Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin רבי יוסף אליהו הענקין
the posek of America; half a century at the head of Ezras Torah
He was born in 1881 at Klimovichi in Belarus, studied at the Slutsk yeshiva under Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer and received ordination from him and from Rabbi Baruch Ber Leibowitz. He served as rabbi in Georgia and in Belarus, and in 1923 left for America.
In New York from 1925 to the end of his life he ran Ezras Torah—the fund for scholars and rabbis in need; millions passed through his hands, while he himself lived in a cramped flat and took nothing for himself. The Ezras Torah calendar with his halakhic notes became the desk-book of American synagogues. He answered whatever America did not know: civil marriage, electricity on the Sabbath, the bounds of city eruvin; his books are Edut LeYisrael and Perushei Ivra. Rav Moshe Feinstein honoured him as his senior.
He died in New York on 12 Av 5733 (1973). His grandson, Rabbi Yehuda Henkin, published his legacy.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Edut LeYisrael and Perushei Ivra — the answers to America
- The Ezras Torah calendar — the halakhic notes
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Klimovichi, Slutsk, America from 1923, Ezras Torah from 1925, 12 Av 5733
Basis: documents and evidence.