Joshua Eilberg, 83; Ex-Congressman Sat on Judiciary Panel

Joshua Eilberg, a former congressman who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during President Nixon’s impeachment hearings and was later convicted on federal charges, has died. He was 83.

Eilberg died Wednesday in Philadelphia of Parkinson’s disease, according to the Joseph Levine & Son funeral home.

Three months after his defeat for a seventh congressional term, the Democrat pleaded guilty in 1979 to conflict-of-interest charges in connection with money he received to obtain a federal grant for Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia.

He received five years’ probation and a $10,000 fine.

Eilberg was an assistant district attorney before serving six terms as a state representative and six terms as a U.S. representative from Northeast Philadelphia.

“The family was very proud of his serving on the Judiciary Committee,” said his daughter, Rabbi Amy Eilberg of Palo Alto.

She said her father had done court-appointed work for indigent defendants in the past 25 years and had been executive director of the local Brith Sholom, a Jewish fraternal organization.

He also did work for immigrants from Northern Ireland, Israel and the Soviet Union, Amy Eilberg said.

A native of Philadelphia, Eilberg, a University of Pennsylvania and Temple Law School graduate, stopped practicing law in 1998, she said.

In addition to his daughter, who was the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Eilberg is survived by his wife, Gladys, and son, William.