David de Sola Pool

Title page of Portraits Etched in Stone: Early Jewish Settlers, 1682–1831 (1952), by David De Sola Pool.

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David de Sola Pool (1885–1970) (Hebrew: דוד די סולה פול) was an American Rabbi.

[edit] Biography

David de Sola Pool was born in London in 1885. He received his rabbinic ordination from the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary. In 1907 he was invited to become minister of Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, in New York, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Pool served as the minister there for 63 years.

Pool translated and edited the Sephardic prayer book for the Union of Sephardic Congregations and the Ashkenazic prayer book for the Rabbinical Council of America. He also authored a well regarded work on the origins of the Kaddish prayer (entitled The Kaddish). In addition, he wrote the book Why I am a Jew.

He was a president of the American Jewish Historical Society, and wrote several works about colonial Jewish history (Portraits Etched In Stone and together with his wife, Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in a New World.)

His wife, Tamar, was the daughter of Hayyim Hirschensohn. His son, Ithiel de Sola Pool, was a pioneer in the development of social science and founder of the Political Science Department at MIT. His grandson, Richard (Dick) Rodstein, is an internationally known voiceover announcer.

[edit] References

• Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings. Ed. Marc D. Angel, Union Of Sephardic Congregations, New York, 1980.