Arthur Saul Super

Arthur Saul Super (; 1 July 1908 - 28 July 1979) was a British-born rabbi and journalist. He initially served as a rabbi to Orthodox congregations before switching allegiances to Reform Judaism. He served as Chief Minister of the United Jewish Progressive Congregations of Johannesburg between 1964 and 1975. In 1914 he moved with his family to Melbourne, where his Latvian-born father was appointed Chief Shokhet for the Melbourne United Shechitah Board. When he was 18 he was the recipient of the Max Michaelis scholarship to study in England. He graduated with degrees from the University of Cambridge and School of Oriental and African Studies. He then relocated to Montreal, Canada after his ordination and was a rabbi at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim between 1933 and 1936. He returned to England to serve the United Hebrew Congregation of Leeds between 1937 and 1940. After the war he took on a new post as rabbi of Bayswater & Maida Vale Synagogue, a United Synagogue congregation in West London from 1947 to 1950. He then left Orthodox Judaism behind and moved to Israel, where he was the chief editorial writer and assistant editor of The Jerusalem Post. The following year the Jerusalem Post Press published his book, Alonei Yitzhak, a Youth Village in Israel. In Israel he also became involved in congregations affiliated with Reform Judaism. He was then based at the Union's headquarters at Temple Israel in Hillbrow. Cape Town wanted a looser federation where each city made its own decisions and pushed back against the notion of a Chief Minister, arguing that it was against the democratic principles of Reform Judaism.

One of Super's significant achievements was the 1965 concordat he arrived at with Orthodox Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Bernard M. Casper. They agreed that from "the religious point of view there is an unbridgeable gulf between Orthodoxy and Reform." He died in 1979 in Netanya and was buried in Herzliya.

Personal life Super married Sally Berko, with whom he had a son, Bernard Samuel Super (1935 - 2016) in Montreal, Canada. The couple subsequently divorced and Super married the widow, Tilly Hyams. He legally adopted Hyams' daughter, Stacia (1946 - 2015) in 1957, her biological father had died in 1947. Stacia had the first Bat Mitzvah in Israel in 1959.