David de Sola Pool

Born in London, England, de Sola Pool was descended from an old and renowned family of rabbis and scholars, de Sola, which traces its origins to medieval Spain. His great grandparents were Rabbi (R.) David Aaron de Sola and Rebecca Meldola, his great-great grandfather was Haham Raphael Meldola, a prominent English Rabbi. He was also related to R. Abraham de Sola, R. Henry Pereira Mendes and Dr. Frederick de Sola Mendes.

He studied at the University of London. He held a doctorate in ancient languages, summa cum laude, from the University of Heidelberg.

In 1907, de Sola Pool was invited to become the assistant rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel — often called the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue — located in New York City, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.[3] He served as its assistant rabbi, under H. Pereira Mendes, until 1919. He left to do work in Israel, but returned to become senior rabbi in 1921, when the synagogue was unable to find a replacement for Mendes after his 1920 retirement. In his detailed history of the congregation, Dr. Pool highlighted with satisfaction its noteworthy diversity: “Probably in no other congregation in the world is there so wide an ingathering of Jews from the four corners of the earth as is to be found in Shearith Israel....Throughout the congregation’s three centuries, its history has been marked by the integration of the elements which have come to it from the sixty or more countries of the earth. Within the compass of the congregation the motto of the country, E pluribus unum, has happy fulfillment.”[4]

He served as rabbi until 1955, and was an involved Rabbi Emeritus for the rest of his life.

Dr. Pool and his wife, Tamar, were particularly concerned about helping young people, to meet and talk with them, and to motivate them to lead ethical lives.[5]

Following in the footsteps of his cousin and predecessor, Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, Dr. Pool ardently advocated for Jewish nationhood. He and his wife, Tamar, were leaders in Hadassah's Young Judaea youth movement, and Tamar went on to become National President of Hadassah, striving there to support for the Zionist cause. In 1919, Dr. Pool took leave of his position and went with his wife to Palestine to do relief work, assuming charge of post-war relief and reconstruction for the World Zionist Organization and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Dr. Pool and his wife stayed three years until before returning to his rabbinical position in New York. Then, as Nazism rose in the 1930s, Dr. Pool spoke out increasingly of the need for a Jewish homeland, calling on American Jewry to action. And after Israel's founding, he and his wife Tamar were continuously active in support of the new nation.

De Sola Pool translated and edited the Sephardic prayer book for the Union of Sephardic Congregations in 1954, and the Ashkenazic prayer book for the Rabbinical Council of America. These prayerbooks are still in use in congregations around the world.

His book The Kaddish (1909, third printing 1964), based on his dissertation, remains a definitive and well-regarded work on the origins of the Kaddish prayer.

De Sola Pool wrote several important books about Jewish history in Colonial America including Portraits Etched In Stone — Early Jewish Settlers, 1682–1831 (1952) and together with his wife, Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World — Portrait of Shearith Israel, 1654–1954 (1955). He co-authored with his wife, Tamar de Sola Pool, Is There An Answer: An Inquiry into Some Human Dilemmas (1966). They also co-edited the Parenzo Haggadah for Passover (1951, 1975). De Sola Pool edited the prayerbooks used for the United States Armed Forces. He also wrote a book, Why I am a Jew (1957), part of a series written by leading clerical figures, which remains a supremely well-written introduction to Judaism.[6]

De Sola Pool held honorary degrees of Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Hebrew Letters, Doctor of Humane Letters, and Doctor of Sacred Theology.

Respected and admired across the world, de Sola Pool combined spiritual and pastoral duties with scholarship, and also with public service. De Sola Pool was one of the foremost leaders of American Jewry and a world leader of Sephardic Jewry.[7]

In 2012, the American Sephardi Federation mounted a small exhibition of de Sola Pool's correspondence.