YOYSEF DOKTOROVITSH

YOYSEF DOKTOROVITSH (b. 1874)

            He was born in Smorgon (Smarhon’), Lithuania, son of R. Yankev Doktorovitsh.  He studied in a number of yeshivas.  From 1904 he was living in the United States, where he was a teacher in yeshivas.  He erected a model of the Second Temple—entitled “Takhnit bet-hamigdash” (Plan of the Second Temple)—which he exhibited in Pittsburg, Baltimore, and New York.  The display later burned down, and he went on to build a model of the First Temple.  He was the author of a religious text, Midot habatim al masekhet midot (The measurements of the Temples, on [Talmudic] tractate Midot), which describes the appearance of the Temple, both the first and the second; it was printed together with his work in Yiddish, Der beysamigdesh (The Temple), a precise description of the Temple with all its gates and rooms.  The two books together: (Brooklyn, New York, 1936), 115 pp.

Source: Ben-Tsiyon Ayzenshadt, Dorot haaḥaronim (Generation of the later ones), vol. 2 (New York, 1913-1914), pp. 52-53.