, Keren and Robin, her brother Ian, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.