February 20, 2012: Rabbi Plaut was a towering figure in Canadian Jewry

By Michael Regenstreif

Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, one of the towering figures of Reform Judaism, an influential writer and a major leader in Canada’s Jewish community over a period of many years, passed away on February 8 in Toronto at the age of 99 following a struggle with Alzheimer’s disease over the past decade.

Rabbi Plaut, born in 1912, grew up in Germany and received his doctorate in law from the University of Berlin in 1934. But Jews were banned from the practice of law in Nazi Germany, so he left Germany in 1935 as a refugee to the United States. He studied for the rabbinate at Hebrew Union College and was ordained in 1939.

He returned to Germany during the Second World War as a frontline chaplain in the U.S. Army and participated in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

Rabbi Plaut held pulpits at Reform congregations in Chicago and St. Paul before coming to Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple in 1961 where he served as spiritual leader until 1978. After retiring from the pulpit, he served as senior scholar at Holy Blossom for more than two decades.

One of Rabbi Plaut’s major works was editing The Torah: A Modern Commentary, a monumental work that took 17 years from conception to publication in 1981, when it became the Reform movement’s standard text. A revised edition was issued in 2005.

As a Jewish community leader, Rabbi Plaut rose to the presidency of the Canadian Jewish Congress serving a three-year term from 1977 to 1980.

In the wider community, Rabbi Plaut was one of Canada’s leading human rights and refugee advocates.

“He was a defender of human and civil rights at a time when many didn’t even know its meaning. We stand on the shoulders of such men,” said Bernie Farber, former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, in a statement quoted by the Toronto Star.

The Star also noted that Rabbi Plaut “founded Toronto’s Urban Alliance for Race Relations, served as vice-chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and was appointed by the federal government to revise Canada’s refugee legislation in the 1980s. Among other honours, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada and received the Order of Ontario. He had been granted 19 honorary degrees from institutions around the world including the University of Toronto and York University.”

Rabbi Plaut wrote many other books in addition to his Torah commentary, including works of fiction, and was a widely published commentator in newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals – both in the Jewish and secular communities. I particularly remember Rabbi Plaut’s column, which ran in the Canadian Jewish News for more than 20 years until 2003. An anthology, Eight Decades: The Selected Writings of W. Gunther Plaut, was published in 2008.

I join in paying tribute to this remarkable leader of Canada’s Jewish community and in sending condolences to his family.