Gunther Plaut
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W. Gunther Plaut (born 1912) is a Rabbi of Reform Judaism and author.
Plaut was the Rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto for several decades and is currently its Rabbi Emeritus. He was born in Germany, where he received his Doctor of Laws degree and in 1935 fled the Nazis and went to the United States. After receiving his U.S. citizenship on March 31, 1943, he enlisted as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. He was eventually assigned to the 104th Infantry Timberwolf Division and served as a frontline chaplain with the 104th in Belgium and Germany.
He wrote a book of the Torah and Haftorah as well as commentary, known as the Plaut Commentary and was a long time columnist for the Canadian Jewish News as well as a contributor of opinion pieces to various Canadian newspapers such as the Toronto Star. He started the W. Gunther Plaut Humanitarian Award. Plaut was recently diagnosed with Alzheimers disease and has largely withdrawn from public activities.
He is a former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and was also vice-chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
In 1978 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1999.
Selected works
- The Torah: a Modern Commentary, ISBN 0807400556
- The Price and Privilege of Growing Old, ISBN 0881230812
- The Rise of Reform Judaism: A Sourcebook of Its European Origins (1963)
- Asylum: A Moral Dilemma (1995), ISBN 0275951960
- Unfinished business: an Autobiography (1981), ISBN 0919630413
- More Unfinished Business (1997), ISBN 0802008887
- The letter (1986), ISBN 0771071647
- The Man in the Blue Vest and Other Stories (1978), ISBN 0800850939
- Hanging Threads: Stories Real and Surreal (1978), 0919630995
- The Man Who Would Be Messiah: A Biographical Novel (1990), ISBN 0889624003
- The Jews in Minnesota; the first seventy-five years (1959)
- Your neighbour is a Jew (1968)
- The Sabbath as Protest: Thoughts on Work and Leisure in the Automated Society (1970)