79 facts · 36 questions
Evidence ID map
Find the 79 numbered facts and 36 numbered questions, with their evidence labels, images and source links.
How this map works: When an item is corrected or replaced it keeps its old number, so old citations still find it. Labels only change when new evidence does.
| ID | Evidence label | Images | Source links | Retained claim or question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F-01 | Documented | 7 | 1 | Born in Volozhin on the second day of Sukkos 5640, 1879, to his father Reb Yeshaya and his mother Sara. This date is well corroborated: it matches his age at death independently given by two memoirists, F-02. One later source disagrees:... Read full entry |
| F-62 | Documented | 2 | 1 | His own eyewitness account of the 1892 closing of Volozhin, quoted by a third party six years after his death. A 1968 HaDoar essay on student unrest through history quotes his final article, שביתת התלמידים בישיבת ואלוז'ין , HaDoar, 4 Iyar... Read full entry |
| F-02 | Corroborated | 18 | 3 | Died in Brooklyn on 9 Cheshvan 5723, Tuesday 6 November 1962, aged 83, his birthday having fallen at Sukkos as F-01 gives it. His own son gives the identical date. Buried at Beth David Cemetery, 300 Elmont Road, Elmont, New York. The... Read full entry |
| F-77 | Documented | 3 | 2 | His last article, and the one life of Rav Itzele he wrote. HaDoar, New York, no. 7 of 5723, 14 December 1962, issue p.9 (printed annual p.109): ר' איצלי מוולוז'ין , by M. S. Shapiro, subtitled on the 120th anniversary of his journey to... Read full entry |
| F-78 | Documented | 3 | 2 | The 1903 Telšiai marriage record fixes the date at 14 February 1903 Old Style, 30 Shevat 5663. The native Hebrew scan reads the groom's line exactly as אלי׳ בן יוסף שמוקלער and the bride as חי׳ בת אבא זאק. The surname Shmukler appears on both the Hebrew and Russian halves. An abbreviation on the Hebrew half reads כמ״הּ; its expansion remains unresolved. The Russian half supplies the civil surname, communities, age columns, witnesses and ketubah amount. The wider record set establishes that this groom was Rav Moshe Shmuel under his borrowed-papers identity; that identity ruling does not license adding words to the Hebrew line.Read full entry |
| F-03 | Documented | 22 | 3 | Studied in Volozhin under Rabbi Ziskind. Around age fifteen, circa 1894 to 1895, he spent time studying under his own brother, Rav Shimon Mordechai, who by then already had a yeshiva in Smorgon. He returned to Volozhin and studied there... Read full entry |
| F-04 | Documented | 14 | 3 | Four ordinations, from four different rabbis. His own autobiography names two: Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz, rav of Kovno, and Rabbi Moshe Danishevski of Slobodka. His son's biographical preface adds two more: Rav Rafael Shapira, rosh... Read full entry |
| F-45 | Documented | 2 | 1 | Four of these documents are reproduced in print, not just described. R' Moshe Shmuel V'Doro carries photocopies of the handwritten originals, listed in its own contents under תצלומי כתבי-סמיכה ומכתבים : a letter of recommendation from Rav... Read full entry |
| F-05 | Documented | 1 | 1 | In his youth he spent a period in Iași, Romania, as a tutor to the sons of a leading householder. This appears in no other source and is an entirely unexplored chapter of his... Read full entry |
| F-40 | Documented | 6 | 1 | A childhood story, in his own words. Around age twelve a friend talked him into visiting one of the new government schools in Volozhin, staffed by teachers from the Vilna Teachers' Seminary headed by Yehoshua Steinberg, so that he could... Read full entry |
| F-06 | Corroborated | 17 | 2 HaTzofe thumbnail and readable reprint | Married Chaya, daughter of Rav Avraham Abba Zak, rav of Alsedziai, known as Olshad or Alshad, in 5663,... Read full entry |
| F-07 | Documented | 9 | 2 | In 1914, 5674, he was invited to give shiurim at a new yeshiva in Anykščiai. The yeshiva closed when the war broke out that same year. R' Shimon Zak's memoir, independently of the Yizkor book, confirms this in the same words: בשנת תרע"ד... Read full entry |
