The old saying goes “You cannot see the forest for the trees.” But for genealogists, the reverse is more likely. One finds genealogical material so overgrown with historical weeds that the tree must be uprooted in order to see its true shape. This article concerns the genealogy of the prominent early 19th-century rabbinical scholar, Rabbi Issac Eizik Chaver (also spelled Haver), whose progeny have been connected erroneously to the prominent Katzenellenbogen rabbinical family. This error was based upon a mistranslation and misinterpretation of a 1960 family genealogy published by the Sherwood family of London.

Rabbi Chaver, a prolific writer of published books, was born in Grodno in 1789. He was elected chief rabbi of Porasow (east of Bialystok) while still in his youth, and successively served as chief rabbi of Ruzhany (for 14 years), Volkovysk, Tykocin, and finally Suwalki, where he died on November 3, 1842. He wrote Beit Yitzchak (novellae), Sudilkow, 1836; Yad Mitzrayim (biurim, or explanations), Warsaw, 1842; Seder Zemanim, Warsaw, 1844; Binyan Olam (responsa), Warsaw, 1851; and Bayit Ne’eman; Ginzei Meromim; Ohr Torah; and Be’er Yiztchak, all in Warsaw, 1888. A eulogy entitled Nefesh Naki, by Isaac’s son R. Joseph Chaver, was published in Warsaw in 1853.

Rabbi Isaac had sons who also were prominent rabbinical scholars. One, Rabbi Moses Rabinowitz, (1817–93), was chief rabbi of Yedwabno. He inherited his father’s manuscript Be’er Yitzchak, published in Warsaw in 1888 by R. Samuel Luria, and the manuscript Beit Olamim, also published in Warsaw in 1889 by Luria. Rabbi Chaver’s ethical will appears at the end of Beit Olamim. Rabbi Moses also possessed a large number of his father’s unpublished manuscripts. Moses had a son, David Rabinowitz, born in Deretchin in 1833 and died in Byten (Buten), northwest of Pinsk, in 1891.

The attempt to construct the genealogical tree of the Chaver family appeared in a booklet written by one of his descendants, Cyril Sherwood, of London, England, son of Solomon Sherwood, son of Hirsch Sheinbaum.¹ Hirsch Steinbaum’s wife was Shprintze (1858–1913), a daughter of the David Rabinowitz mentioned above. The Sherwood booklet, entitled The Book of the Family, 1408–1960, was published privately by Cyril Sherwood in London in 1960, and was divided into a preface (written by Cyril Sherwood), introduction and genealogy. The genealogy included a translation of the family’s genealogical pedigree from a Hebrew document that “had been in the possession of our family for many years.” The original Hebrew document, which traces the genealogy back to the famous Katzenellenbogen family, is shown in Figure 1. Sherwood notes that the Hebrew text was translated by Rabbi Joshua Heschel of Edware, Middlesex, England, and that the family chart included in this 1960 booklet “was drawn by the Scrivener of the College of Arms, London.”

The introduction to Sherwood’s booklet is based on an earlier family genealogy published in Tel Aviv in 1928 (in both Hebrew and English) by Mordecai Rabinowitz, a brother of the David Rabinowitz cited above. Mordecai includes an in-depth study of the Chaver-Rabinowitz family, recording the names of all the wives, except in the case of his paternal grandfather, Rabbi Isaac Eizik Chaver. The name of Chaver’s wife does not appear. In addition, Mordecai makes no reference to the Katzenellenbogen family, which does appear in the Hebrew genealogical pedigree in the possession of his brother David Rabinowitz. The reason for these differences is discussed below.

Rabbi Heschel’s translation, together with his footnotes, has produced a major error in recording the family genealogy, an error that has resulted in making all descendants of Rabbi Isaac Eizik Chaver descendants of the Katzenellenbogen family, whereas, in fact, it was only David Rabinowitz’s family, through his wife, who were descendants of the Katzenellenbogens.

Rabbi Heschel assumed that when the family pedigree document states in Hebrew “my distinguished mother, Rivka Miriam,” it should have been written (and thus read) as “his distinguished mother, Rivka Miriam.” At this point, Heschel writes a long footnote justifying his interpretation. He begins by saying that “the genealogy does not state in so many words which of the Chaver family was Rivka Miriam’s husband” and the phrase “his mother” is not specific, since several members of the family have just been mentioned.

