Funeral services were held here Friday for Rabbi Harry Halpern, a prominent educator and Jewish leader, who died last Wednesday at the Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. He was 82 years old.
For 49 years until his retirement in 1977, Halpern served as the spiritual leader of the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn. At the time of his death he was adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Jewish Theoological Seminary in New York.
Halpern also served in various leadership positions of Jewish groups. He had been the president of the New York Board of Rabbis and the Rabbinical Assembly of America. He also was a member of the Kings County Advisory Council of the New York State Commission Against Discrimination and served on the Human Rights Commission from 1967 to 1978.
Halpern, born in New York, was educated at City College and Columbia University and was ordained in 1929 by the Jewish Theological Seminary. He received a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree there in 1951.
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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.