| F-08 | Corroborated | 3 | 2 | He was rav of Olshad in his own right, and was still on that seat in 1923. See section 6 for how this fits alongside his father-in-law's fifty-year... Read full entry |
| F-09 | Documented | 17 | 4 | Emigrated to New York at the end of summer 5683, 1923, now confirmed by his own immigration record. The Ellis Island manifest of the S.S. Lituania, sailing from Libau, records a Moses Shapiro, age 45, arriving 6 September 1923, last... Read full entry |
| F-69 | Unverified | 5 | 3 | Family testimony reports a Cleveland period, but the letters have not been independently read. Letters he wrote from Cleveland are printed in his own sefer דרכי שמואל , New York 1977, per direct family testimony. No online scan of this... Read full entry |
| F-63 | Documented | 1 | 1 | His own writing from inside those lean years, not just a letter describing them. In 1926, while still without a settled position, he published a Yiddish fundraising appeal, צו דער בענייאונג פון דעם אלטען כולל קאוונא , To Every Renewal of... Read full entry |
| F-10 | Documented | 7 | 1 | Rav and menahel of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, per his son's account. At one point he had to appeal to the Agudas HaRabbonim to protect his position against the trustees. The length of his tenure is disputed... Read full entry |
| F-64 | Documented | 1 | 1 | The yeshiva reached its peak under him in the 1930s. A 1978 HaDoar review of דרכי שמואל quotes R' Nisan Goldberg's own preface to that book, F-61's source: Yeshivas R' Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn reached its height in the 1930s under his... Read full entry |
| F-61 | Documented | 2 | 1 | A former talmid's own memoir of him as menahel, a newly found and previously uncited source. R' Nisan Goldberg, a talmid at Chaim Berlin around 1933, published his own recollections in רבי ר' משה שמואל שפירא , HaDoar, 25 January 1963,... Read full entry |
| F-11 | Documented | 4 | 2 | His son Yechiel (Joel) owned a print shop and held his father's manuscripts. He published the two posthumous volumes, and he is the "Joel" of the family comments on kevarim. He was the younger brother of Simcha, see F-42, who did not... Read full entry |
| F-55 | Documented | 0 | 1 | The 1940 census records Moses and Ida Shapiro in Brooklyn with their sons Hyman, Irving and Joel. Earlier “Israel” wording was a stale misreading. This household supports Hyman/Chaim, Irving/Isaac and Yechiel/Jochel/Joel as the same established people under their recorded names.Read full entry |
| F-56 | Documented | 4 | 1 | Joel/Jochel/Yechiel Shapiro declaration 213143, sworn 15 March 1933 [original image checked]: 1735 Sterling Place; linotype operator [HIGH], with a shorter struck occupation likely “student” [MEDIUM]; age 20, single; born Kurtzan, Lithuania, 10 June 1912 [HIGH]; last foreign residence Alsedziai [HIGH]; entered New York as Jochel Sapiro on 4 April 1927 aboard President Roosevelt. The Lithuanian register gives 26 May 1912 Julian / 8 June Gregorian at Olsiady/Alsedziai, so the two-day date gap and Kurtzan-versus-Alsedziai distinction remain explicit. Petition 217141, sworn 5 June 1936 [new original], repeats these fields and names witnesses Morris Borenstein and Samuel Katz. The declaration triplicate preserves Joel’s first known photograph and his signature. The 1912 birth image is not on the FamilySearch microfilm and has not been retrieved from LVIA, so that birth act remains text-only.Read full entry |
| F-58 | Documented | 4 | 2 | Hyman Shapiro petition 212942, sworn 9 March 1936 [original image checked]: 1735 Sterling Place; printer; born Kurtzen, Lithuania, 10 October 1909 [HIGH]; last foreign residence Alsedziai; entered New York as Chaim Shapiro on 4 April 1927 aboard President Roosevelt; unmarried. The FamilySearch index year 1902 is a misindex: the petition itself types 1909, consistent with the 1927 manifest age 17 and the other records.Read full entry |
