Morris Gutstein

Who was Morris Gutstein?

Rabbi Morris Aaron Gutstein was an American rabbi. He was a prominent congregational Rabbi in Newport, Rhode Island, and Chicago, Illinois, and a historian best known for his work on the history of the Jewish community of colonial Newport.

Rabbi Gutstein was born in Ottynia, a small town in the province of Galicia, which at the time of his birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a scion of a rabbinical family, descended maternally from a long line of renowned rabbis, including Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, and Rashi, the famous Biblical exegete. On his father's side he is descended from a line of Sephardi rabbis with origins dating from the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. In 1921, he immigrated with his family to America. He earned his bachelor's degree at New York University in 1929 and received his Conservative rabbinical degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1932. While studying at the seminary, he served as rabbi of Temple Beth El in Long Beach, New York.

After graduating from rabbinical school, Rabbi Gutstein became rabbi of the famed Touro Synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest continuously functioning synagogue in America. While serving as Rabbi of the Touro Synagogue, he studied the history of the early colonial Jewish community of Newport, authoring several historical works, including The Touro Family in Newport, The Story of the Jews of Newport, and the biographical treatise Aaron Lopez and Judah Touro. He was instrumental in the effort to obtain recognition for the Touro Synagogue as a national historic site, a designation that was bestowed by Congress in 1946. He continued his graduate studies concurrently, obtaining Orthodox ordination from Rabbi Eliezer Lipa Weisblum in 1937 and a Ph.D. in history in 1939 from Webster University. From 1940 to 1943, Rabbi Gutstein also served as a civilian chaplain for American soldiers and sailors stationed in the Narraganset Bay area. In the years leading up to and during World War II, Rabbi Gutstein, worked tirelessly to bring Jews living in Nazi Germany to safety in the United States by acting as a formal sponsor for the immigrants, training them in Jewish communal work and ultimately arranging positions for them in other congregations.