Half-length portrait, facing right.

JOSEPH, RABBI JACOB

Oil painting on panel, signature in red (indecipherable) lower right.

Provenance: From the Estate of Chief Rabbi Joseph’s great grand-daughter. Rabbi Ya’akov Yoseph (1848-1902) studied at the Yeshiva of Volozhin, before his appointment as Rabbi of Vilna in 1883. In 1888 he was called to the United States to assume the newly created post of Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Congregations of Russian Jews in New York City. However due to the tragedy of his experiences at the hands of New York Jewry, he would be the first and the last “Rav Hakollel” - Chief Rabbi of New York. See Yonah Landau, The Rav Hakolel and His Generation: A Biography of Yaakov Yosef Chief Rabbi of New York and His Battles for Yiddishkeit at the Turn of the Century (2011).