The body of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Hassidic leader and honorary president of Agudath Israel, was flown last night to Israel for interment today in Tiberias. Rabbi Heschel died Monday morning at the age of 79.
More than 3,000 persons attended funeral services yesterday held in front of his last residence in Brooklyn. Known as the Grand Rabbi of Kopyczenitz, he was an international leader of the Agudath Israel world movement.
Rabbi Heschel, the scion of a long line of Hassidic rabbis, was born in Husiatin. Eastern Galicia. His father was a rabbi, and his mother the daughter of another famous rabbi. During World War I, he moved to Vienna. In 1940, he came to New York, where he established a Hassidic center on the lower East Side. Later he moved to Brooklyn, where he founded a yeshiva in the Boro Park section. Two of the rabbi’s sons, among five children surviving, are also rabbis.
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