ABSTRACT
Feinstein was a major halachic authority (posek) and generational authority (gadol ha-dor) in the Orthodox Litvak (non-Hasidic) Jewish world of the twentieth century. He was born in the village of Uzda in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). He graduated from yeshivas in Slutsk, Shklov and Mstislaw and then served as rabbi in Lyuban (near Minsk). He spent the greater part of his life in the United States, where he managed to emigrate in 1937. He settled in New York, where he became dean of Yeshiva Mesivta Tiferes Yerushalayim. He published many theological works. Two very famous works by him are his collection of halachic decisions and response, Igros Moshe (‘Letters of Moshe’), and his Talmudic commentary, Dibros Moshe (‘Words of Moshe’). Moshe Feinstein died in New York, but his body was transported to Jerusalem, where his funeral at the cemetery Har Ha-Menuchot was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