Heschel notes that Rabbi Jacob’s wife (father of Rabbi Isaac Eizik Chaver) is recorded as Cheinke, and Rabbi Moses’s (son of Rabbi Isaac Eizik Chaver) wife is recorded as Chaike. His erroneous conclusion is that “Rivka Miriam must therefore have been the wife of Rabbi Itzchak Eisik Chaver.”² Heschel’s final conclusion is that “it seems certain that the word was originally imo (his mother) and at some stage the vav has become a yad.

Real Name of Rabbi Chaver’s Wife

The true name of Rabbi Isaac Eizik Chaver’s wife was Shprintze, not Rivka Miriam. In the introduction to his book entitled Binyan Olam, published in Warsaw in 1851, Rabbi Chaver writes:

Also to greatly recall the memory of my first wife, the upright rabbanit among women, with the fear of G-d should be praised, Mrs. Shprintze, of blessed memory, who died in Tykocin on the 19th Tishrei, 1848. Who for many years took care of me, taking the chores of the household on her shoulders, to make a livelihood for me and our household so that I could turn to Torah and worship.

From this source we may conclude that Rabbi Chaver’s wife was not Rivka Miriam, but Shprintze. His second wife was not the mother of his children, because Shprintze died many years after their children were born (the son Moses was born in 1817). Chaver, thus, had remarried in his old age, as was customary. Moreover, one copy of the 1928 booklet has handwritten annotations on a blank page that records that the mother of Moses, son of Isaac Eizik Chaver, was called Shprintze.³

Figure 2. Captions under pictures present two versions of David Rabinowitz’s wives. Note the corrected version paste-over on the left.

To whom was Rivka Miriam married? This fact is important because it is through her that the family is descended from Katzenellenbogen. The Hebrew-language pedigree that had been in the family’s possession for many years, and upon which the Sherwood booklet is based, says that Rivka was the daughter of Batsheva, daughter of Rabbi Israel Katzenellenbogen, who died in Jerusalem.⁴ The dates of death of Rabbi Israel Katzenellenbogen and that of his wife, Sarah, daughter of Isaac, have been preserved in a yarhzeit list found in the possession of a family in Israel that descends from Rabbi Israel. Both Israel and Sarah died at the end of 1868 and are buried on the Mount of Olives. The book Chelkat Mechokek, which lists burials on the Mount of Olives, includes Sarah’s epitaph. The fate of Israel’s grave and epitaph remains unclear. Israel was the great-great-grandson of Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen of Hamburg, mentioned below.

Since we know that Rivka Miriam was not the wife of Rabbi Jacob (Cheinke); his son, Rabbi Isaac Eizik (Shprintze); or his son, Moses (Chaike), we must look to the next generation, that of David Rabinowitz and his brothers. The 1928 source is the earliest we have.

In the Yiddish section, the 1970 family book, Nine Generations, says that David’s two wives were Rivka Miriam and Batsheva.⁹ It seems that all of David’s children came from his first wife. One of his daughters was named Batsheva, so she obviously was not named after the second wife of the same name.¹⁰ No other descendants were named Batsheva.

Next, we must reexamine the Hebrew pedigree (yichus) document to explain the meaning of imi (my mother), which had confused Rabbi Heschel. The yichus begins (as the illustration shows) with Shprintze.¹¹ Her name is indented for a specific reason—so that each of her children could add his or her name to the beginning of the lineage. The second line, which starts the yichus, has one oddity—there is an added word that, unlike the rest of the text, has the Hebrew vowel (dots) added to read zekeini (my grandfather). This clearly refers to the children of Shprintze who were going to add their names, since all sources record very clearly that Shprintze was the daughter of David who died

in 1891 (as the yichus states). The next three lines present no problem, as the lineage is that of the Chaver ancestry.

The end of line 5 has the problem word imi (my mother). Since the yichus starts with Shprintze, it is obvious that “my mother” refers to Shprintze’s mother, Rivka Miriam. It is most likely that the compiler of this yichus saw no need to include any additional words. Any additional text would most likely have confused the reader more as was the case with Rabbi Heschel. In his case, he started the tree, as is stated in the 1960 booklet, with “Solomon, son of Shprintze.”¹² The remainder of the ancestry is that of the Katzenellenbogen family, as is recorded in many similar pedigree manuscripts held by members of the Polish-Lithuanian branches of the family.¹³

Descendants of the Katzenellenbogen Family

A family tree reconstruction of the various branches of the descendants of Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen,¹⁴ clearly shows how the various branches of the family “fit into the mold.” If the family tree were to be constructed.

be immediately apparent by studying the tree in Figure 3 and the dates of birth and deaths presented

The Sherwood family has a copy of the 1928 booklet in which names of various members of David Rabinowitz’s family are recorded on blank pages. The booklet was compiled by Solomon Sherwood, son of Hirsch (Zvi Abraham) Sheinbaum, and includes Solomon’s date of birth.