| F-59 | Documented | 3 | 2 | Irving is Isaac/Isaak Shapiro, born 15 August 1917 in Alsėdžiai. His original two-sided draft card, checked directly, records Irving Shapiro, age 23, born 15 August 1917 in Alesdzai, Lithuania; his home was 1735 Sterling Place, Brooklyn.... Read full entry |
| F-57 | Documented | 0 | 1 | Still an active rabbi at 70, twelve years before his death. The 1950 census, checked directly, lists Moses Shapiro, head of household, age 70, born Russia, widowed, occupation rabbi, industry Yeshiva, in Brooklyn, Kings County,... Read full entry |
| F-79 | Documented | 1 | 5 | A full Brooklyn address-and-phone chain, 1928 to 1957, closing the gap X-08 once flagged as unsearched. A family collaborator's word-coordinate sweep of the Brooklyn residential telephone directories on the Internet Archive, every issue... Read full entry |
| F-12 | Documented | 2 | 1 | R' Shimon Zak, the writer, was his brother-in-law. R' Rivkind quotes him using the word גיסי , my brother-in-law, and identifies the man: הגיס הנזכר הוא הסופר שמעון זק... Read full entry |
| F-41 | Documented | 11 | 1 | His wife Chaya died on 4 Marcheshvan 5707, in the autumn of 1946, matched independently by R' Rivkind's own memoir, which gives the same month and year. A memorial page for her, headed ציון לנפש אמנו היקרה חיה ז"ל , calls her בת הרב הגאון... Read full entry |
| F-42 | Documented | 9 | 2 | The eldest son, Simcha. The family's own tradition of an eldest son who stayed in Europe and was murdered, recorded as Q-16, appears here in two primary family sources, and they disagree on where he taught. A memorial page in the sefer... Read full entry |
| F-65 | Documented | 3 | 2 | His own naturalization petition, four surviving children listed by name and birth date. Filed in Brooklyn, certificate 212943, one number after Hyman's own, F-58, confirming father and son naturalized in the same March 1936 batch at the... Read full entry |
| F-67 | Documented | 3 | 4 | Isaac's own arrival record, found at last, and the whole family travels together. A ship manifest, checked directly off the scan, records Chaja Schapiro, 45, wife, and three sons, all born Alsedziai, Lithuania, arriving together on the... Read full entry |
| F-13 | Corroborated | 7 | 4 | Born in Volozhin in 1870, son of Rav Yeshaya and Sara. Studied at the Volozhin yeshiva. Married a wife from Smorgon and lived there many years. A copy of his 1903 sefer offered at auction in 2024 carries, by the dealer's description, the... Read full entry |
| F-14 | Documented | 6 | 2 | He attended the two rabbis of Smorgon, Rabbi Chaim Leib and Rabbi Yehuda Leib Gordin, and his novellae are printed inside Rabbi Gordin's own תשובות יהודה , Responsa of Yehuda, a book of Rabbi Gordin's own halachic rulings and... Read full entry |
| F-47 | Unverified | 1 | 1 | Which specific responsum has not been located. The book's OCR was searched directly for דובינסקי , שמעון מרדכי and סמארגאן , Smorgon. Only Rabbi Gordin's own closing signature, אב"ד דפ"ק סמארגאן , turns up, on simanim 28, 31, 34 and 35;... Read full entry |
| F-48 | Documented | 1 | 1 | A mechutan connection to another rabbinic family. The opening dedication of שם טוב , page 3, is a halachic letter in Shimon Mordechai's own hand addressed to כבוד ידידי מחותני הרב הגאון הצדיק... מו"ה מרדכי שליט"א אבד"ק סלאנים , my friend... Read full entry |
| F-15 | Disproven | 7 | 1 | "Rav of Smorgon" is disproven as stated. The Smorgon Yizkor book has a dedicated chapter listing every rav of the community from before 1750 to the last two, who perished in 1943. He is not on it. He was a resident scholar there, not the... Read full entry |
| F-16 | Corroborated | 5 | 3 | Died in March 1946 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, aged 75 or 76. This is why he was not in Smorgon when it was destroyed, and it is why the Smorgon necrology, all 1,442 entries, contains no Dubinsky at... Read full entry |
