For many Seforim blog readers, the name ‘Abramsky’ will instantly be associated with the personality of Rav Yechezkel Abramsky (1886-1976), the author of Hazon Yechezkel on the Tosefta. Born in Russia, imprisoned by the Soviets, released in the 1930’s after diplomatic intervention by the U.S. and Britain, he was for years the head of the London Beth Din before his retirement to Israel.
But other readers will also know his son, Chimen (1916-2010), whose life followed a very different path, and was, simultaneously, one of the leading bibliophiles of the Jewish world – and of the Socialist-Marxist world. One of his grandsons, Sasha Abramsky, has written a memoir of his grandfather centred on 5, Hillway – Chimen’s house close to London’s Hampstead Heath (and to Highgate Cemetery, burial place of Karl Marx). Chimen was a bibliophile and scholar, but also an obsessive collector of books, of which 5, Hillway contained an estimated twenty thousand. This book describes the house room by room, and the significance of the books in each one, piled high and crammed into every nook and cranny.
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