W. Gunther Plaut | Rabbi and scholar, 99

W. Gunther Plaut, 99, a rabbi whose vast, scholarly, and contemporary edition of the Torah helped define Reform Judaism in late-20th-century North America, died Wednesday in Toronto.

His son, Rabbi Jonathan V. Plaut, said his father had been ill with Alzheimer's disease for nearly a decade. At his death, the elder Rabbi Plaut was the senior scholar at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, where he had been senior rabbi from 1961 to 1977.

Rabbi Plaut wrote more than 20 books on Jewish theology, history, and culture. He was best known for The Torah: A Modern Commentary, his magnum opus, published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the umbrella organization for Reform Jewish congregations in North America.

First published as a single volume in 1981 and issued in a revised edition in 2005, Rabbi Plaut's Torah has become a touchstone for Judaism's liberal branches. While Jews have long studied the Torah with the aid of rabbinic commentaries, none like his had ever before appeared.

"God is not the author of the text," Rabbi Plaut wrote in the volume's introduction, "the people are; but God's voice may be heard through theirs if we listen with open minds."

The Plaut Torah has sold nearly 120,000 copies, according to its publisher. It is used today in many Reform synagogues, as well as in some Conservative and Reconstructionist ones, throughout the United States and Canada. - N.Y. Times News Service