Rabbi Pinhas Hirschprung (1912-1998[1]) was a Polish rabbi of Hasidic ancestry, who later emigrated to Montreal, Canada, where he served as Chief Rabbi.
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He was born to Rabbi Chaim Hirschprung in the city of Dukla, in Poland (Galicia) in 1912. He first studied with his grandfather Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Zehmin (who was also the teacher of the Rebbe of Klausenburg, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam) and later became the prime student of Rabbi Meir Shapiro, Dean of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva and founder of the Daf Yomi movement. Rabbi Shapiro once said about him that already as a youth he knew all 2,200 folio pages (4,400 column pages) of the Talmud by heart[2]. After he reached the age of bar-mitzvah, he wrote his first book of Torah novellae, "Pri Pinchas" and then went on to write another book "Ohel Torah" soon after. After Rabbi Shapiro died in 1933, Rabbi Hirschprung would test prospective students for admittance to the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, where entry required the memorization 200 Talmudic folio pages (400 column pages). He was endowed with an eidetic memory that enabled him to memorize the hundreds of volumes of rabbinic literature verbatim. Only a few other known scholars of the post WWII generation attained such a level of vast Talmudic fluency, including Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (The Lubavitcher Rebbe), Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.
During World War II, he escaped to Kobe, Japan via Lithuania and then traveled on to Shanghai[2]. In 1941, he reached Canada on the last boat to leave before the attack on Pearl Harbor.[3]
He served as the chief Rabbi of Montreal from 1969 [4] until his passing on January 25, 1998 and served a dean (rosh yeshiva) of the Rabbinical College of Canada yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Montreal. Rabbi Hirschprung shared a very close relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.