Arthur Hertzberg, the rabbi, scholar, and activist who died April 17 at 84, was what could be called a premature dove on the Middle East. His was a faction that thought that if Israel recognized the Palestinians as a nation with whom it could negotiate, the problems resulting from the 1967 war would soon sort themselves out. They supported a two-state solution, though in the early days it was called a three-state solution by those (including the established leadership of the Labor Party and King Hussein) who thought that, Jordan, as the former occupying power of the West Bank, should play a role in any solution.

Hertzberg was one of the few prominent American Jewish leaders, though certainly not the only one, who shared this view early on, which he combined with an articulate liberalism and impeccable rabbinic, scholarly, and Jewish communal credentials. Hertzberg was president of the American Jewish Congress, the last rabbi in a long line of rabbi presidents of the then-liberal group, following Arthur Lelyveld and Joachim Prinz in a line reaching back to Stephen Wise.

Hertzberg disdained the growing gravitational pull exercised by the Holocaust over the American Jewish imagination, the decline of membership organizations generally and the Zionist movement in particular, and the rise of the Jewish charitable federations as the cornerstone of community life.

Hertzberg was raised in an Orthodox family associated with the Belzer Chasidim but was ordained and remained throughout his life a Conservative rabbi. He felt great warmth for the Orthodox sector of Jewish life, despite the political and secular distance between his views and theirs. He was enamored of Torah scholarship and knowledge and bemoaned what he once called the “continuing evaporation” of Jewishness among the young.

On Israel, Hertzberg remained an unreconstructed Zionist, albeit increasingly strident and dogmatic in his dovish views. He was a quintessential pre-Oslo dove, but could not shift his views when Oslo collapsed under the weight of its own assumptions about Palestinian intentions. He continued his Jewish political role from a perch as a vice president at the World Jewish Congress for 16 years following his term as AJCongress president. His introductory essay to the anthology of classic Zionist thinkers he edited, “The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader,” remains the single best exposition of how Zionism came about and what it meant.

Generally, his scholarly and historical works centered on the shifts in Jewish life triggered by modernity. Hertzberg mined those seams and produced major works, including a book on the French Enlightenment and the Jews, a book that resonates with contemporary problems of Jews – and Muslims – living in the Fifth Republic. Hertzberg was close to the Jewish labor movement despite its often-intense displays of secularism, and cherished Yiddish culture.

Hertzberg had an outsize ego. Years ago, I asked my secretary to get Arthur on the line. Arthur answered but hung up before I picked up. When I called him right back, by way of explanation he offered, “The only person I hold for is the president of the United States.” But for most of his life his intellect easily of the better of his ego.

For example, in late 1988, five American Jewish doves flew to Stockholm for secret talks with Yasser Arafat. Orchestrated by Secretary of State Schulz, those talks led to the opening of the American-PLO dialogue. I knew nothing of this mission, even though I was quite close to one of the five, Menachem Rosensaft. But I found out about it a day before it went public, through Hertzberg. We were talking about something or other and all of a sudden Arthur volunteered that whatever his dissenting views, he did not believe in getting out in front of the Israeli government in actual diplomacy.

“And that’s why I didn’t go to Stockholm,” he snorted.

Never at a loss to flaunt my ignorance, I asked him about what he was talking, and he told me of the impending talks with Arafat. By the turn of the century, things were a bit different. Hertzberg met Lyndon LaRouche for several interviews, published in the political cult’s journal, Executive Intelligence Review. When I challenged Hertzberg on this, he told me that the he thought Mr. LaRouche was trying to repent and that meeting with him was proof of this. I attacked Arthur on this score, and we never spoke again, creating a loss I felt deeply while he was still alive, and all the more so now.

Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.