11 Facts About Pinchas Hirschprung

Pinchas Hirschprung was a Polish-Canadian rabbi, posek, and rosh yeshiva, who served as Chief Rabbi of Montreal from 1969 until his death.

Pinchas Hirschprung was born in 1912 to Leah and Rabbi Chaim Hirschprung in the Galician shtetl Dukla.

Pinchas Hirschprung received his early religious education from his grandfather, later becoming a student of Rabbi Meir Shapiro at Yeshivat Hakhmei Lublin.

Pinchas Hirschprung purportedly wrote his first sefer, Pri Pinchas, at the age of 13, and, according to Rabbi Shapiro, knew all 2,711 folio pages of the Talmud by heart as a youth.

Pinchas Hirschprung began teaching at the Yeshiva after his ordination in 1932, and became its head of admissions upon Shapiro's death the following October.

At the beginning of World War II, Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung smuggled himself from Nazi-occupied Poland into Lithuania.

Pinchas Hirschprung left for Shanghai in the fall of 1941, and from there for North America, finally arriving in Montreal on 23 October 1941.

Not long after his arrival in Canada, Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung accepted the positions of rabbi of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue on Saint Urbain Street, and of rosh yeshiva at the newly founded Yeshivas Merkaz HaTorah.

Pinchas Hirschprung became involved in the affairs of the Va'ad ha-Ir of Montreal.

In 1953, Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung re-established Montreal's Bais Yaakov school for girls, which was renamed Bais Yaakov d'Rav Pinchas Hirschprung in his honour after his death.

Pinchas Hirschprung was named rosh yeshiva of Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch in 1965, and in 1969 succeeded Sheea Herschorn as Chief Rabbi of Montreal.