GRUNFELD, ISIDOR

GRUNFELD, ISIDOR (1900–1975), rabbi and author. Born in Tauberettersheim, Bavaria, Grunfeld studied law and philosophy at the universities of Frankfurt and Hamburg, and rabbinics at yeshivot there. After practicing law at Wuerzburg, Bavaria, he settled in England in 1933, where he studied for the rabbinate and was ordained in 1938. He was minister of the Finsbury Park synagogue (1936–38), and served first as registrar and later (from 1939) as dayyan of the London Beth Din, from which office he retired owing to ill health in 1965. Among his numerous communal activities were those for the Jewish War Orphans in Europe, and the British Council for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. He was also active in Amnesty International and various peace movements. Grunfeld's literary work is chiefly concerned with S.R. Hirsch\>\> 's writings, editing English translations of his work with extensive introductions and notes (Judaism Eternal, 2 vols., 1956; Horeb, 2 vols., 1962; introduction to I. Levy's English translation of S.R. Hirsch's Pentateuch commentary, 1959). He also wrote The Sabbath (1954) and Three Generations (on the history of neo-Orthodoxy, 1958). His wife Judith (née Rosenbaum) was active in the Beth Jacob movement (religious girls' schools) and in the Jewish secondary schools movement in England. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: JC (Oct. 28, 1960); Jewish Review, London (Nov. 4, 1961).