new york (jta) | Rabbi Balfour Brickner, a leader of the Reform movement, died this week at 78.
Brickner was the former spiritual leader of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City and a long-serving member of the professional staff of the Union for Reform Judaism.
He fought for equality and social justice across the globe — from the segregated American South in the 1960s to Vietnam in the early 1970s to Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Brickner was among the first American Jews to travel to Israel at the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.