| F-17 | Family tradition | 1 | 2 | Rav Shimon Mordechai and Haya-Feiga’s children are preserved in two family-compiled sources with different counts. The VGD tree names six: Itzko-Meir, Polina, Maria, Roza, Fania and Anna. The family chart names eleven, adding Nohm Chaim Vaisbord, Raina Dubinsky, Esphir, Zina, Naum and Manya. Raina Dubinsky is their daughter and the first cousin of the younger Raina Shmukler. Nohm Chaim Vaisbord’s surname placement remains open.Read full entry |
| F-18 | Documented | 2 | 2 | Rav Yeshaya Dubinsky was alive in 1903. His son's title page calls him ישעיה נ"י , an honorific used only of the living. The VGD tree gives him 1836 to 1916, which is family information, not a document. Moshe Shmuel's own son writes that... Read full entry |
| F-19 | Corroborated | 2 | 2 | Sara was alive in 1903, called אמי שתחי'. Born 1836, died 1915. The family's own information and the VGD tree agree exactly on these dates, though they may share a single source. Her grandson's account says she was the one who מספקת את... Read full entry |
| F-20 | Family tradition | 0 | 0 | Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi. He is the hinge of the whole question and he appears in no printed source, in no VGD record, and nowhere in the 1909 book the brothers themselves wrote about Rav... Read full entry |
| F-21 | Family tradition | 0 | 0 | Yeshaya's father was Rav Yitzchok Dubinsky, died 1903. A son born in 1893 was named Itzko-Meir, which is consistent, but the VGD record for Yeshaya says parents... Read full entry |
| F-70 | Documented | 16 | 3 | The Dubinsky family of Volozhin in the Russian revision lists, 1811 to 1874, found in the free All Lithuania Database. The Lithuanian State Historical Archives' revision lists for Volozhin (Oshmiany district) have been partly translated by... Read full entry |
| F-72 | Documented | 7 | 8 | Where the graves are, and are not: a cemetery-by-cemetery pass, 1 September 2026. Beth David, Elmont (Moshe Shmuel, F-02, and presumably Chaya, d. 1946): Find a Grave holds 248 Shapiro memorials at Beth David but none for Moshe Shmuel, for... Read full entry |
| F-73 | Documented | 8 | 10 | Community registers, pinkasim and metrical books: what survives for each town, as far as it can be established from here. Two different kinds of register are in play. A pinkas is the community's own record book (kahal, chevra kadisha,... Read full entry |
| F-22 | Documented | 8 | 2 | There was a third brother, and he is now named: Rav Shlomo Yosef. R' Shimon Zak's biography says their mother played a great role in the education of her three sons, without naming the third. He is named directly in Shimon Mordechai's own... Read full entry |
| F-50 | Documented | 3 | 1 | Rav Shlomo Yosef was himself a rabbi: Av Beis Din of Kalelishok. Printed page 11 of שמן רוקח , exactly where the index on page 3 points (the letter's own internal folio mark is ו, six), carries the full letter behind that index entry,... Read full entry |
| F-23 | Documented | 0 | 1 | The title page transcription lives on a user-editable wiki, but HebrewBooks' own OCR of the searchable copy independently places ממשפחת , אמי , דובינסקי and וואלאזין on page 1, the title page. The substance is corroborated by the scan... Read full entry |
| F-24 | Documented | 5 | 1 | The Smorgon Yizkor book, p.109, says the same thing in its own independent wording: "From his mother's side, Rabbi Mordechai was a member of the family of the Gaon Rabbi Chaim, the founder of the Yeshiva of... Read full entry |
| F-25 | Documented | 0 | 0 | The 1905 מאמר מרדכי title page says only ממשפחת הגאון האמתי מוהר"ח , without the maternal specification. The maternal wording appears on the 1903 page and in the Smorgon Yizkor, so the claim rests on two legs, not one. The 1905 title page... Read full entry |
| F-44 | Documented | 0 | 0 | A third independent voice makes the same claim. Rav Dovid Cohen, a talmid who knew Moshe Shmuel personally for decades in America, writes in his own memoir that he was ליטאי נלהב ממוצא מתנגדים ממשפחת הגר"ח מוואלוז'ין , an ardent Litvak of... Read full entry |
