Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

Born in 1934 and raised in the Bronx, New York, Aryeh Kaplan was an Orthodox rabbi, writer, and physicist. He completed his rabbinical training in Jerusalem and was ordained there in 1956 by Rabbi Yehuda Finkle, one of Israel’s foremost rabbinic authorities. He then went on to earn a B.S. degree with high honors at the University of Louisiana and an M.S. in physics at the University of Maryland. After completing a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he changed career direction by taking a full-time position as a rabbi in Mason City, Iowa, in 1965. From then until the end of his life, he held positions as rabbi for congregations in many states across the country, ending up in Brooklyn, New York. Rabbi Kaplan wrote more than 50 books, including many on Kabbalah and meditation, but is best known for The Living Torah, a scholarly translation of the Torah with an extensive index. Rabbi Kaplan married Tobie Goldstein in 1961, and they had nine children together before he died suddenly in 1983 at the age of 48 from a heart attack.