Funeral services were held Sunday for Rabbi I. Usher Kirshblum, spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens. He died last Saturday of heart failure while vacationing in Hollywood, Fla., He was 71 years old.
Kirshblum, who had been associated with the Jewish Center since 1946, was membership chairman of the Zionist Organization of America and a member of the Rabbinical Assembly of America in which he was a leading opponent of ordaining women as rabbis. He was also active in numerous Jewish communal and Zionist organizations.
Born in Bialystok, Poland, he came to the United States as a child. He was a graduate of Brooklyn College, studied at the Jewish Institute of Religion and was ordained a rabbi in 1944. In 1971, Kirshblum received an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
