Moses Avigdor Chaikin

Moses Avigdor Chaikin
Personal life
Born	(1852-05-11)11 May 1852 Shklow, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	17 June 1928(1928-06-17) (aged 76) Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine
Spouse	Tony Rebecca Pinsker[1]
Religious life
Religion	Judaism
Denomination	Orthodox Judaism

Moses Avigdor Chaikin (Hebrew: משה אביגדור חייקין, romanized: Mosheh Avigdor Ḥaiḳin; 1852 - 17 June 1928) was a Russian-British rabbi and author.

Biography

Title page of The Celebrities of the Jews (1899)

Moses Avigdor Chaikin was born in Shklow, Mogilev Governorate, to Lubavitch parents Rabbi Israel Shraga and Chaya Dina Chaikin. At an early age he moved with his father to St. Petersburg, where the latter became chief shoḥet. Chaikin was educated for the rabbinate, and obtained several rabbinical diplomas, among others one from Rabbi Abraham Samuel Diskin [he] in Volkovysk and one from Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno.^[1]

After the pogroms of 1881–82 he emigrated to Paris, where he served as rabbi of the Polish Jews from 1883 to 1887; but then returned to Russia and was rabbi at Rostov-on-Don from 1888 to 1889. Being expelled from Russia in 1890, he went to England, and in 1892 was appointed rabbi of the New Hebrew Congregation in Sheffield. In 1901 he was appointed Chief Minister of the Federation of Synagogues, and in 1911 a dayan of the London Beth Din.^[2]

In August 1926 he retired and moved to Tel Aviv, where he died two years later.^[2]

Publications

• Apologie des juifs: étude historique et littéraire sur l'état politique et social des juifs depuis la chute de Jérusalem jusqu'à 1306 (in French). Paris: F. Vieweg. 1887. Translated into English in 1897.^[3]
• The Celebrities of the Jews: A Glance at the Historical Circumstances of the Jewish People from the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Day. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford. 1899. hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t5j96223p.
• Tsiyun Rashi (in Hebrew). London: Express. 1921.
• Kelalei ha-poskim [Rules of the Codifiers] (in Hebrew). London: Express. 1923.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Lipkind, Goodman (1902). "Chaikin, Moses Avigdor". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 659.

1. Kadish, Sharman. "Chaikin, Moses Avigdor". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70148. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael A.; Rubinstein, Hillary L., eds. (2011). "Chaikin, [Moses] Avigdor". The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6. OCLC 793104984.
3. Wininger, S. (1925). "Chajkin, Moses Awigdor". Große jüdische National-Biographie (in German). Vol. 1. Cernăuți: Orient. p. 531.