(1876-1927). A fine three-quarter length portrait looking frontwards.

CHAJES, TZVI PERETZ.

c. 1918

Oil on canvas. Signed in red by artist (indecipherable) lower left. Framed.

Tzvi Peretz Chajes was born in Brody, Galicia, where he was trained for a rabbinic career. He first served congregations in Florence and Trieste, where he developed his scholarly talents as an historian and researcher of the Bible. In 1918 he was invited to become Chief Rabbi of Vienna, a city thriving with a wide variety of Jews who had found refuge their from the destruction of so many Jewish communities in Eastern Europe as a result of World War I. Chajes was one of the very first rabbis to support Herzlian Zionism and in Vienna he also served as chairman of the Zionist Executive Committee. He died young yet his talents and charisma outlived him and his name still resonates in Vienna today by way of the the Zvi Perez Chajes Schule (ZPC). Chajes was reinterred in the Trumpledor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.