Alvin Kass, a revered rabbi who was the youngest chaplain in New York Police Department history and who went on to become its longest-serving, died on Oct. 29 in Manhattan. He was 89.

Rabbi Kass, the department’s chief chaplain, had intended to become a lawyer. He was just two weeks away from beginning his first year at Harvard Law School on a scholarship, when he decided to transfer to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He was ordained there as a Conservative Rabbi in 1982. “I decided to minister to people’s spiritual needs rather than legal ones,” he said.

Rabbi Kass ministered to the grieving families of the 23 police officers, two of them Jewish, who were killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He conducted Rosh Hashanah services in a makeshift synagogue at LaGuardia Airport for emergency workers who had flown in from around the country to assist local police officers, firefighters, and medical technicians. He attended the funeral of every police officer who died that day.