NEW YORK (AP) -- Sylvia Straus Heschel, a pianist and the widow of the prominent Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, died Monday at the age of 94, her daughter said.
Heschel died in her Manhattan home, according to her daughter, Susannah Heschel.
Abraham Heschel taught Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he combined deep scholarship with a strong moral passion that led him to march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and to oppose the war in Vietnam.
Sylvia Straus was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Cleveland. Susannah Heschel said her parents met during World War II in Cincinnati, where her mother was studying the piano with the Polish-born concert pianist Severin Eisenberger and her father, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland, was teaching at Hebrew Union College.
'They were both at a dinner party and my mother was asked to play,' Susannah Heschel said. 'She played and he fell in love with her.'
Abraham Joshua Heschel, z"l, was one of the great figures of Jewish life in the twentieth century. He remains among my heroes and exemplars. I continue to learn from his works, his life, his students. By all accounts, his wife was a source of strength and inspiration to him.
My condolences to Susie.
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