Rabbis
The Sons of Jacob Congregation faced the same difficulty of attracting resident rabbis as did the congregations in many small Northern Ontario towns. Rabbi Lifchitz and Rabbi Monson are among the rabbis remembered to have resided in North Bay between the 1930s and the 1940s. Rabbi Schecter served as the resident shochet, or kosher butcher. A young Rabbi Monson, who served the congregation before he was ordained in Montreal in 1939, was remembered for riding through town on his bicycle and rounding up young students from their cottages in the summer to bring them to cheder to study. Herb Brown recalled hiding with his brother by the lake to avoid the rabbi. David Monson served as a chaplain during the war and later moved to Toronto, where he founded Beth Sholom Synagogue in 1946. Osias Schacter also served as a shochet and several documents refer to a Rabbi Slonim who led services in North Bay in the 1940s. Rabbi Leo Fettman ran both the Hebrew classes and the religious services in the late 1950s.
Although the Sons of Jacob Synagogue was often unable to attract a full-time rabbi to North Bay, the community was usually able to hire Hebrew teachers and often brought in a Rabbi to conduct High Holidays services. Rabbi Dov Edelstein was hired in 1963 and 1964, at a salary of $6,000, to run Hebrew classes, Shabbat and High Holiday Services over the teaching period from September to June. He left in 1966 to take a position in the United States. He was replaced by Rabbi Moshe Frankel, who stayed until 1969 and was in turn, replaced by Charles Benchimol. In the 1990s, the congregation shared Rabbi Avram Avnit with Sudbury, who ran the education program for the 18 families that attended the shul in North Bay at that time.
