Kisselov, Aaron Moses. Mishberei Yam [“Waves of the Sea”: Responsa]

One of a small handful of Hebrew works printed in Harbin, Northern Manchuria, home to an affluent White Russian-Jewish emigre community. The author, Moses Aaron Kisselov, was rabbi of the Jewish community of Harbin and a first-rate halachist. Many of the responsa in this collection deal with pressing issues peculiar to the difficulties of Jewish life in the remote areas of the Far East. For example, we read at the beginning of Chapter 33 (“Halachoth requiring a solution based on the present local situation”): “in this region of the Far East, and in the lands of China and Japan, there are few Jews in various cities, and due to their minute number, they have not a learned rabbi qualified to arrange ‘gitin’ (bills of divorce), neither have they a ‘sofer’ (scribe) and there are among them such that have left behind women in Russia, and desire to divorce them. In some cases, the distance to the nearest ‘talmid chacham’ knowledgeable of ‘gitin’ is thousands of miles. If we do not allow these men to appoint a scribe and witnesses in another locale, their wives will be left ‘agunoth’ (forbidden to remarry)” (p.236).