KORN, BERTRAM WALLACE

KORN, BERTRAM WALLACE (1918–1979), U.S. Reform rabbi, author, and historian. Korn, who was born in Philadelphia, was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, earning his degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1939. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1943. He earned his DDL in American Jewish History at HUC in 1949. He was a leading U.S. Jewish historian, particularly in the area of 19th-century studies. He served as a rabbi in Mobile, Alabama (1943–44) before entering the Chaplaincy and serving in China. He then went to Mansfield, Ohio (1946–48) while he pursued his doctorate at HUC. Having completed his doctorate he assumed the pulpit of Keneseth Israel, Philadelphia, in 1949. Each summer he continued his work as a navy chaplain. He was promoted to rear-admiral, the first Jewish chaplain to achieve this rank. He retired in 1978. He served as chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board's Chaplaincy Commission. Korn was an active scholar and teacher, a visiting professor at HUC-JIR in New York and at Dropsie College in Philadelphia. Korn chaired the Central Conference of American Rabbis' Commission on History (1953–57), and was president of the American Jewish Historical Society (1959–61) and earned its Lee M. Friedman Gold Medal. He also edited the Yearbooks of the Central Conference of American Rabbis for many years. His books include: The American Reaction to the Mortara Case (1957); American Jewry and the Civil War (1951,   19612); The Early Jews of New Orleans (1969); and The Middle Year of American Jewish History (Heb., 1970). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: K.M. Olitzsky, L.J. Sussman and M.H. Stern, Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1993).