הרב שמעון שוואב

Rav Shimon Schwab (5669/1908–Purim Katan 5755/1995) was a rav and communal leader in Germany and in the United States, and for thirty-seven years a rav of Khal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights. Born in Frankfurt am Main to Yehuda (Leopold) and Chana Schwab, he came of a family that had long belonged to the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft, the Orthodox kehillah that stood independent of the Reform-dominated general community, led until 5648/1888 by Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch and then by his son-in-law Rav Shlomo Breuer. He learned in the Realschule, which joined limudei kodesh and general subjects after the way of Torah im Derech Eretz, and then in Rav Breuer’s Torah Lehranstalt.

In 5686/1926, at seventeen, he entered the Telshe yeshiva in Lita and learned Gemara there three years, and afterward spent a year and a half in Mir. In 5690/1930 he spent a Shabbat with the Chofetz Chaim, Rav Yisrael Meir HaKohen; the visit left a strong impression on him, and he returned to it often in drashot all his life. After semicha he came back to Germany, and from September 1933 was community rav in Ichenhausen in Bavaria, where he labored to found a yeshiva that would teach Mishnah and Gemara and published a booklet, Heimkehr ins Judentum (1934). The yeshiva opened, but local Nazi activists made threats at once; the talmidim were sent home after a single day, and this likely moved him to seek a post overseas.

Through Rav Dr. Leo Jung he was put in touch with the Shearith Israel kehillah in Baltimore, which took him on trial and then chose him as its rav — and so the family obtained visas and escaped the Holocaust. At the urging of Rav Elchonon Wasserman, who visited Baltimore in the late 1930s, he set out the traditional understanding of the days of Mashiach in a work that appeared anonymously in Hebrew in 5701/1941, Beit HaSho’eivah. In 5718/1958 he was invited to join Rav Yosef Breuer in leading Khal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, widely held the continuation of the pre-war Frankfurt kehillah; from Rav Breuer’s petirah in 5740/1980 until 5753/1993 he led the kehillah alone.

Shaped both by German Torah im Derech Eretz and by the yeshivot of eastern Europe, he identified at first with the latter, setting aside the way of Rav Hirsch in a public article in 1934; later he retracted, holding that Rav Hirsch had seen in his approach a central value in Torah. In the 1960s, seeing that emphasis on limudei kodesh alone would harm the community, he wrote his pamphlet These and Those (1966), championing Torah im Derech Eretz as no less valid, its title drawn from the words of Chazal, eilu va’eilu divrei Elokim chaim. He was niftar at eighty-six and was succeeded by Rav Zechariah Gelley. His teachings were gathered after his petirah by his eldest son, Rav Moshe L. Schwab, in Rav Schwab on Prayer; his responsa, chidushim and biography of Rav Hirsch appeared as Shemesh Marpei.