| F-49 | Documented | 1 | 1 | One of the era's leading rabbinic authorities made this claim in print, unprompted by the family. The approbations to Shimon Mordechai's שמן רוקח , page 4, are not his own words but a third party's; in fact, three distinct approbations... Read full entry |
| F-53 | Documented | 2 | 1 | Shimon Mordechai calls him kin too, nine years later, in his own hand. Deeper in the same sefer, one of the letters is addressed לקריניק , to Krynki: כבוד ידידי ש"ב הרב הגאון המפורסם... כקש"ת מו"ה שלמה זלמן סענדער כהנא שפירא שליט"א אבד"ק... Read full entry |
| F-54 | Documented | 8 | 2 | Rav Shmuel Yaakov Rabinowitz, the son-in-law from F-52, has his own entry too, and it names his father. אהלי שם gives him a full entry under his own town, יעלאק , Yelok, Kovno district (the Russian caption under his photograph spells it... Read full entry |
| F-26 | Documented | 2 | 1 | Rav Zalman Sender Kahana Shapira is a documented great-grandson of Rav Chaim. The chain is Rav Chaim, then Relka, then R. Yaakov of Volozhin, then Rav Zalman Sender. This is from print, not from a... Read full entry |
| F-27 | Disputed | 14 | 2 | The Leoni chart is a generation off on Relka. Leoni makes Rav Zeev Soloveitchik and Yankele into her sons without naming her husbands. Lipman has the husbands as R. Yosef Soloveitchik and R. Moshe HaKohen, with Yitzchak Zev and Yankele as... Read full entry |
| F-28 | Documented | 3 | 2 | Somebody was counting the sons-in-law, and the brothers' own book confirms it. Lipman says חתנו השלישי , the third son-in-law, for R' Yosef Soloveitchik. The brothers' 1909 book independently names the second: Rav Mordechai Kamenetzky of... Read full entry |
| F-29 | Documented | 1 | 1 | Moshe Tzvi appears nowhere. Not in the Leoni chart, not in Lipman, and not in the searchable OCR of the brothers' own 1909 book about Rav Chaim. A search inside that book for משה צבי , דובינסקי and שמוקלר returns nothing on any of the... Read full entry |
| F-30 | Documented | 12 | 2 | A different man, often confused with ours. Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro of Be'er Yaakov, 1917 to 2006, is a son of Aryeh Shapira and a grandson of Rav Rafael Shapira, and descends from Rav Chaim through the Netziv's wife Reina Batya. He is the... Read full entry |
| F-46 | Documented | 1 | 1 | Rav Chaim's own in-laws. The brothers' 1909 book names his wife Sara's siblings, none of whom appear in the Leoni chart. A sister married Rav Chanoch Zundel Treivish, who signed the 5564, 1804, public appeal for the Volozhin yeshiva,... Read full entry |
| F-31 | Documented | 13 | 2 HaTzofe thumbnail and readable reprint | Rav Avraham Abba Zak held the Alsedziai seat from 1890 until he was murdered on 7 Elul 5701, Saturday 30 August 1941, at Geruliai near Telz, together with his daughters Chana and Dvora and their husbands, Rabbi Sholom Tuvia Hurwitz and Reb... Read full entry |
| F-32 | Corroborated | 2 | 1 | The reconciliation. Jews were expelled en masse from the Kovno guberniya in spring 1915. The father-in-law was displaced, the son-in-law held the seat in his absence, and gave it up when he returned. A eulogy would naturally call a... Read full entry |
| F-33 | Documented | 1 | 1 | The spelling that hid it. HaDoar spells the town אולשאד , with an aleph and a vav. Nearly every search in this project used אלשאד and found nothing. Anyone continuing should search both, and also אלשאדזי , אלסיאד , Alsedziai, Olshad and... Read full entry |
| F-68 | Educational reading | 1 | 1 | A source recovered through the Alshad spelling. Read directly at page 164 of Henkin and Gershoni's מכותבי ראי"ה ומכתבי הראי"ה (Alonei Mamre 122, Kiryat Arba, 5769/2009): the article quotes a letter addressed to מוה"ר משה שמואל שפירא... Read full entry |
| F-34 | Documented | 5 | 1 HaTzofe thumbnail and readable reprint | A correction to the Zak side. Rav Avraham Abba's father, R' Aryeh Leib Zak, was a בעל־בית נכבד , a respected householder of Luknik, not a rabbi. His own son says so in... Read full entry |
