Rabbi Abraham De Sola delivering the opening prayer at US House of Representatives on January 9, 1873.
Photo Credit : Public domain
Abraham De Sola was a professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at McGill University, and the first Jewish professor in Canada.
Photo Credit : Public domain
Rabbi Abraham De Sola became the spiritual leader of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in 1846.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Abraham De Sola
Rabbi Abraham De Sola was the spiritual leader of Montreal’s oldest synagogue, Shearith Israel, as well as the first Jewish professor in Canada.
De Sola was part of a long line of prominent scholars and rabbis. The sixth child of David Aaron De Sola and Rebecca Meldola, he was born in London, where his Spanish and Portuguese relatives had come via Amsterdam in the early 19th century. His maternal grandfather, Dr. Raphael Meldola, was the Chief Rabbi of London’s Sephardic congregation, Bevis Marks Synagogue. His father was an author and hazan in the same congregation. His wife, Esther Joseph, was the daughter of Henry Joseph, the patriarch of one of Canada’s most prominent Jewish families.
De Sola was educated at the City of London Corporation School and received personal instruction from his father and Louis Loewe, a respected Oriental scholar. In 1847, he moved to Montreal after being offered a position at Shearith Israel. He served as the rabbi for this Orthodox Sephardic congregation for the rest of his life. De Sola established their Sunday school and opened a co-ed private Jewish day and boarding school. Despite being part of the Sephardic community, he also maintained close contact with Ashkenazi Jewish communities, and went out of his way to support their schools and organizations, too.
De Sola was a renowned scholar and educator. In 1848, soon after his arrival in Montreal, McGill offered him a job as a lecturer in Hebrew and Oriental literature, subjects which he taught there for the rest of his life, along with courses in Spanish and Philology. De Sola’s interests were eclectic and wide-reaching: botanical and zoological references in the Bible, profiles of prominent Jews, medical studies on rabbinical dietary laws, and the history of the Jewish communities in Persia, England, Poland and France. In 1858, McGill made him an honorary doctor of laws – the first Jewish minister to receive this honour in England or North America.
In addition to being a university professor, de Sola was a frequent speaker at organizations such as the Montreal Mercantile Library Association, the Montreal Literary Club, the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal and the Natural History Society, which he was President of from 1867-68. His talks and sermons were often reprinted in Jewish periodicals and the press, including in Isaac Leeser’s The Occident, the first Jewish periodical published in the US. Memorably, at the invitation of President Ulysses S. Grant, de Sola opened the US Congress with prayer in 1873 – the first British subject, and the first Jew, to do so.
As a philanthropist, De Sola was instrumental in founding the Hebrew Philanthropic Society in Montreal to care for the poor, sick and needy, as well to assist recent immigrants. He helped establish the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society (1863), the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society (1863) and the Yod Beyod/Jewish Mutual Aid Society (1872). He was also a tireless organizer for relief funds in support of Jews as far afield as Morocco, Persia, Palestine and Russia.
De Sola died in New York City in 1882, while visiting his sister, and was buried in Montreal. His son Clarence was a leading Canadian Zionist, and his son Meldola was a prominent scholar and exponent of Orthodox Judaism in North America. De Sola was admired in Canada and around the world for his prolific work as a spiritual leader, a teacher and a writer. He is remembered as one of his time’s leading Orthodox Jewish voices.