The fact that only David Rabinowitz’s family can claim descent from the Katzenellenbogen family and their famed ancestor, Saul Wahl, legendary Polish “king for a night” in the 16th century, is a difficult pill for some members of the family to swallow. One family member, David Weiner of Stockholm, Sweden, expended much time, money and effort to have the broken Hamburg tombstone of the chief rabbi of Hamburg, Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen, who died in 1749, repaired and re-erected in 1994. Weiner had assumed that Rabbi Ezekiel was his ancestor, only to learn now that this is untrue.

Other members of the Rabinowitz family celebrated yearly the festive meal known as “Sudat (Feast of the) Tosfot YomTov” on Rosh Chodesh (new month of) Adar, with members of David Rabinowitz’s family, only to learn now that they cannot claim descent from Rabbi YomTov Lipman Heller, chief rabbi of Prague and then Cracow. Rabbi Heller died in 1654 and was buried in Cracow. In the third book on the family, entitled Nine Generations, written by Haim Rabinowitz and published as a hardcover book in Hebrew and English in Tel Aviv in 1970, we read, “I [the author] had the good fortune to participate for many years in such holidays (that is, the Sudat Tosfot YomTov) celebrated by…the Katzenellenbogen family, connected with the family of David Rabinowitz.”¹⁵

The Sandock family of South Bend, Indiana, had a large format, artistically designed family tree specially made for the family members, only to learn now that its details are untrue.

For the present writer, also a descendant of Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen, chief rabbi of Hamburg, a large section of the Chaver-Rabinowitz family needs to be edited and excluded from descendants of the Katzenellenbogen family, which can be found in Chapter VIII of his 1990 edition of The Unbroken Chain.

Conclusion

The interpretation of primary sources used in constructing family trees is only as accurate as the researcher doing the interpretation. This does not detract from the fact that primary sources are the most important ones to study, understand and interpret—correctly. Many existing errors are becoming increasingly evident. Scholars must check the primary sources themselves. Researchers should not base conclusions on the work of others who may not have studied the primary sources, but who only made use of secondary or even tertiary texts, which could be translations, from or into other languages, with concomitant inaccuracies.

Notes

1. The present writer met Cyril Sherwood in London in 1998, when Dr. Rosenstein gave a talk to the local genealogical society. Subsequent to that meeting, Mr. Sherwood shared his thoughts, in a letter, about this subject and concluded “one interpretation could certainly be that the line to the Katzenellenbogens was through David Rabbinowitz’ [sic] first wife Rivke [sic] Miriam. In any event, one must always be wary about the accuracy of the contents of a Yichus Brief.”
2. Page 24.
3. In possession of Cyril Sherwood.
4. There is no record in the family as to whom her husband was. It only states she was of noble ancestry.
5. Cyril Sherwood’s copy has paste-over text, in other sections as well.
6. David’s brother, Leib’s wife is stated to have been named Breina, so the names of the wives may have been confused.
7. Page 17.
8. Page 57.
9. Named after her mother’s mother.
10. The 1960 booklet states the pedigree begins with Solomon, son of Shprintze. Solomon’s name would have been prepended to the document. The illustration shows the name added to be that of Eta (Hetty Silverman, a first cousin to Cyril Sherwood), daughter of Joseph, son of Shprintze. This illustration confirms the fact that each branch prepended its own details.
11. Page 23.
12. The present writer has many such copies as well as one antique original on parchment.
13. Included in this article.
14. Page 25 of the English section.

 

Dr. Neil Rosenstein, born in Cape Town, South Africa, is a surgeon now living in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He helped found the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York) and is the author of numerous works including the Lurie Legacy, Unbroken Chain, Latter Day Leaders, Sages and Scholars, The Gaon of Vilna and his Cousinhood and others. He just published The Grandees of New Jersey: Naar; Baiz; Peixotto; Pretto and Seixas families; and Saul Waul, the Polish King or Lithuanian Knight.