Pinchas Hirschprung

Pinchas Hirschprung (1912–1998) was a Polish-Canadian rabbi, halakhic authority, and yeshiva head who spent his later decades as chief rabbi of Montreal. Born in the Galician town of Dukla, he studied under Rabbi Meir Shapiro at the Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin and received rabbinic ordination in 1932; the Torah novellae he composed in his youth were gathered under the title Pri Pinchas. When war engulfed Poland, he escaped through Lithuania and reached Kobe, Japan, continuing by way of Shanghai before settling in Montreal in the early 1940s. There he led the Adath Yeshurun congregation and headed the Merkaz HaTorah yeshiva, later directing the local Tomchei Temimim from 1965 and being appointed chief rabbi of the city in 1969, a post he held until his death. He serialized a Yiddish account of his wartime flight in 1944, and further collections of his novellae appeared as Eish Pinchas.