President Johnson Leads Notables at Funeral Services for Lehman

President Lyndon B. Johnson, making his first journey from Washington since assuming the Presidency, led scores of the country’s notables, non-Jewish and Jewish, today, in attending funeral services for the late Herbert H. Lehman, at Temple Emanu-El. The elder statesman, former Governor of New York for four terms, and a member of the U.S. Senate for two terms, died suddenly at his home last Thursday, aged 85. Interment was private.

While 2,500 invited guests jammed Temple Emanu-El during the services, conducted by the Reform congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Julius Mark, many thousands lined the streets outside the edifice. With “maximum security” prevailing, 5,000 New York policemen and Secret Service agents guarded the President.

Sharing the pew in Temple Emanu-El with President Johnson, while the rites were being conducted, were Mrs. Johnson; New York’s Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; the city’s Mayor, Robert F. Wagner; Senators Jacob K. Javits and Kenneth B. Keating, the two members representing New York State in the U.S. Senate; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a brother of the late President; and Adlai E. Stevenson, chairman of the United States Delegation to the United Nations. Sitting nearby was Associate Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Goldberg was among a number of the nation’s prominent personalities invited by the President to come here in his plane from Washington. Others who accompanied the President on the trip from Washington and attended the services, included George Meany, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations; W. Willard Wirtz, Secretary of Labor; Under Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman; United States Senator J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas; Clinton P. Anderson, Democrat of New Mexico; Lister Hill, Democrat of Alabama, and George McGovern, Democrat of South Dakota.

The State of Israel was represented at the services by Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Avraham Harman, and by Ambassador Michael S. Comay, head of the country’s delegation to the United Nations. Levi Eshkol, Prime Minister of Israel, had sent a message of “grief” and condolence to Mrs. Lehman. Noting that the Jewish people had seen in Mr. Lehman “a champion of democracy and freedom who, in his battle for humanity, was true to the tenets of our prophets, Mr. Eshkol stated that all Israel and he, personally, felt Israel had “lost a great friend.”

PSALMS READ, PRAYER FOR PEACE DELIVERED AT THE SERVICES

Mrs. Lehman, it was disclosed, had telephoned the President, asking him not to come to New York because of the tense general situation due to the assassination of the late President Kennedy. However, the President, who assured Mrs. Lehman that he was touched by her concern, insisted on attending the rites for his friend and former Senate colleague.

Thirty-five motorcycle policemen, supplemented by two police helicopters flying at very low levels, guarded the President on his way to the Temple from New York’s International Airport, and on his return trip to the airport. The President left New York after the brief service. During the rites, Rabbi Mark read the 14th and 23rd Psalms, recited a passage from “Hamlet,” quoted from a letter by Mr. Lehman, and prayed for peace. A eulogy was delivered by United States District Judge Edward Weinfeld.

City and federal agents had carefully examined every part of the Temple prior to the President’s arrival, and also closed down temporarily the House of Living Judaism, across the street. Police barricades kept the crowds back in a seven-block area surrounding the Temple.

Over the weekend, many thousands filed by the bier containing the remains of the late Mr. Lehman, reposing in a midtown funeral chapel. Among the visitors were Mayor Wagner, who flew back to the city from a conference he was attending in Puerto Rico, and Francis Cardinal Spellman. The latter knelt before the casket and offered a quiet prayer. Over the weekend, too, editorials highly laudatory of Mr. Lehman’s distinguished career were printed in virtually every leading newspaper in the country.