| F-35 | Documented | 7 | 1 | A trap in the Pinkas. The "(1890-1941)" printed after Rav Avraham Abba Zak's name is his years in office, formatted like the entry above it. It is not a lifespan. A great deal of confusion has come from reading it as a birth... Read full entry |
| F-36 | Documented | 7 | 2 HaTzofe thumbnail and readable reprint | Chaya's brother R' Shimon Zak survived. He wrote אבא ז"ל in HaTzofe in August 1946, was still in Tel Aviv writing about this family after 1962, and wrote both the Volozhin Yizkor biography and its Hebrew original in HaDoar in October 1963.... Read full entry |
| F-43 | Documented | 9 | 1 | The Zak siblings. R' Shimon Zak's own memoir calls himself הבן היחיד במשפחתנו , the only son in our family, and calls Chaya אחותי הבכירה , my eldest sister. With F-31's Chana and Dvora, that gave Rav Avraham Abba Zak four known children:... Read full entry |
| F-60 | Corroborated | 1 | 2 | A Zak sister, immigrating alone in 1921, checked directly against the manifest, and since identified. (Written before F-74: the Alsėdžiai birth registers now record a Ginda Zak, born 17 April 1897, daughter of Abel son of Leib and Leia ,... Read full entry |
| F-71 | Unverified | 5 | 3 | A Zaks stone in the Suwałki-region Kalvarija, read directly from the photograph, and probably not ours after all. The Kalvarija old Jewish cemetery (the Kalvarija south of Marijampolė, 114 stones, 1876 to 1936, per the ESJF drone survey)... Read full entry |
| F-74 | Documented | 56 | 17 | The Zak family in the Lithuanian State Archives, found through JewishGen's Lithuania collection: the marriage, the mother, the sisters, the son's whole life. The LitvakSIG translations of the Telšiai crown-rabbinate books and related... Read full entry 1903, 1906 and 1910 |
| F-75 | Documented | 3 | 6 | What became of the sister who went to America: Hinde Zak became Hilda Zaron of Brooklyn, a hat maker, married to a First World War veteran, and had no children. Her own petition for naturalization, read directly, filed in the Eastern... Read full entry |
| F-76 | Documented | 10 | 10 | What became of the sisters who stayed: Yad Vashem, searched under the married names, and R' Shimon Zak's own Pages of Testimony. The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, searched on 2 September 2026 under Zak, Levinzon, Hurwitz and... Read full entry |
| F-51 | Documented | 3 | 2 | Rav Avraham Abba's own entry, in his own lifetime. The 1912 rabbinic directory אהלי שם gives him a full entry under Alshad: born תרכ"ב , 1862; the entry names his father as בר' ארי' ליב הכהן זאק , R' Aryeh Leib HaKohen Zak, adding a detail... Read full entry |
| F-52 | Documented | 3 | 1 | A second son-in-law, not in the family's own account. The same 1912 entry names two sons-in-law for Rav Avraham Abba Zak: הרב האברך ר' משה שמואל שמוקלער מחבר הספר תולדות הגר"ח מוואלאזין , the young scholar Moshe Shmuel Shmukler, author of... Read full entry |
| F-37 | Corroborated | 1 | 1 | Best reading: this is Lev Rubin's monument, and the inscription commemorates his father-in-law. Lev gets a full name, a patronymic and both dates. Dubinsky gets initials and a memorial formula. The dedication is from children and... Read full entry |
| F-38 | Corroborated | 1 | 1 | Why that matters more than a burial would. Lev Rubin's wife was Мария Семеновна , Semyonovna, the Soviet civil patronymic from Semyon, the standard Russian stand-in for Shimon. So a family in about 1980 carved into stone the link between... Read full entry |
| F-39 | Documented | 0 | 0 | Note which initial they cut. The children are all recorded Семенович and Семеновна , so had the family been carving his civil name they would have cut С. М. They cut Ш. , the Jewish Shimon. And a patronymic from Yeshaya would be И. or Е. ,... Read full entry |
| F-66 | Corroborated | 5 | 5 | The five remaining Mitzvat Emet photographs, read directly, one new match. burial329268 turns out to be the identical photograph as burial352860, confirming F-37's reading and the same obscured fence bar over the middle initial from this... Read full entry |
