Leading Jewish and Christian theologians joined 500 other persons at funeral services here yesterday for Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the foremost educators and philosophers of Conservative Judaism, who died Friday at the age of 65. Dr. Heschel, who was professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for 27 years, was eulogized by his many disciples and colleagues who attended the funeral.
Referring to his deep concern for the victims of injustice and discrimination, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly, described Dr. Heschel as “a voice who spoke for the downtrodden and who felt their pain.” Rabbi Heschel was in recent years an outspoken critic of racism and the war in Vietnam, an ardent defender of the right of Soviet Jews and intensely concerned with the problems of ecumenism and the search for peace in the Middle East.
Dr. Heschel was born in Warsaw and educated in Berlin where he received his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1983. He came to the United States in 1940 and served as an instructor and later associate professor of Jewish philosophy and rabbinics at Hebrew Union College from 1940-45 and in 1945 joined the faculty of the JTS. He also served as visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa.
AUTHOR OF MORE THAN 20 BOOKS
He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research, a member of the board of directors of YIVO, a member of the publication committee of the Jewish Publication Society of America, and an honorary member of the Rabbinical Assembly.
Rabbi Heschel was the author of more than 20 books in which he formulated a Jewish theology related to the moral issues of the times. His best known work was published in two parts: “Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion” in 1951 and “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism” in 1955.
Among those attending Rabbi Heschel’s funeral were Mayor John V. Lindsay; the Rev. Christopher Mooney, president of Woodstock College, a Roman Catholic institution; Dr. Samuel Belkin, president of Yeshiva University; Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor emeritus of the JTS; Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; and Dr. J. Brooke Mosley, of the Union Theological Seminary, Elie Wiesel recited “God Follows Me Everywhere,” one of a group of Yiddish poems written by Rabbi Heschel as a young man in Warsaw.
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