Rabbi Chaikin was born in the
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1931, where his father, Meir Chaim Chaikin, had served as an emissary of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi
Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. In 1955, Chaikin went on
shlichus to
Morocco and served as the head of the Chabad
Yeshiva in
Agadir. Due to the teaching of
Hebrew in schools under his auspices, he was accused of being a
Zionist. This led him to leave Morocco and relocate to
France. He subsequently moved to
Denmark, where he established a Chabad yeshiva. In 1968, Rabbi Chaikin accepted a rabbinic position in Brussels, Belgium. As a result of this position, he became an influential rabbinic figure in
Europe. He served as Chief Rabbi of Ukraine until 2008, when he asked Rabbi
Jonathan Markovitch to succeed him; subsequently, he moved to the
Crown Heights neighborhood of
Brooklyn. ==References==