More than 1000 people filled the Central Synagogue today to attend the funeral services of Rose Halprin who died Sunday at the age of 82. People of all walks of Jewish and Zionist life came to pay their last respects to one of the outstanding and leading American Zionists. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, senior rabbi of Central Synagogue, and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, president of the American Jewish Congress, officiated at the services.
Among those offering eulogies was Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the World Zionist Organization Executive-American Section, who will be going to Israel to participate in the state funeral for Mrs. Halprin.
“Rose Halprin was petite in size but a giant in her moral convictions,” Mrs. Jacobson said. “She was a Zionist leader who not only was emotionally tied to the movement but was intellectually committed to its philosophy. She became a Zionist leader early in life in an era when it took conviction and understanding to be a Zionist.”
Continuing, Mrs. Jacobson said: “She did not believe in compromise but fought for her convictions with the courage of a lion….Once she became intellectually convinced of the rightness of a program or a goal, she fought for it heart and soul.”
After tracing Mrs. Halprin’s activities and contributions to the American and world Zionist movement and to the State of Israel, Mrs. Jacobson said Mrs. Halprin will be remembered for “the dignity and courage with which she faced her last illness–her gallantry and determination to keep a normal routine to the last. We will remember her strength of character–her life-time service to Hadassah, to the Zionist movement, to the Jewish people. We will remember her moral integrity, her passionate anger at injustice.”
MEMORIAL PROJECT ANNOUNCED
Tributes were also issued by scores of leaders of Jewish and Zionist organizations. In addition, Kalman Sultanik, executive vice-president of the World Confederation of United Zionists, announced that the establishment of a large memorial project to perpetuate the memory of Mrs. Halprin will be proposed at the forthcoming meeting of the Confederation’s leadership. The Confederation is a nonparty Zionist umbrella organization in this country whose major constituents are Hadassah, Bnai Zion and the American League for Israel.
Mrs. Halprin was its honorary life-president and was one of the original founders of the World Confederation of General Zionists in 1946 and a driving force behind the reorganization of the Confederation in 1958 as the world Zionist body espousing the platform of non-affiliation with political parties in Israel, Sultanik recalled. Mrs. Halprin was elected as co-chairman together with Dr. Israel Goldstein of the reorganized Confederation.
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