Name Sholom Klass Role Author | Died 2000 | |
Books Responsa of Modern Judaism: A Compilation of Questions and Answers on Past and Present Day Halacha as Presented in the Jewish Press |
Rabbi Sholom Klass (1916–2000) was the co-founder, publisher and editor of The Jewish Press, a large Jewish circulation newspaper.
Contents
He also authored Tales from our Gaonim and the Halachic work Responsa of Modern Judaism (3 volumes).
Rabbi Klass received Smicha (Rabbinical Ordination) from Yeshiva Torah Vodaas.
Prior to starting The Jewish Press, he was a co-publisher of The Brooklyn Daily(now defunct).
Causes
He used his newspaper to support both what should seem obvious (Torah, Israel, Jewish Civil Rights) and a range of causes that were not getting much publicity, from the Igud Harabbonim (Rabbinical Alliance of America) to matters dealing with honoring the power of Bais Din.
Legacy
His daughter's "Dear Dad", written for the 9th Yartzeit, contains examples of one of Rabbi Klass' major accomplishments: the popularization of the use of a dash in writing G-d's name, in English, as the normative form by Orthodox Jews.
He and Rabbi Meir Kahane, whom he hired, broke this barrier, the latter also expanding upon this in the books he authored.
Although Rabbi Shalom Klass turned over his (Halachic) Questions & Answers column to his nephew Rabbi Yaakov Klass well before his death, one way in which the column affected worldwide Jewry was as the inspiration of the acronym AYLOR - Ask Your Local Orthodox Rabbi .
Interestingly, some have attempted to even extend AYLOR by having "O" stand for "Ordained.".
The point made by Rabbi Klass is that information in the column is to educate, not to provide an absolute ruling.