Hyman Meyer Crestohl
Hyman Meyer Crestohl (September 15, 1864 - May 5, 1928) was a Canadian rabbi, born in Poland. His son, Leon Crestohl, was elected to the House of Commons.
Hyman Meyer Crestohl obtained his semicha in Poland by noted Rabbis, including the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, and soon served as rabbi in Siedlce. Being a Zionist, he became an early member of Mizrachi, the religious faction of the Zionist movement. He was in contact with many of the movement's political leaders in Europe, such as Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, and rabbis Samuel Mohilever and Yitzchak Yaacov Reines.
In 1904 Crestohl went to New York as an emissary of Mizrachi and he stayed there until he immigrated to Canada in 1911. He was nominated as rabbi of Ohev Sholom synagogue in Quebec City that year. He found in Quebec City a small Jewish community of approximately 400 people, most of which had come from eastern Europe in the 1890s and were engaged in commerce. The congregation was the city's second and it had been founded only a year before his arrival.
During his eight years as rabbi, he maintained ties with the Zionist movement in Canada, founding and acting as first president of the Dorshei Zion Society of Quebec City and serving on the council of the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada. During World War I he was also ACTIVE in ministering to the religious needs of Jewish soldiers training at Valcartier.
In 1919 Crestohl moved to Montreal, where he served from 1920 to 1928 as rabbi of the Hadrath Kodesh congregation, founded by immigrants from Russian Poland. Crestohl also functioned as a shochet in Montreal's kosher meat industry. In 1920 he became first president of the Mizrachi Organization of Canada.
Crestohl was well known as a scholar of rabbinic literature and he wrote many works on this subject. Only one of his treatises was published, posthumously by his children.