Shemen, Nachman, Rabbi

Nachman Shemen, a rabbinic scholar, author and Jewish civil servant, was born Nachman Boimoil in Chodel, Poland on March 15, 1912. His great-grandfather was a disciple of the founder of Hasidism in Poland, known as the “Seer of Lublin,” and both of his parents were descendants of Hasids and scholars. Shemen was ordained in Warsaw in 1929 at age seventeen by the chief rabbi of Warsaw, Rabbi Eliezer Ezra Kershenbaum of Lublin, and the famous scholar Rabbi Pinchas Eliezer Grosfershtand. In 1930, he settled in Toronto with his family, becoming a teacher at the Eitz Chaim Talmud Torah until 1965. He was also a disciple of Rabbi Yehuda Lieb Graubart, spiritual leader of the city’s Polish Jewish community and an internationally respected rabbinic authority and author. In 1936, he married Toby Rosenberg and they had a son and three daughters.
From 1940 until his death in 1993, Shemen was a secretary of the Canadian Federation of Polish Jews, later known as the Canadian Federation to Aid Polish Jews in Israel, serving as secretary of the Toronto branch and executive secretary of the national executive. From 1954 to 1993, he was Director of the Orthodox Division of the Canadian Jewish Congress, now known as the Kashruth Council of Canada.
Shemen was a prolific writer, contributing articles to periodicals not only in Canada, but also in the United States, Europe, South America, and Israel. Shortly after his arrival to Canada, Shemen began a journalistic career with the Toronto Hebrew Journal. Writing under seven pen names, his works appeared in numerous Yiddish dailies, weeklies, and periodicals around the world. From the mid-1950s, he served as the editor of Yidishe Nayes for a decade, a monthly bulletin published jointly by Canadian Jewish Congress and the United Jewish Welfare Fund of Toronto. He edited commemorative volumes for many Toronto Jewish organizations and wrote more than twenty books ranging from biographies of rabbis to fascism, from Chasidism to labour issues. He was also a founder and volunteer rabbi for the Torah V’Avodah Congregation.