Rabbi Baruch Korff papers (Ms. 84.3)

Biographical note

Born in Ukraine in 1914, Baruch Korff became the seventy-second generation of rabbis in his family. Following a pogrom in 1919, during which his mother was killed before his eyes, he fled to Poland. He earned his Smicha (Yoreh, Yoreh) in Poland in 1933, and his advanced Smicha (Yadin, Yadin) in Palestine in 1935.

Emigrating to the United States, he served as headmaster Yeshiva Torath Emeth, Brooklyn, New York, 1936-37; rabbi of Congregation Hayim Solomon, New York City, 1938-40; adviser to the Vaad Hahatzala-Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, adviser to the War Refugee Board, director of the Emergency committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, and executive vice president and United Nations observer of the Political Action Committee for Palestine, 1941-49; rabbi of Temple Israel, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1950-53; rabbi of Congregation Agudath Achim, Tauton, Massachusetts, 1954-71, subsequently elected rabbi emeritus; and chaplain of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, 1954-74.

In 1973 he founded the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency and became an adviser to President Nixon; in 1974 he founded the President Nixon Justice Fund and the United States Citizens Congress. In 1983 he donated his farm in Rehoboth, Massachusetts to Brown University and moved to Providence, to act as consultant to the University with respect to the endowed scholarship, faculty prize, and archive funds that he founded.

In addition, from the 1950s on, he travelled extensively in the Middle East under various auspices. He was also the author of "The Warriors Manual" (1943), "Flight from Fear" (1953), and "The Personal Nixon" (1974).