About Yisrael Meir Kagan
Yisrael Meir ha-Kohen Kagan (February 6, 1838 – September 15, 1933) was a Lithuanian rabbi, posek, and ethicist whose works are widely influential in Orthodox Jewish life. He was known popularly as the Chofetz Chaim, after his book with that title on lashon hara, and was also well known for the Mishnah Berurah, his book on ritual law. == Biography == Kagan was born on February 6, 1838, in Dzienciol (Yiddish: זשעטל, romanized: Zhetl), Grodno Governorate in Russian Empire (today Dzyatlava in Belarus), and died on 15 September 1933 in Raduń (Yiddish: ראַדין, romanized: Radin), Nowogródek Voivodeship in Second Polish Republic (now in Belarus). When Kagan was ten years old, his father, Aryeh Z'ev Kagan (Poupko), died during a cholera epidemic at the age of 46. His mother moved the family to Vilnius in order to continue her son's Jewish education. While in Vilnius, Kagan became a student of Jacob Barit. Kagan's mother, Dobrusha, remarried Reb Shimon Epstein, and moved to Radin. At 17, he married Frieda Kagan (Epstein), the daughter of his stepfather, and settled in Radin. Later in life, he would revert his name back to Kagan. This is why there are a number of letters of his extant that he signed as Poupko and others as Kagan.
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