Meir Don Plotsky

Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzky (1866–1928) was a Polish talmudic scholar and communal leader born in Kutno into a family close to the Hasidic court of Ger. As a boy he studied at the Kalisz yeshiva of Rabbi Chaim Eliezer Wax, and he came to regard Rabbi Avraham Bornsztain, the Avnei Nezer of Sochaczew, as his foremost teacher. In 1891 he took up the rabbinate of Dvart (Warta), and he later served as rabbi of Ostrów Mazowiecka. His reputation spread with Chemdas Yisrael (from 1903), a work touching on Maimonides' Sefer HaMitzvot, and grew further through his Torah commentary Kli Chemdah. Active in Agudath Israel and its rabbinical council, he traveled to American cities on the movement's behalf in 1921. Around 1926 he left the rabbinate to head the Mesivta yeshiva in Warsaw, and he died in 1928.