Arthur Hertzberg (1921–2006)

Arthur Hertzberg, né Avraham, was born to a Jewish family in Lubaczów, Poland. In 1926, he and his siblings emigrated to the USA with their mother and grandmother to join their father, an Orthodox rabbi, in Baltimore, Maryland. Hertzberg graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1940, and was ordained a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New Yorkk City in 1943. He then earned a PhD in history from Columbia University, where he was a student of Ernst Cassirer. In 1950, he married Phyllis Cannon, with whom he had two daughters. He taught at several universities, including Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Hebrew University, and Dartmouth. He was the Bronfman Visiting Professor of the Humanities at New York University from 1991 until his death in 2006. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Hertzberg was a rabbi for congregations in Philadelphia, Nashville, and Englewood, NJ. He served as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1953. He also served as president of the American Jewish Policy Foundation and the American Jewish Congress, and vice president of the World Jewish Congress. He was a leading representative in Jewish-Catholic dialogue during the papacy of Pope John XXIII. Dr. Hertzberg participated in the 1943 Rabbis' March, walked with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in both the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" during the first of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. Dr. Hertzberg was the author, editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books, including his landmark history The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (1968). He published a memoir, A Jew in America: My Life And a People's Struggle for Identity, in 2002.