Silver, Abba Hillel, 1893–1963, American rabbi and Zionist leader, b. Lithuania. He was taken to the United States in 1902. Educated at the Univ. of Cincinnati (B.A., 1915) and Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, he became rabbi of the The Temple, Cleveland, in 1917. He was cochairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council during World War II and chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and he thus played a part in the founding of the state of Israel. He was the author of several books, including Democratic Impulse and Jewish History (1928), Vision and Victory (1949), and A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (1959).
See his selected writings, ed. by H. Weiner (1967).
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