Jacob Avigdor


Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Avigdor 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 in 1896. He excelled in religious studies, and being considered a prodigy, 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 in 1920, where he officiated until the Nazi occupation. Being District Rabbi of about 80 surrounding villages, he also served as head of the Beth din.
He officiated at the wedding of Menachem Begin which took place at his shul, the Choral Synagogue in 1939.
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.

Reuniting with son Isaac

Rabbi Avigdor's son, Rabbi, also survived the war. He had seen the death of a man, and not long after the war, at a DP camp in Italy, he wrote a document for his widow as witness. As she relocated and wanted to remarry, the senior Rabbi Jacob Avigdor, head of the local Jewish court, needed proof that the woman's husband had died. She gave Rabbi Jacob the formal document written by Rabbi Isaac. This is how the father found out the son was still alive, allowing them to reunite, many months after the war.
Rabbi Isaac included this story in a book about his father's life, Faith After the Flames: The Life of Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Avigdor and details are included in a published book review. The story of the father, the son, and the widow is also told by Holocaust writer Esther Farbstein in her Hidden in Thunder: Perspective on Faith, Halachah and Leadership, volume 1
Rabbi Isaac C. Avigdor, son of Rabbi Jacob Avigdor, was a community rabbi in Connecticut "for a half century". For decades he was a columnist in The Jewish Press

Works