Menahem Manish Chajes ABD Vilna

One of the earliest rabbis of Vilna. On the text of his tombstone see Sid Leiman's blog:
https://seforimblog.com/2020/07/in-praise-of-ephemera-a-picture-pos...

Text reconstruction:

פה
נטמן בו גאון עוזנו
|חשך| היום עלינו, |משיח| ה' רוח אפי|נו|
מים זילו עפעפינו, אוי נא לנו כי
חטאנו נפלה עטרת ראשינו
שמש חשכה בעדינו ה"ה הגאון
הגדול החסיד |ו|העניו נ"י ע"ה פ"ה
רגמ"ה ר"מ ואב"|ד| כבוד מורינו
ורבינו מהור"ר |מנחם מאנש בן
מוה"ר יצחק חיות זצ״ל| יצאה
נשמתו הטהורה בנשיקה יום
ב' ח' אייר כי פנה היום שמש
|וירח קדרו ושמים| לפ״ק|?|
|תנצב"ה|

According to Prof Hava Turniansky, Chajes comes from Chaja's חיה׳ס, like Sirkes, Etkes, etc. Hence Chajes is the spelling in la'az not Chajos or Chajus.

Per Michael Rony: Most family members lived in Eastern Galicia, around Lemberg/Lvov/Lviv. In the Polish records where they were called Chajes. In the Hebrew sources they spell their name as חיות. A few of these migrated to Hungary and are listed in the Hungarian records as Chajes. The Hebrew spelling raises doubts about the derivation of the name from the name Chaje, unless you accept the theory that the family preferred to be known as the "animals" instead of the descendants of a woman by the name of Chaje. More likely the name means something like vitality and the modern Hebrew pronunciation of Chayut reflects the original meaning better than the Yiddish pronunciation.

Chief Rabbinical Judge of Vilna

Author

Listed in Toldos Avrohom, p. 464

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/hebrewbooks_org_46423_669.pdf

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