A burial service was held today in Farmingdale, Long Island for Rabbi Leo Lichtenberg who died in Cincinnati on Monday at the age of 62. He was Hillel Foundation director and adjunct assistant professor of religion at Adelphi University in Garden City, L.I. for 20 years until his retirement in 1974. Since retirement, he had been serving as a cataloguer at the Klau Library of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati, Ohio.
From 1954 to 1968, Lichtenberg was director of Hillel and an instructor in Hebrew at Hofstra University, L.I., concurrently with his service at Adelphi. Earlier in his career, he directed Hillel activities at the University of Virginia and at Ohio University. He also held pulpits at various periods at Wichita Falls, Texas, and at Charlottesville, Va.
Lichtenberg was a U.S. Air Force chaplain in World War II and in the Korean War, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He was a former president of the National Association of Hillel Directors and a former national chaplain of the American Legion.
Born in Rostock, Germany, Lichtenberg received his secondary education in Berlin before coming to this country in 1935. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1938 and was ordained a rabbi by HUC-JIR in 1940.
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.