Eliezer Silver

Rabbi Eliezer Silver (Hebrew: אליעזר סילבר‎‎; February 15, 1882 - February 7, 1968) was the President of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada and among American Jewry's foremost religious leaders. He helped save many thousands of Jews in the Second World War and held several Rabbinical positions in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Ohio.

Rabbi Silver was born in Obeliai, Lithuania, one of two sons of Rabbi Bunim Tzemach (1844–1917) and Malka Silver. He had centuries-old rabbinic ancestry. He studied in Daugavpils, with Rabbi Yosef Rosen (the "Rogatchover Gaon") and received Semicha from Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski in 1906. He immigrated to the United States with his wife in 1907, to escape the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia. They settled in New York City, where Rabbi Silver worked as a garment salesman and later sold insurance.

However, Rabbi Silver soon accepted a Rabbinical position at Kesher Israel Congregation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which he served from 1907 to 1925. His Torah scholarship soon drew him into leading Orthodox circles on the national level. In 1912, he was part of a delegation of rabbis that asked President William Howard Taft to void a treaty with Russia because of Russia's persecution of Jews.

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