Chaim Hirschensohn

Who was Chaim Hirschensohn?

Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn was born in Tzfat, to Rabbi Yaakov Mordechai Hirschensohn, who had emigrated there from Pinsk in 1848. In 1864, the family moved to Jerusalem.

Like his brother, the young Zionist Chaim Hirschensohn worked with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda to revive spoken Hebrew and helped found the Safah Berurah society in Jerusalem. He and his wife Chava published works and journals both in Hebrew and Yiddish.

In 1904, he was hired as the Chief Rabbi of Hoboken, New Jersey, a post that included "Hoboken, West Hoboken, Jersey City Heights, Union Hill and the Environs" in its jurisdiction. He remained in Hoboken until his death in 1935. Rabbi Hirschensohn wrote on many subjects, including the relationship between Judaism and democracy, the status of women, and conflicts between traditional Judaism and modern scholarship and science. He is probably best known for Malki Ba-Kodesh, a 6-volume work he published between 1919 and 1928, in which he explores the halakhot that might govern a future Jewish state.