(1839-1915). Lithuanian rabbi, educational innovator, founder of the Mizrachi movement. Reines was born in Karlin. His father, who had lived in Palestine for a number of years, gave him a solid talmudic education, but he also studied Jewish works on logic and mathematics and the works of the great Jewish philosophers. Uncharacteristically for a rabbi of his time, he also knew Russian and German.
His first rabbinic position was in Saukenai (1867). In 1869 he was appointed rabbi of the more important town of Swienciany, where he remained for 16 years. In 1880 and 1881 he published his two-volume Ḥotem Tokhnit, a plan which many rabbis considered quite radical, aimed at introducing a modernized, logical method of talmudic study. Had he not been known for his extreme piety, he might have been accused of heresy. His program envisaged the introduction of general subjects in addition to the conventional Jewish curriculum in a ten-year course of studies. As the plan was opposed, he opened his own yeshivah in 1884. However, it was closed four years later by the Russian authorities as a result of pressure by various Jewish bodies. In 1885, Reines became rabbi of Lida, where he remained until his death. In Lida, in 1905, he was able to open another yeshivah modeled on his philosophy, this time with more success.
Reines was very active in the Zionist movement as a member of Ḥibbat Zion. When an attempt was made at the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901) to give the Zionist Organization a "cultural" orientation, he founded the religious Mizrachi movement as a counterweight. Mizrachi soon became the most influential Zionist movement in Russia. Reines was also responsible for opening schools in Palestine combining religious and general studies under a Religious Zionist aegis.
