Jacob Avigdor

Rabbi Dr. Jacob Avigdor

Yaakov Avigdor (also Jacob) (1896–1967) was a Polish rabbi, author and Holocaust survivor, who served as Chief Rabbi of Drohobych - Boryslav in Poland, and of the Ashkenazi Jewish community in Mexico.

Life

He was born into a rabbinic family in Tyrawa Wołoska, a shtetl in the Austrian province of Galicia between the cities of Sanok and Przemyśl (now southeast Poland) in 1896. He excelled in religious studies and was ordained at the young age of 16 years. Later he attended the universities of Kraków and Lviv, obtaining a PhD in Philosophy. Acquiring a high reputation as an orator and Talmudist, he was named Chief Rabbi of Drohobych and Boryslav, then in southeast Poland (now western Ukraine), in 1920, where he officiated until the Nazi occupation.

During the Holocaust, he lost his wife, his two daughters and his brother David the Rabbi of Andrychów, among many family members. After his liberation from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Avigdor became extremely active in the efforts of rescue and rehabilitation of Jewish refugees in postwar Europe. Upon immigrating to the U.S. in 1946, he accepted a pulpit in Brooklyn, New York, and six years later he was offered the rabbinate of Mexico, holding that position until his death in Mexico City in 1967.

Avigdor was much consulted on religious and ethical questions by worldwide peers. A prolific writer, his topics included religious philosophy, Jewish history and traditions, and commentary on Biblical text. Most of his prewar works were lost. In Mexico, he became a regular contributor to Yiddish periodicals, and published books in that language, Hebrew and Spanish.The Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem holds a Hebrew calendar written by him from memory during his stay at Buchenwald.

Works

(‡ Hebrew translation of the Polish title)

References

{trans: Questions and Answers "Abir Yacov"}.

{trans: Book of Remembrance to the Jews of Drohobych, Boryslaw, and Surroundings}.

{trans: Encyclopedia of Galician Rabbis and Scholars}.

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