TORONTO - One of the most persistent voices for religious engagement in every public debate in Canada, a scholar and a popularizer of modern Scripture scholarship has died. Rabbi Gunther Plaut was 99 when he passed away Feb. 8.

Many Toronto Catholics will remember his column in The Globe and Mail through the 1970s and '80s. But Rabbi Plaut was also famous for one of the most widely read commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures. The Torah: A Modern Commentary has been through 13 printings and was last revised in 2005. It has sold almost 120,000 copies.