Chaim Elozor Wax[1] (1822, Tarnogród - 1889, Kalisz[2]) was a well-known Hasidic rabbi, posek, and a Jewish leader in Poland. He was a philanthropist and accomplished student of the Talmud.
He is especially known from his responsa work Nefesh Haya, and as the president of Kupat Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes Kollel Polen, Warsaw region.[3]
- ^ Also spelled Waks or Wachs. In Avotaynu XXIV Number 2 (Summer 2008), Dr. Neil Rosenstein in an article about matching up Rabbinical sources and Polish records points to the difficulty in tracing Rabbi Wax's records. This is due to the use of the surname Gerymter (sometimes together with the surname Waks) that appears in Kalisz vital records as indexed in JRI-Poland, a name that does not appear in any Rabbinical sources. Analysis of other Polish vital records, including records from Jozefow Ordynacki that are the marriage records of 2 siblings of Chaim Elozor from Tarnogrod, use the Gerymter surname. It is clear that his family used the name Gerymter and not Waks. One of these records show that he had a brother-in-law named Zrul WAKS, and this might be the source (reason unknown) of the Waks name used by Rabbi Chaim Elozor, a surname that he used together with the name Gerymter in Kalisz vital records.
- ^ The State Archive of Kalisz Archived November 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine: "Jewish Civil Registry of Kalisz", Town: Kalisz, Year: 1889, Akt (record) #: 45, Record Type: death, Given Name: Chajm Lajzer, Surname: Gerimter / Waks.
- ^ Kollel Polen