The Rise of Reform Judaism

A Reform rabbi and writer born in Münster, Germany, W. Gunther Plaut obtained a law degree in Berlin in 1934, but because of the Nazi takeover of Germany, he switched to religious studies. In 1935 he accepted a scholarship to study at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College and fled Germany. He was ordained in 1939 and worked as a rabbi in Chicago until 1948, leaving his pulpit during World War II to serve as an army chaplain. After the war, he took up a rabbinical position in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple in 1961, first as its rabbi and then, from 1977, as its senior scholar.