| Q-01 | Disputed | 6 | 2 | The family tradition says the brothers descended from Rav Chaim Volozhiner personally, through their mother Sara. The 1903 title page says only ממשפחת , from the family of. The approbations to the 1912 sefer restate it, read off the... Read full entry |
| Q-02 | Family tradition | 1 | 1 | The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, and that he was the link to Rav... Read full entry |
| Q-03 | Disputed | 0 | 0 | The family tradition places two generations between Rav Chaim and Sara. The arithmetic says one... Read full entry |
| Q-04 | Unverified | 0 | 0 | The Moshe Tzvi tradition and the family dates both come from one branch: Ilia Doubinskii and his father Eduard, of Chicago, formerly of... Read full entry |
| Q-05 | Unverified | 3 | 1 | One brother stayed Dubinsky. The other published as Shmukler in 1909 and died as Shapiro in... Read full entry |
| Q-06 | Corroborated | 4 | 3 | All eight approbations to the 1903 sefer are printed together on a single page, pdfpager.aspx?req=14897&pgnum=3. An OCR search of the scan reported two kinship words, שארי and קרובי ; read at native resolution, the page carries ידידי... Read full entry |
| Q-07 | Documented | 5 | 2 | The descendants chapter of תולדות רבנו חיים מוואלזין runs pdfpager.aspx?req=46885&pgnum=67 through 70, printed pages 61 to 64. It opens with הגר"ח הניח אחריו שני בנים ושלשה בנות , Rav Chaim left behind two sons and three daughters, and... Read full entry |
| Q-08 | Corroborated | 2 | 2 | זכרון בספר , published by Ezras Torah and Agudas HaRabbonim, New York 1922, 343 pages, is a collection of letters from European rabbis. Page 65 (hebrewbooks internal pgnum 60, five pages off the printed pagination), read via... Read full entry |
| Q-09 | Disputed | 2 | 2 | Shemen Rokeach was reprinted in Jerusalem twice, 1940 and 1969, and Shem MiShimon again later. Nobody reprints a forgotten Vilna sefer without a... Read full entry |
| Q-10 | Corroborated | 2 | 2 | The title page itself, read directly, settles it: שם טוב, דרושים נהמדים לרוח הזמן מיוסדים עפ"י מדרשי חז"ל, ונלוה להם בסוף הספר חדושי הלכות בבא קמא , pleasant sermons for the spirit of the times, founded on the Midrashim of our sages, with... Read full entry |
| Q-11 | Corroborated | 3 | 3 | Fifteen chapters of a Shem Tov by Rav Shimon Mordechai Dubinsky were published in Russian on toldot.com between 2014 and 2018. The best reading is that this is a translation of the 1913 sefer, not the work of a living... Read full entry |
| Q-12 | Disputed | 2 | 2 | The family names Rav Yitzchok Dubinsky, died 1903, as Yeshaya's... Read full entry |
| Q-13 | Family tradition | 2 | 2 | Yeshaya 1836 to 1916. Sara 1836 to 1915... Read full entry |
| Q-14 | Disputed | 12 | 2 | He is called "rav of Smorgon" in places. That is disproven. The Smorgon Yizkor lists every rav of the town from before 1750 onward and he is not on the list. So what was... Read full entry |
| Q-15 | Corroborated | 25 | 4 | Three figures are in circulation: about thirty years, approximately twenty-five years, and 1927 until 1950... Read full entry |
| Q-16 | Family tradition | 19 | 8 | The family says an eldest son, Simcha, remained in Europe and was murdered with his... Read full entry |
| Q-17 | Corroborated | 8 | 6 | R' Shimon Zak's biography says their mother educated three sons. He is now named: Rav Shlomo Yosef, from Shimon Mordechai's own... Read full entry |
| Q-18 | Corroborated | 17 | 6 | The father-in-law was displaced from Alshad in the First World War, Moshe Shmuel held the seat in his absence, and gave it up when he... Read full entry |
| Q-19 | Corroborated | 13 | 3 HaTzofe thumbnail and readable reprint | 1862, now agreed by two independent sources: toratcha, and the 1912 rabbinic directory אהלי שם , which gives his own entry as born תרכ"ב... Read full entry |
| Q-20 | Disproven | 5 | 4 | A death notice for ד"ר שמעון זק ran in Maariv and Davar on 17 January 1975 and again in Maariv on 20 January 1975. Funeral from the Sanhedria municipal funeral home in Jerusalem on 5 Shevat 5735, mourned by his wife חנה זק... Read full entry |
