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SurnameVald
NameGrigory
PatronymBorisovich
Birth year1938
Birth month3
Birth day18
birth_placeKharkiv, Ukraine

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Ovchinsky Leon (1871-1941)

people
surnameOvchinsky
nameLeon
birth_year1871
birth_month8
birth_day3
birth_placeDovgiliški, Vilna Governorate
death_year1941
death_month8
death_day7
death_placeJelgava

Ovchinsky (Owtschinsky) Leon (Levi, Leib) (3 August 1871, Dovgiliški, Vilna Governorate — 7 August 1941, Jelgava) - rabbi and writer.

From the age of eight Leon Ovchinsky studied in a cheder (an elementary religious school for boys). In 1884 he completed his studies at a yeshiva (a school for the training of rabbis) in Sventsyany (Švenčionys, Lithuania) and in 1884–1887 studied at the rabbinical seminary in Lida, Vilna Governorate (now Grodno Region, Belarus), under the guidance of the distinguished Rabbi Yitzhak Reines; he later studied under Rabbi L. Margolis in Jakobstadt (Jēkabpils). From 1897 he served as rabbi in Alt-Auce (Auce) in the Courland Governorate.

He wrote and published a number of theological and historical works in Hebrew, including “Nachalat Avot” — a biographical lexicon of rabbis (1894), and “Toledot yeshivat ha-Yehudim be-Kurland” (1908), a history of the Jewish communities of Courland from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, based on rare Jewish chronicles and documents from local communities, with appended information on rabbis, writers, and public figures.

From 1919 to 1941 he served as Chief Rabbi of Jelgava.

Ovčinskis L. Ebrēju vēsture Kurzemē un Zemgalē, 1561—1923. R., 1928. 196 lpp. (Jidiša val.).