A capacity crowd of 1200 persons, including many young people, filled the Park Avenue Synagogue here yesterday to hear eulogies to the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel delivered by Jewish and non-Jewish professors, rabbis, and Coretta Scott King who spoke on behalf of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Foundation. The memorial meeting marked the end of the 30-day mourning period for Rabbi Heschel who died Dec. 21 at the age of 65.
Israeli Consul General in New York David Rivlin read a message from Israeli President Zalman Shazar who called Rabbi Heschel a “distinguished thinker” and an “aristocrat in spirit.” Shazar said the late rabbi was a “guide and teacher to many” and “served as a bridge between the past and future.” Rivlin then delivered his own eulogy in Hebrew.
Mrs. King, the wife of the late Dr. King, called Rabbi Heschel “one of the great men of our times.” In what was apparently a reference to President Nixon, Mrs. King said, “In a day when we have a would be emperor and king, we will miss the voice of Rabbi Heschel just as we have missed the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King.”
AN ENDURING JEWISH PRESENCE
Rabbi Heschel, she said, was “a profound scholar in Jewish thought and history,” and “we shared a great love, respect and admiration” for him. Mrs. King said the rabbi supported her husband in his efforts to liberate all the oppressed people in this country–Mexican-Americans, Blacks, Indians, Puerto Ricans.
She mentioned that the rabbi had marched at her husband’s side in Selma, Ala. in 1965, a march which eventually led to the Voting Rights Act. Rabbi Heschel was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change. Mrs. King said Rabbi Heschel “lived in the spirit of the Old Testament prophets” and “lives in the hearts and the souls and the minds of those who he loved and those who loved him.”
William D. Davies, professor of Christian Origins at Duke University in North Carolina, delivered a eulogy on behalf of “the non-Jewish world” and said Rabbi Heschel was “all the great things to the non-Jewish world as he was to the Jewish world.” Praising his public outcry against oppression, Davies said he “very publicly marched to Selma, very publicly protested the Vietnam war very publicly protested the condition of Jews in Russia.”
Prof. Davies said Rabbi Heschel embodied the idea that it is “important not only that one protest against evil, but that one be seen to protest,” so as “not to be guilty of a compromising silence.” He said the rabbi will “be an enduring Jewish presence in the history of the protest movement of this country.” To encounter Rabbi Heschel, Davies said, was to feel the “depth and grandeur” of Judaism for non-Jews.
Rabbi Judah Nadich of the Park Avenue Synagogue read an opening psalm in Hebrew and in English. Gerson D. Cohen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which arranged the memorial service, said Rabbi Heschel “achieved a synthesis in his person of what Judaism has meant and must continue to mean to modern man.”
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.
