Wolf was born on 2 May 1889 in the Polish town of
Szczuczyn. he was a descendant on his father's side from at least eight generations of rabbis. Gold's first teacher was his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Yehoshuah Goldwasser - a leader in
Hovevei Zion. Later he studied at the
Mir yeshiva under Rabbi
Eliyahu Baruch Kamei. After that he studied in
Lida at Yeshiva Torah Vo'Da'as, the
yeshiva of Rabbi
Yitzchak Yaacov Reines where
Torah study was combined with secular studies. Gold was ordained as a rabbi at the age of 17 by Rabbi Eliezer Rabinowitz of Minsk, and succeeded his father-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Reichler, as rabbi in
Juteka. At the age of 18 he moved to the United States, where he served as rabbi in several communities including South Chicago,
Scranton,
Pennsylvania (until 1912),
Congregation Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1912–1919), San Francisco (until 1924) and
Congregation Shomrei Emunah of
Borough Park, Brooklyn (1928-1935). He was a pioneer in establishing
Orthodox Judaism in the United States. He founded the Williamsburg Talmud Torah, and in 1917 founded
Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. He started the Beth Moshe hospital in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 1920. In 1947 Beth Moses merged with Israel Zion Hospital to become
Maimonides Hospital) and an orphanage in Brooklyn and also founded a Hebrew teachers training college in San Francisco. In 1914, Rabbi Gold invited Rabbi
Meir Berlin, secretary of the World
Mizrachi, to come to New York to organize a branch of Mizrachi in the United States. For the next 40 years, Gold traveled in the United States and Canada organizing chapters of the Mizrachi movement and became president of American Mizrachi in 1932. In 1935, he
emigrated to
Palestine, where he became the head of the Department of Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora and worked to establish new educational institutions within the Diaspora, especially for North African Jews. During
World War II, he was involved in the widespread Zionist opposition to the British
White Paper of 1939 and worked to rescue European Jewry from the
Holocaust. In 1943, he traveled to the United States where he participated as a speaker on behalf of European Jewry at the
Rabbis' march in Washington. He was a member of the
Jewish Agency Executive, heading the Department for Jerusalem Development. In 1946, he was a member of the Jewish Delegation to the
United Nations General Assembly. He served on the founding committee of
Bar-Ilan University. On 8 April 1956, Gold died of heart disease at
Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, and was buried near his lifelong friend Rabbi
Meir Bar-Ilan. He had at the time of his death three daughters and a son. His grandson, Rabbi Yaakov Katz, is a
Rosh Yeshiva (dean) at
Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh. ==See also==