Joseph Shapotshnick

A prolific author of numerous self-published books, pamphlets, newspapers and journals, Shapotshnick published in 1908 an 80-page treatise on the kabbalistic meanings of the name of God, entitled "Kedushas H-Shem".

[citation needed] From the mid-1920s, Shapotshnick offered to help agunot — women whose inability to gain a Jewish divorce meant that they could not remarry — to find ways of resolving their problems.

It is not clear whether any of the women he helped ever remarried, but there were serious concerns[weasel words] that his dispensations for them to do so were faulty, potentially meaning that their offspring from a second marriage would be considered mamzerim (bastards) under Jewish ritual law.

Eventually, the newly established Adath Yisrael community agreed to inter him at their Enfield cemetery, after the imposition of various conditions on his only son, Levi.

The crowd was almost exclusively drawn from the common folk of the East End Jewish community, who were mostly unaffected by his controversial episodes, but who saw him as a fighter for their cause and a charismatic religious leader.