RABINOWITZ, LOUIS MAYER

RABINOWITZ, LOUIS MAYER (1887–1957), U.S. manufacturer and philanthropist. Rabinowitz, who was born in Rosanne, Lithuania, immigrated to the U.S. in 1901. In 1916 he established a corset manufacture company in New York. Rabinowitz subsequently became chairman of the corset industry (1934) and director of the Business Men's Council (1935). Active in Jewish community affairs, he was vice president of the Hebrew National Orphan Home (1921), the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, the American Jewish Historical Society, the New York chapter of the America-Israel Society, and director of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City (1935). A collector of books, manuscripts, and paintings, he gave much of his collection to the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yale University. Donating the Rabinowitz Fund for Judaica Research at Yale, he established a chair there in Semitic languages and literature (1955). Rabinowitz served as director of the Yale University Association of Fine Arts and as honorary trustee of the Yale Library Associates. A director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he established the Louis M. Rabinowitz Institute for Research in Rabbinics at the seminary in 1951 and donated many rare books to its library. The Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation (1953) sponsored a five-year archaeological exploration in Israel in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati.