Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Aaron Landes, Philadelphia Rabbi and Navy Chaplain, Dies at 84

Rabbi Aaron Landes, a Philadelphia congregational rabbi for decades and the longtime director of U.S. Naval Reserve chaplains, has died.

Landes died on April 19 following a battle with leukemia. He was 84.

He managed some 700 chaplains as head of the chaplains corps until retiring in 1989, according to the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia.

Landes served as the senior rabbi of Beth Sholom Congregation in suburban Elkins Park, Pa., for 36 years, retiring in 2000 and becoming rabbi emeritus. He also founded the Forman Hebrew Day School — now the Perelman Jewish Day School — and served on the boards of several religious organizations, the Exponent reported.

“He was a very unusual man in that he was highly intelligent and highly creative in his profession, but I don’t know many men who were so successful as he was in two professions,” his daughter Tamar said.

Landes was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1955 and then became a Navy chaplain, serving two years of active duty at the 5th Naval District Headquarters in Norfolk, Va.

Afterward he served two weeks of reserve duty each year. He also held a master’s degree from JTS. Landes was a graduate of Yeshiva University, where he served as president of the undergraduate student body.

He met his wife of 61 years, Sora, while working the summer after his college graduation as a lifeguard at Camp Massad, a Jewish sleepaway camp in the Poconos.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.