RADIN, ADOLPH MOSES

RADIN, ADOLPH MOSES (1848–1909), U.S. rabbi and communal worker. Radin, born in Neustadt-Schirwindt, Lithuania, served as rabbi in Prussia and Poland, and then immigrated to the United States in 1886, becoming rabbi in Elmira, New York. There he was appointed visiting Jewish chaplain of the State Reformatory, but soon accepted a position as rabbi of Congregation Gates of Hope in New York City. A pioneer among American rabbis in working with Jewish inmates, Radin was named chaplain of all penal institutions in New York and Brooklyn (1890), serving until his death. In 1905 he assumed the pulpit of the People's Synagogue of the Educational Alliance, from which he assisted immigrants on the Lower East Side, and founded the Russian American Hebrew Association, which he considered his greatest achievement. Radin was an active philanthropic fund raiser and a champion of Zionism. He wrote Offener Brief eines polnischen Juden an Heinrich von Treitschke (18853); Asirei Oni u-Varzel (1893), a report on the Jews in New York prisons; and other works, and contributed to Hebrew, German, Polish, and American Jewish periodicals. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S.A. Neuhausen, Telishat Asavim al Kever A.M. Radin (1910); AJYB, 5 (1903/04), 87; CCARY, 19 (1909), 424–31.