BRESLAU, ISADORE

BRESLAU, ISADORE (1897–1978), U.S. rabbi and communal leader. Born in Kabilnik, Russia, in 1897, Breslau came to Holyoke, Massachusetts, with his parents in 1906. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Albany, New York. In 1917, he interrupted his college studies at New York University to join the United States Navy during World War i, and served as a furnace stoker on the battleship USS Kentucky. After the war, he returned to nyu to earn his degree. He then graduated from Albany Law School, but decided against taking the bar exam or practicing law because of what he perceived as the flaws in the American justice system. Breslau then attended Albany State College. In 1923, Breslau enrolled in the Jewish Institute of Religion, where he studied under Rabbi Stephen S. *Wise, who remained Breslau's close friend.

Breslau occupied pulpits at the Washington Heights Free Synagogue and the 82^nd Street Synagogue, both in New York, and Temple Israel in Waterbury, Connecticut. The Depression posed financial difficulties for many congregations, and Breslau's was no different. This forced him to leave the rabbinate to find another means to support his family, although Breslau continued to serve as a volunteer rabbi for High Holiday services.

Moving to Washington, d.c., the Breslaus opened a branch of the family business, the Mill End Shops. While his wife worked in the store, beginning in 1939 Breslau served for two years as unpaid director of the American Zionist Bureau, a forerunner of aipac. In 1939, he also served as an American delegate to the World Zionist Congress in Geneva. He was appointed executive director of the Zionist Organization of America in 1940, a position he kept for almost two years.

Breslau's days with the azb and zoa were among his happiest. He met daily to brief Justice Louis D. Brandeis, chair of the zoa, on matters pertaining to Palestine and the Jewish community. However, the rise of Hitler and Nazism in the 1930s moved the focus of Zionism away from the Jews of Palestine and toward the endangered Jews of Europe.

Frustrated by the inability of American Jewish organizations to forestall the Nazi threat to the Jews, Breslau volunteered to serve as a military chaplain in 1943. In 1944 the Army assigned him to the European Theater, where Breslau worked with Jews liberated from Vichy France in Marseilles, and then to Germany, where Breslau became the first Jewish chaplain in Berlin, Germany, after the fall of the Nazi regime.

After the war, Breslau served as department chaplain for the Department of the District of Columbia Jewish War Veterans of the United States. In 1949, he founded and served as the first president of the Jewish Community Council of Washington, d.c., and as president of the American Association for Jewish Education, which he was also instrumental in founding.

Breslau headed the Louis D. Brandeis Zionist District of Washington, d.c., served as the chairman of the United Palestine Appeal of the Seaboard Region, and helped found and served as co-chair of the United Jewish Appeal in Washington d.c. In addition, he was a member of the National United Jewish Appeal Executive.

[Michael Feldberg (2^nd ed.)]