Rabbi Leo Jung (Hebrew: Eliyahu) (June 20, 1892, in Uherský Brod, Moravia – December 19, 1987, in New York City, United States) was one of the major architects of American Orthodox Judaism. He was the indirect progenitor of the religious day school system common throughout North American Jewish communities, He was also a major fundraiser and activist for many Jewish causes worldwide, in the periods before, during and after the Holocaust.
Background and education
His father, Meir Tzvi Jung held rabbinic post in Mannheim then was elected rabbi of Uherský Brod in 1890. The elder Jung believed in the Torah im Derekh Eretz (Torah combined with worldly activity) philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Later he moved to London. Jung's father founded schools in Uherský Brod, Cracow and London, where both religious and secular learning took place. In London, Meir Tzvi was a leader in Agudat Yisrael, and the Sinai Movement. The Sinai Movement was a movement in which young men would meet for the purpose of studying Talmud and socializing. At his death in June 1921, Meir Tzvi was the Chief Minister of the Federation of Synagogues in England, an appointment he had held since 1912.
In 1916, Jung became the director general of the Sinai League of which his father was founder and president. Meir Tzvi founded the journal, "The Sinaist", based on the Torah im derekh eretz philosophy. Jung became the editor of this bi-monthly journal, which he claimed expressed his father's philosophy, "study is great, for it leads to (right) action".
Jung, like his father, received a secular and Talmudic education. He attended Cambridge University and he received his doctorate from the University of London. In 1910 he attended the Yeshiva of Eperies and in 1911 he went to study in Galanta, Hungary. He also attended the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. Jung claimed that he received three rabbinic ordinations, from Mordechai Zevi Schwartz, Abraham Isaac Kook and David Zvi Hoffmann of Berlin. He regarded his semikhah from Hoffman as, "his last and most cherished semikhah".
Early career
Jung's first American pulpit was in Cleveland, where he arrived in January 1920. In Cleveland he was an, "utterly novel phenomenon, the first English speaking Orthodox rabbi, bearded and a Ph.D." He saw a weak adherence to a dying Orthodoxy there, which he tried to revive. It was there that he raised funds for the first of 15 new aesthetic and modern mikvaos in the United States, to replace unsightly and ill-maintained earlier ones. His new mikvehs, "hygienically and aesthetically on the heights of Judaism". He stated in Rhythm of Life, p. 44
I can remember a number of loathsome places ... and I cannot criticize too sharply the carelessness, which made such conditions possible. Coupled with the inability of the rabbis to discuss this all-important subject and with a lack of informed rebellion among women (who should have refused to get married before the community established decent mikvaoth) the situation prevailed which rendered such hostility on the part of the half informed and uninformed young women more intelligible.
Jung was involved in raising standards by actively creating commissions to improve observance of most aspects of Jewish ritual life including circumcision, conversion, kashrut, shabbat, burial, and mikveh.
After serving for two and a half years at the Knesset Israel congregation in Cleveland, in 1922 he and his wife Irma Rothschild were asked to come to New York City, for he position of rabbi at the prestigious Jewish Center Synagogue, in New York.
Jung hired Joseph Kaminetsky to serve as principal of the newly founded afternoon school and Kaminetsky later became executive director of Manhattan Day School, which evolved from the Jewish Center Day School. Kaminetsky later became the director of the Torah Umesorah school system.
Since Orthodoxy was not well represented in the Jewish-American publication world, Jung's Jewish Library Series and his other works played an important role in creating books for and about Orthodox Judaism. The multi-volumed series helped promote traditional rabbinic biography and literature among the American public, though they had limited circulation.
In 1926, Jung, as head of the editorial board of the Jewish Forum, recommended that all Jewish organizations have Sabbath observance as a fundamental purpose. The Orthodox Union (then known as the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, or UOJCA) instituted a Sabbath Committee, which included Jung. The committee's goal was to educate, to rally loyalty to the Sabbath, and facilitate employment opportunities for Sabbath observers.