Baltimore Jewish History

Rabbi Ervin Preis (Shlomo Aryeh Preis)

Rabbi, Suburban Orthodox Congregation, 1976-2002

Born: 10/25/1935

Died: 12/21/2002 (16 Teves, 5763)

Rabbi Preis would assume the pulpit on Sept. 4, 1976 and move to Baltimore with his wife, Anita (nee Burnstein) and three children.

In June, 1976, the shul would mail a letter to the membership “indicating the recommendation by the Rabbinic Selection Committee of Rabbi Eliot Feldman as the next Rabbi of Suburban Orthodox Congregation. ‘However,’ the letter reads, ‘the Board also decided that Rabbi Ervin Preis be brought back for a second visitation and that he too be considered for the position.’ A unanimous vote on June 16, 1976 would give the position to Rabbi Preis.

With his hiring, Rabbi Chaim Gevantman, first rabbi of Suburban Orthodox, would assume the role of rabbi emeritus, until his passing in 1982, when the shul was renamed Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim in Rabbi Gevantman’s memory.

Rabbi Preis was rabinnically ordained (semicha) in 1960 by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). He would serve as an army chaplain before taking his first pulpit at Congregation Ahavath Chesed of New London, CT in 1964, a position he would hold until moving to Suburban Orthodox in 1976.

Rabbi Preis was born on Oct. 25, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary. His family would flee four years later to Manchester, England, where they stayed until moving to the Bronx, NY in 1951.

Rabbi Preis was the son of Cantor Moshe Preis of Lodz, Poland, whose father, Shlomo Aryeh Preis, died when he was a young boy. Young Moshe would sing to earn himself money and was soon thought of as a young singing prodigy. He was offered offered a position at the large Kacinczy Shul in Budapest at age 19 in 1933. In Budapest, he would board at the home of Mr. Yitzchok Pollak, a communal leader. Cantor Preis would soon marry Raizel Pollak in 1934. R’ Ervin Preis would be born in October, 1935. By 1938, after traveling to Manchester to officiate at a wedding of a congregant, Cantor Preis was offered the position of cantor at the Central Synagogue. Wisely, with the threat of the Nazis at hand, Cantor Preis would accept and move his family to Manchester. The entirety of the family remaining in Poland was wiped out by the Nazis.

Thus, how Rabbi Preis was raised in Manchester. Rabbi Preis would earn his B.A. in mathematics and rabbinical ordination at Yeshiva University/RIETS in 1960.

Rabbi Preis passed away at the early age of 67 on 16 Teves, 5763, December 21, 2002. He was buried in the Eretz HaChaim cemetery in Beit Shemesh, Israel. In his Baltimore Sun obituary, Rabbi Herman N. Neuberger, president of Ner Israel Rabbinical College said, “[Rabbi Preis] had respect from all rabbis. He wanted things done in unity and in concert with everyone. He was a consensus person.”