Gunther Plaut

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Rabbi Dr. Gunther Plaut

Wolf Gunther Plaut , CC , O.Ont (born November 1, 1912 in Münster , German Reich ; died February 8, 2012 in Toronto ) was a Canadian reformist rabbi and author. He was rabbi of the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto for several decades .

Life

Plaut was born in Münster as the son of Jonas and Selma Plaut, who ran the Auerbach orphanage in Berlin from 1922 to 1938 . His younger brother Walter also became a rabbi and later lived in Great Neck, New York . Plaut received his doctorate in law. He left Germany during the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and first emigrated to the USA. In 1939 he was ordained a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College , returned to Germany as a military rabbi for the US armed forces and was involved in the liberation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . After the war he was first rabbi in Chicago and St. Paul . In 1961 he came to the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. In addition to his activity as a rabbi, Plaut published a number of articles and books on Judaism . In 2001 Gunther Plaut attended an annual meeting of the Union for Progressive Judaism in Halberstadt . Gunther Plaut has not appeared publicly since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's .

plant

Gunther Plaut's commentary on the Torah and the Haftara is one of the standard works of progressive currents today. A German translation of his Torah commentary was published in five volumes between 1999 and 2004.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • The material invalidity of marriage in German and Swiss international private law. Risse, Dresden [1935], also Berlin, Jur. Diss., 1934
  • The Torah: a Modern Commentary . ISBN 0-8074-0055-6
  • The Price and Privilege of Growing Old , ISBN 0-88123-081-2
  • The Rise of Reform Judaism: A Sourcebook of Its European Origins. 1963
  • Asylum: A Moral Dilemma . 1995 ISBN 0-275-95196-0
  • Unfinished business: an Autobiography . 1981 ISBN 0-919630-41-3
  • More Unfinished Business . 1997 ISBN 0-8020-0888-7
  • The letter (1986) ISBN 0-7710-7164-7
  • The Man in the Blue Vest and Other Stories (1978) ISBN 0-8008-5093-9
  • Hanging Threads: Stories Real and Surreal (1978) 0919630995
  • The Man Who Would Be Messiah: A Biographical Novel (1990) ISBN 0-88962-400-3
  • The Jews in Minnesota; the first seventy-five years (1959)
  • Your neighbor is a jew (1968)
  • The Sabbath as Protest: Thoughts on Work and Leisure in the Automated Society (1970)

literature

  • Gisela Möllenhoff, Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jewish families in Münster 1918 to 1945. Biographical lexicon. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1995 ISBN 3-929586-48-7 , p. 161
  • James M. Skidmore: W. Gunther Plaut. “A rabbi for all of Canada” , in: John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak (eds.): German-language exile literature since 1933. Volume 3. USA: Supplement 1 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2010 ISBN 978-3-11-024056-6 S. 232-248 Viewable in Google books

Web links

Archival material

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, z'l . Holy Blossom Temple . February 9, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Plaut, Gunther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plaut, Wolf Gunther (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian rabbi of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Muenster
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 2012
Place of death Toronto