MEDINI, ḤAYYIM HEZEKIAH (known also under his initials ):

By: Isidore Singer, M. Franco

Palestinian rabbinical writer; born at Jerusalem 1833; son of Rabbi Raphael Eliahu Medini. At the age of nineteen, on completing his studies in his native city, he received the rabbinical diploma. He then went to Constantinople, where for thirteen years he was a member of a rabbinical court. In 1866 he was called as chief rabbi to Kara-Su-Bazar in the Crimea. In 1889 Medini returned to Palestine, staying first at Jerusalem, and going in 1891 to Hebron, where he has since been acting chief rabbi.

Medini's works include: "Miktab le-Ḥizḳiyahu" (Smyrna, 1865), Talmudic studies and responsa; "Or Li" (ib. 1874), responsa; "Paḳḳu'ot Sadeh" (Jerusalem, 1900); "Sede Ḥemed," his chief work, an encyclopedic collection of laws and decisions in alphabetical order, twelve volumes of which have appeared since 1890 (Warsaw).

S. M. Fr.