Nahum Rabinovitch

Nahum Rabinovitch was born in 1928 in Montreal

Rabinovitch was born in Montreal in 1928, the younger of two children. His parents were the children of immigrants from Eastern Europe.

He studied at the Merkaz HaTorah yeshiva in Montreal under Rabbi Pinchas Hirschsprung and received rabbinic ordination there. He earned a commerce degree from Sir George Williams College and then a master's degree in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. There he also studied at the Ner Yisroel yeshiva and was ordained again by Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman.

From 1955 to 1963 he led a congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, where he helped found the city's first Jewish day school. In 1963 he became rabbi of the Clanton Park Synagogue in Toronto, and in 1971 he completed a doctorate in the history and philosophy of mathematics at the University of Toronto.

He headed Jews' College in London from 1971 to 1982, where Jonathan Sacks was among his students. In 1982 he became head of the Birkat Moshe yeshiva in Ma'ale Adumim, a post he held until his death. He wrote Yad Peshuta, a 14-volume commentary on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah.

He opposed the Oslo Accords and the Disengagement, and in 2015 he helped found Giyur Kehalacha, a conversion court outside the Chief Rabbinate. He died on 6 May 2020.