Background
Joseph Herman Hertz, rabbi, was born on 25 September in 1872 in Rebrin, Slovakia. He was brought to the United States at the age of twelve and graduated ten years later from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. After serving as a rabbi in the United States for a number of years, he was appointed to a rabbinical post in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he focused worldwide attention on religious intolerance in the Transvaal. He was expelled by the Boers in 1899, but returned after the formation of the Union of South Africa. From 1913 until his death in London, Jan. 14, 1946, he was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire.