RESEDA, Calif.—As a journalist who tried to get every side of the story, former Heritage publisher Herb Brin probably would have enjoyed his funeral.

He would have appreciated the fact that while speakers in the synagogue at the Jewish Home for the Aging extolled his virtues during services on Sunday, Feb. 9, they did not neglect to point out his faults.

Rabbi Louis Feldman, spiritual leader at the Jewish Home for the Aging's Grancell Village, called Brin a tzaddik while providing three instances of the many times Brin "was not afraid to take on the issues of the day."

He cited Brin's picketing of the Academy Awards when actress Vanessa Redgrave, a vocal opponent of Israel, was up for an Oscar for her role as a supporting actress in Julia. Brin, when told that politics should not enter affairs of the arts, responded that "Humanity must grace the arts!"

According to Feldman, Brin also had campaigned hard to assure that Cedars-Sinai Hospital maintain admissions and standards of care for the Jewish indigent. He also led a successful effort to prevent the transformation of the Jewish Community Library into the area's third research center for teachers.

Yiddish-speaking immigrants sometimes would take three or four buses to reach the library in order to be able to read publications and books in their native language. "A Jewish library is a sacred place!" Brin had thundered.

Rabbi Will Kramer, who wrote a column for Brin for 47 years, said after his rabbinical colleague's presentation: "I just heard Herb described as an angel. He was also a devil. ... I heard Herb described as a poet. He could write wonderful poetry and lousy poetry as well. It was true of artists generally and also of Herb that he had no taste when it came to his own work. He didn¹t know which was good and which was bad. So much was good!"

Brin's newspaper, like his poems, was a "dedicated vehicle for the good of the Jewish people," Kramer said.

Although Brin was born and raised in Chicago, where he learned the journalistic craft before moving to Los Angeles, Kramer said "he was in a very real way a (Holocaust) survivor. He never could figure out why he survived and the others died. Forgive me, I shared that with him..."

Kramer startled Brin's circle of friends and relatives when he said: "I didn't like Herb— I loved him. There were times he wasn¹t very likeable, but he was loveable. Herb was a genius ... and ... Herb was a Jew through and through. ... The Jew in me identified with the Jew in him."

Brin had three sons: the oldest, Stan, an Orange County resident who was accompanying Brin's body to Jerusalem for burial and thus could not attend the memorial; the middle son, David, an award-winning science fiction writer and astrophysicist who lives in San Diego County; and Daniel, the youngest, who served in Los Angeles County as editor-in-chief of the Heritage
newspapers published in Los Angeles, Orange County, Central California and
San Diego County.

Following the acquisition of  the San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage by Norman Greene and myself, Daniel has served as our senior associate editor.

David Brin described his father as a "mix of utter cluelessness with utter genius. He didn¹t understand people at all, yet he could penetrate to their hearts."

Herb Brin wrote six books of poetry and two travelogues, and a portion of
his ninth book, the autobiographical Shouting for Justice, now can be read
on the Web site  http://www.davidbrin.com/herbbrin.html.

Daniel Brin said it was his "joy to work with (his father) for 25-26 years at Heritage. It was quite a ride. Not so many people can be as lucky as I have been and I am grateful to him."

Artist David Rose, who accompanied Brin to France to illustrate the trial in Lyons of the nazi collaborator Klaus Barbie, remembered Brin during the trial, "sitting next to me, his head bowed in his hands, listening to the survivors."

Rose recalled that unlike journalists who had large expense accounts and who could afford fancy restaurants and hotel suites, he and Brin stayed in second-class hotels and scrambled to catch second-class trains to get around Europe as they interviewed German and Danish bureaucrats about the nazi years.

Rose said he still can remember them dragging themselves back to their hotel from the courthouse and then hearing Brin, in the next room, pounding out a story on his little portable typewriter.

Although they were travel companions around the world, Brin was not easy to get along with, Rose said. "He was irascible, pugnacious ... sometimes while traveling we didn¹t speak to each other."

While Rose was a self-described "peacenik" on many issues, Brin, in his opinion, was "far right, but we were united in our love for the Jewish people."

Tom Tugend, now a senior staff member for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los
Angeles, spent 36 years working for Heritage.

"I have always felt Herb was a man born one century too late," Tugend said. Brin should have lived in the 19th century, "when the editor was the newspaper and vice versa, and they settled their differences with a six-shooter and a horse whip."

Tugend said Brin was a man "who hated well and loved greatly."

Sholem Gimpel, a poet, said that when he was getting his start, he sent Brin a copy of his poems, and the newspaper publisher wrote a quite favorable article about them — the "start of a profound friendship." Gimpel said Brin was a "generous soul" who gave him encouragement as a poet.

"He was asked to read at the Skirball and it was he who insisted that I also be invited. ... Brin was so rare in a world in which people think of themselves only."

Kaddish was not recited at the funeral because Brin's body was as yet unburied, or as David Brin put it: in being flown to Jerusalem for burial, Brin was in the process of "making aliyah." Manny Berenson, cantorial soloist at the Jewish Home for the Aging, chanted  El Moleh Rachamim to
conclude the service.