Aronson, David
ARONSON, DAVID
ARONSON, DAVID (1894–1988), U.S. rabbi; born in Ulla-Vitebsk, Russia, a descendant of the Gaon of Vilna. He immigrated to the United States and was educated at New York University (1916) and the Jewish Theological Seminary where he was ordained in 1919. He served as a chaplain in World War i and then at pulpits in Salt Lake City (1920–21) and Duluth, Minn. (1922–24). For 35 years he served as rabbi of the Conservative Beth El Synagogue in Minneapolis. He took an active role in public life, serving as associate editor of the American Jewish World and as a member of the Governor's Commission for Human Rights. After the establishment of Israel, he called for the standardization of the Jewish calendar by abolishing the second day of Jewish festivals in the Diaspora. In 1951 he posed a solution to the *agunah problem by allowing a Jewish court to initiate divorces. From 1959 Aronson was professor of rabbinics at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. He was president of the Rabbinical Assembly from 1948 to 1950. He wrote The Jewish Way of Life (1946, 19572), Torah, the Life of the Jew (1964), and various articles, including a report on the Warsaw Jewish community, which he visited in 1927.