| Q-21 | Disputed | 14 | 2 | Leoni makes Rav Zeev Soloveitchik and Yankele into Relka's sons without naming her husbands. Lipman has the husbands as R. Yosef Soloveitchik and R. Moshe HaKohen of Nesvizh, with Yitzchak Zev and Yankele as the... Read full entry |
| Q-22 | Corroborated | 1 | 2 | Rav Chaim's daughter Chasa appears in the Leoni chart with no husband and no issue recorded. Two secondary sources had already pointed to Rav Mordechai Kamenetzky of Lida, with a caution that a similar name, Rav Elimelech Eisenstadt... Read full entry |
| Q-23 | Corroborated | 3 | 2 | Lipman calls R' Yosef Soloveitchik the third son-in-law. Somebody was counting, and knew the... Read full entry |
| Q-24 | Corroborated | 19 | 6 | Rav Itzele's row in the chart reads: Eliyahu Zalman, Rivka, Reina Batya, Rechel, and two more children whose names are not given... Read full entry |
| Q-30 | Unverified | 1 | 3 | The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, Q-02, and that two generations stand between Rav Chaim and Sara, Q-03. The brothers' own 1909 book lists, among Rav Itzele's five sons-in-law, Rav Hirsh, son of Rav Nachum Chaim, of Ivenets ,... Read full entry |
| Q-31 | Unverified | 0 | 1 | The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, Q-02. The Ivye revision lists hold a Sora Shmukler, daughter of Movsha Iuda son of Girsha, F-78. Movsha is Moshe and Girsh is Tzvi, and in these registers a man is written... Read full entry |
| Q-25 | Disputed | 1 | 2 | Mitzvat Emet has seven catalogue rows for this family in one cemetery. The best reading is that several of them are faces of one monument, not separate... Read full entry |
| Q-26 | Unverified | 1 | 1 | The inscription commemorates him. It does not say he lies... Read full entry |
| Q-27 | Corroborated | 3 | 3 | Lev Rubin's wife was Maria Semyonovna, and Semyonovna is the Soviet civil patronymic from Semyon, the standard Russian stand-in for... Read full entry |
| Q-28 | Family tradition | 2 | 2 | A relative reports that Itzko-Meir, that is Isaac Semyonovich, Dubinsky, 1893 to 1973, Shimon Mordechai's son, was the father of Eduard, of the Chicago branch, whose son Ilia Doubinskii is the source of the Moshe Tzvi tradition and the... Read full entry |
| Q-29 | Unverified | 1 | 1 | On page 25 of שמן רוקח , in the middle of an unrelated halachic discussion, Shimon Mordechai calls the sitting Av Beis Din of Brisk his she'ar, relative by marriage: לד' שארי הגאון האמיתי ר' חיים שליט"א אבד"ק בריסק , following the words... Read full entry |
| Q-32 | Disputed | 3 | 0 | The register's age column is headed, left to right, № / Женскаго (Female) / Мужескаго (Male), and row 3 reads 22 / 24 under those two headings. Read that way, the bride, Khaia Zak, was 22 and the groom was 24. The earlier... Read full entry |
| Q-33 | Unverified | 1 | 0 | The 1858 Volozhin household that now, for the first time, places Yeshaya himself in a document (F-70) gives Itska Movsha's wife as זעלדא בת יוסף , read off the film as Зелда Iоскiовна , Zelda daughter of Iosel — inferred, not stated... Read full entry |
| Q-34 | Unverified | 1 | 1 | F-48 already recorded, unnamed, that a 1909 letter in Shem Tov calls its addressee Shimon Mordechai's מחותני , in-law through a child's marriage. That rabbi is now identified as R' Mordechai Veitzel Rosenblatt of Slonim, whose known sons... Read full entry |
| Q-35 | Unverified | 0 | 2 | Birth acts have been found for Shimkha/Simcha (1904), Raina Shmukler (1905) and Okhel/Yechiel (1912). The open coverage question is now limited to Hyman/Chaim, born 1909, and Irving/Isaac, born 1917.Read full entry |
| Q-36 | Unverified | 5 | 0 | A family collaborator's film-by-film sweep of the Volozhin revision lists covering 1811 through 1874 turns up a Sapira/Shapira household where this file had never looked: Zelik Leib, son of Movsha Sapira, first recorded as a household... Read full entry |