Pinchas Hirschprung

Rabbi Pinchas Hirschsprung (1912-1998) was a Polish rabbi.

Life

He was born to Rabbi Chaim Hirschsprung in the city of Dukla in 1912. He first learned with his grandfather Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Zehmin (who was also the teacher of the Rebbe of Klausenburg, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam) and later became the prime student of Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin. Rabbi Shapiro said about him that already as a youth he knew 2,200 talmudic folios by heart.

After he reached the age of bar-mitzvah, he wrote his first book of Torah novellae

, "Pri Pinchas" and then went on to write another book "Ohel Torah" soon after. After Rabbi Shapiro passed away in 1933, Rabbi Hirschsprung would test prospective students for admitance to the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva.

During World War II, he escaped to Kobe, Japan via Lithuania and then traveled on to Shanghai. In 1941, he reached Canada on the last boat to leave before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Rabbinate

Rabbi Hirschsprung was the prime student of Rabbi Meir Shapiro (who headed the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva). He served as the chief Rabbi of Montreal from 1969 until his passing on January 25, 1998.

Scholarship

He was considered to be among the foremost Jewish scholars of his generation and among the last Polish Torah giants. He possessed sufficient Talmudic fluency to pass the "pin test" - a test in which a pin is driven through any word on the first page of a talmudic tractate and the test taker must recite all of the words that the pin travels through. The students of Tomchei Temimim of Montreal would test him by presenting him with a word or phrase Tosfos or Rashi that they said had fallen out of a Gemarah and ask him which tractate and page they should return it to.