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Rabbi Abraham A. Price
- Accession Number
- 2017-12-2
- Source
- Archival Accessions
- Accession Number
- 2017-12-2
- Material Format
- textual record
- graphic material
- Physical Description
- 15 cm of textual records
- 22 photographs : col. (12 negatives) ; 9 x 9 cm and 35 mm
- 3 signs
- Date
- 1938-1982
- Scope and Content
- Accession consists of records belonging to Rabbi Abraham A. Price. The bulk of the records are marriage registers from 1938 to 1982. There are also some loose marriage certificates spanning 1939 to 1946, Price's registration certificate as a marriage officiant from 1938, a letter in Yiddish, and his Isaac Kook Award of Merit certificate, as well as some photographs and corresponding negatives of a family vacation. Also included are three kashruth signs. One was issued by the Kashruth Council of the Canadian Jewish Congress (likely in the 1950s); the other two are hand-painted and were issued by Rabbi Price (likely in the 1940s). They are in both Yiddish and English and read: "Certificate of Kashruth. All meat and meat products of this butcher shop is strictly Kosher under the supervision of Rabbi Abraham A. Price."
- Custodial History
- The donor is the son-in-law of Rabbi Price.
- Administrative History
- Rabbi Abraham A. Price (1900–1994) was a prominent rabbi and Talmudic scholar in Toronto. He was born on 10 December 1900 in Stopnitz, Poland, to Rabbi Joseph and Basia Price. He married Sarah Wine and had two children: a son, Moshe Leib, who predeceased him, and a daughter, Leah (Lola) Zuchowsky. He also had a brother, Lazar.
- Price lived in Poland until 1923, when he moved to Berlin and became a banker. He left Berlin for Paris in 1931 and lived there for six years, before fleeing to the United States in 1937. Rabbi Price originally went to New York City but spent only ten days there before moving to Toronto.
- Rabbi Price studied with world-famous scholars Rabbis Abraham Borenstein and Sillman, by whom he was ordained at the Rabbinical Seminary Sochatzow (Sochatov), Poland, in 1919. He was hired in 1937 by Moishe Oelbaum, Moishe Sigal, and W. J. Silverberg to head Yeshivah Torath Chaim and to act as the official rabbi of Chevra Shas Congregation. Price remained dean of the yeshivah until at least 1985. He published ten volumes of highly-acclaimed rabbinical studies, including three volumes of Mishnath Avraham with commentaries of the Book of the Pious "Sefer Chasidim," which were awarded the Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook Award of Merit in 1965. It was the first time this prize was given to an author outside Israel.
- Price was one of Toronto's most influential rabbinic authorities. He worked tirelessly to help European yeshivah students during and after the Second World War. In 1942, he orchestrated the release of over fifty German-Jewish men from an internment camp in Quebec and brought them to study at the yeshivah. In 1948, he again intervened to sponsor fifty-five young yeshivah boys from Prague. He brought these boys to study at Torath Chaim as well.
- Rabbi Price died on Thursday, 31 March 1994, in Toronto.
- Descriptive Notes
- Language: Records are in Yiddish and English.
- Subjects
- Marriage records
- Rabbis
- Name Access
- Price, Abraham A., 1900-1994
- Source
- Archival Accessions