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Rabbi Simon Glazer

Rabbi and Rebbetzin Simon Glazer in 1917

Born in Kaunas, Lithuania Rabbi Simon Glazer was president of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, and co-founded the Agudath ha-Rabbanim, the Assembly of Hebrew Orthodox Rabbis of America.

Glazer's professional career was spent primarily in Montreal and New York City. He was the chief rabbi of the United Synagogues of Montreal and Quebec City before he moved to New York.

Glazer wrote a number of books, and was a supporter of Zionism. He campaigned for a Congressional resolution on the Jewish Palestine question in the 1920s. He also organized an effort to delay the institution of quotas on Jewish immigration to the United States. The effort was unsuccessful but it delayed the legislation long enough to allow thousands of Jews to come to the US.

Unusual for a European-trained rabbi of the period, he had a secular education, which aided him in his positions in North America, and allowed him to write books in English for an American public.

When in Montreal he took interest in the poor immigrant population, which previously had no official supporters. In 1910, he founded the Montreal Hebrew Old People’s and Sheltering Home, which was both an old age home and an orphanage. He also helped start the local Yiddish language newspaper, Keneder Adler.

Glazer moved back to the United States in 1918, taking the rabbinate of Congregation Bikur Cholim of Seattle, Washington. In 1920, he took a position as rabbi in charge of a consortium of eight synagogues in Kansas City metropolitan area. He was more successful there in leading a citywide kehilla than he had been in Montreal.[4]

In 1923, he moved to New York, where he spent the remainder of his career. His first post there was rabbi of Beth Medrash Hagadol of Harlem, followed by Congregation Beth-El of Brooklyn in 1927, and finally the Maimonides Synagogue of Manhattan from 1930 until his death in 1938 of heart disease.

He was the Rabbi of Beth-El from 1927-1930.

Information above from Wikipedia

 

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Thu, April 18 2024 10 Nisan 5784