Pardes, Shmuel Aaron
PARDES, SHMUEL AARON
PARDES, SHMUEL AARON (1887–1956), rabbi. Born in 1887 in Stashov, Poland, he studied in Kensk and then in Ostovsvski, where he was ordained. He then served as rabbi in Zarick, where he established a Torah publication called Ha-Pardes, which was suspended during World War i. However, it followed him to Zavyertza, where he had become rabbi after the war, and then to the United States, where he immigrated in 1924. Some of the most respected rabbis in Europe published their commentaries in Ha-Pardes. He served as rabbi in Bendin and then as dayyan in Chestokova before immigrating to the U.S. He became rabbi of the Montgomery Street Synagogue in New York and then moved to Chicago as rabbi of Bikur Cholim, where in 1927 he reestablished Ha-Pardes, which became a quasi-organ of the Agudat Harabbonim. He used the platform of his journal to support men like himself, East European rabbis, and to criticize his more Westernized colleagues of the Rabbinical Council of America. Ha-Pardes is among his most enduring contributions.
He wrote "Pilpul be-Inyan Batla Da'ata Eẓel Kol Adam," in Sefer Kevod Ḥaḥamin (1935), and was editor of Yehuda Leib Graubart's Ḥavalim be-Ne'imim, vol. 5 (1939).
bibliography:
M.D. Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1996).
[Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)]