Raisin, Jacob Zalman

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RAISIN, JACOB ZALMAN

RAISIN, JACOB ZALMAN (1877–1946), rabbi and writer. After emigrating from Poland to the United States, he served as a Reform rabbi in Charleston, South Carolina, for many years (1915–44).

An author of Hebrew poems and articles on English literature in Hebrew, his books – in English – include Sect, Creed and Custom in Judaism (1907), Centennial Booklet Commemorating the Introduction of Reform Judaism in America (1925), and the posthumously published Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals (1953). His volume The Haskalah Movement in Russia (1913) is still an important contribution to the literature of Haskalah.

bibliography:

M. Raisin, Mi-Sefer Ḥayyai (1956), 117–20; Lefkowitz, in: Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook, 56 (1946), 267–8.

[Eisig Silberschlag]