Eliezer Silver

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Rabbi Eliezer Silver in his younger years

A famous picture of Rabbi Eliezer Silver

Rabbi Eliezer Silver (15 February 1882 - 1968) was the President of the Agudath HaRabbonim of America and among American Jewry's foremost religious leaders. He helped save many thousands of Jews in the Second World War and held several Rabbinical positions in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Ohio.

1 Biography
2 World War II rescue activities
3 Post-World War II
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Rabbi Silver was born in Kovno, Lithuania, one of two sons. He had centuries-old rabbinic ancestry and on his mother's side was a descendant of King David.

He studied in Dvinsk, with Rabbi Yosef Rosen (the "Rogatchover Gaon") and received Semicha from Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski in 1906. He immigrated to the United States with his wife in 1907, to escape the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia. The young couple settled in New York City, where Rabbi Silver worked as a garment salesman and later sold insurance.

However, Rabbi Silver soon accepted a Rabbinical position in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His great Torah scholarship soon drew him into leading Orthodox circles on the national level. In 1912, he was part of a delegation of rabbis that asked President William Howard Taft to void a treaty with Russia because of Russia's persecution of Jews.

In 1914, when Rabbi Silver traveled abroad to visit his parents, he was caught in Russia as World War I broke out. Stranded for seven months by Russia's refusal to recognize an American passport issued to a Jew, he eventually crossed the border into Norway under an assumed name and returned home in 1915.

Rabbi Silver was active in relief efforts in World War I. In 1925 he moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. Around 1931, he accepted an invitation to become Rabbi in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained until his passing.

Rabbi Silver was very active in the Agudath HaRabbonim, elected its president in 1929. He was also a pivotal founder, organiser and president of Agudath Israel of America.

[edit] World War II rescue activities

Rabbi Silver convened an emergency meeting in November 1939 in New York City, where the Vaad Hatzalah (Rescue Committee), was formed, with Rabbi Silver as president. Rabbi Silver spearheaded its efforts in rescuing as many European Torah scholars as possible from Nazi Europe.

Rabbi Silver launched a fund-raising drive that raised more than $5 million, and also capitalised on an exemption to US immigration quotas allowing entry to ministers or religious students. At his direction, synagogues in Cincinnati and across the country sent contracts to rabbis, thereby securing 2,000 emergency visas that were telegraphed to Eastern Europe.

With the increasingly desperate race against time, the Vaad, under Rabbi Silver turned to all channels, whether legal or not ^[1] , to save as many lives as possible by bringing Jews to the US, Canada and Palestine. Sympathetic foreign diplomats provided fake visas for perilous immigration routes; counterfeiters were paid to produce phony passports.

During WWII, a Vaad representative in Switzerland even negotiated with the SS, offering to ransom concentration camp prisoners for cash and tractors - talks that freed hundreds from Bergen-Belsen and other death camps.

In October 1943, as the scale of Nazi atrocities was becoming shockingly clearer, Rabbi Silver helped organise and lead a mass rally of more than 400 rabbis in Washington to press for more decisive action by the US government to save European Jews. The rally was organized by Hillel Kook's "Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe". ^[2]

On the steps of the Capitol, Vice President Henry A. Wallace heard Rabbi Silver's plea to deliver European Jews from extermination. The public reaction to President Roosevelt's snub (where he avoided meeting the rabbis) helped build pressure to form the War Refugee Board, which rescued tens of thousands of Jews. ^[2]

Rabbi Silver's ceaseless lobbying of the White House, the Vatican, the Kremlin and neutral governments on behalf of Europe's Jews directly saved at least 10,000 lives and helped spare tens of thousands more.

[edit] Post-World War II

After the war, when the full extent of the Nazi atrocities came to light, a stunned but focused Rabbi Silver began planning for reconstruction. In 1946, he distributed relief funds and helped expedite visas to Jews in eight European nations - wearing, with government permission, a US Army uniform for extra protection in areas where anti-Semitism was still rife. When donations were insufficient, Rabbi Silver often spent his own money to meet refugees' needs.

In the post-war years, when Rabbi Silver helped many Jews escape the Communist countries of Europe behind the Iron Curtain, he personally guaranteed countless loans - many of which he had to repay himself.

Rabbi Silver died penniless in 1968. He was interred at Washington Cemetery (Knesseth Israel) in Cincinnati. He had been Rabbi of the Kneseth Israel Congregation in Cincinnati for nearly 40 years. He authored the Seforim Anfe Erez.