F-02 · Corroborated
115 stable evidence items · 306 retained public media files
Records gallery
The complete Shapiro research file: 79 numbered facts and 36 numbered questions. Each item keeps its evidence label and number, so anything cited can be found again.
Evidence rule: Documented, Corroborated, Family tradition, Disputed, Disproven and Unverified are different labels. This gallery keeps those boundaries instead of making every item look settled.
Cemeteries & gravestones
9 retained items
F-16 · Corroborated
Died in March 1946 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, aged 75 or 76. This is why he was not in Smorgon when it was destroyed, and…
F-18 · Documented
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…
F-19 · Corroborated
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…
F-72 · Documented
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…
F-37 · Corroborated
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…
F-38 · Corroborated
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…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
F-39 · Documented
Note which initial they cut. The children are all recorded Семенович and Семеновна, so had the family been carving his civil name they would…
F-66 · Corroborated
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…
Immigration, censuses & directories
12 retained items
F-09 · Documented
Moses Shapiro arrived at New York on 6 September 1923 aboard the Lituania, list 4 row 3 [both original manifest pages checked]. He was 45…
F-69 · Unverified
A Cleveland period, real after all, per family testimony, not yet independently read on this file's own end. Letters he wrote from Cleveland are printed…
F-55 · Documented
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…
F-56 · Documented
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]…
F-58 · Documented
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…
F-79 · Documented
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…
F-65 · Documented
Moses Shapiro petition 212943, sworn 9 March 1936 [original image checked]: occupation rabbi [HIGH]; born Wolozin, Russia, 7 June 1878; married Chaje on 4 April…
F-67 · Documented
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…
F-60 · Corroborated
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…
F-75 · Documented
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…
European records
5 retained items
F-78 · Documented
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…
F-70 · Documented
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'…
F-73 · Documented
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…
F-74 · Documented
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…
F-76 · Documented
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…
Sefarim, letters & published sources
22 retained items
F-45 · Documented
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…
F-13 · Corroborated
Born in Volozhin in 1870, son of Rav Yeshaya and Sara. Studied at the Volozhin yeshiva. Married a wife from Smorgon and lived there…
F-14 · Documented
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…
F-47 · Unverified
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…
F-48 · Documented
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…
F-15 · Disproven
"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…
F-22 · Documented
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…
F-50 · Documented
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…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
F-23 · Documented
The title page transcription lives on a user-editable wiki, but HebrewBooks' own OCR of the searchable copy independently places ממשפחת, אמי, דובינסקי and…
F-24 · Documented
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…
F-25 · Documented
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…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
F-44 · Documented
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…
F-49 · Documented
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…
F-53 · Documented
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…
F-54 · Documented
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…
F-26 · Documented
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…
F-27 · Disputed
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…
F-28 · Documented
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…
F-29 · Documented
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…
F-46 · Documented
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…
F-51 · Documented
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…
F-52 · Documented
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…
People, places & family evidence
31 retained items
F-01 · Documented
Born in Volozhin on the second day of Sukkos 5640, 1879, to his father Reb Yeshaya and his mother Sara. This date is well…
F-62 · Documented
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…
F-77 · Documented
His last article, and the one life of Rav Itzele he wrote. HaDoar, New York, no. 7 of 5723, 14 December 1962, page 9…
F-03 · Documented
Studied in Volozhin under Rabbi Ziskind. Around age fifteen, circa 1894 to 1895, he spent time studying under his own brother, Rav Shimon…
F-04 · Documented
Four ordinations, from four different rabbis. His own autobiography names two: Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz, rav of Kovno, and Rabbi Moshe Danishevski of Slobodka…
F-05 · Documented
In his youth he spent a period in Iași, Romania, as tutor to the sons of a leading householder. This appears in no other…
F-40 · Documented
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…
F-06 · Corroborated
Married Chaya, daughter of Rav Avraham Abba Zak, rav of Alsedziai, known as Olshad or Alshad, in 5663, 1903.
F-07 · Documented
In 1914, 5674, he was invited to give shiurim at a new yeshiva in Anykščiai. The yeshiva closed when the war broke out…
F-08 · Corroborated
He was rav of Olshad in his own right, and was still on that seat in 1923. See section 6 for how this fits…
F-63 · Documented
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…
F-10 · Documented
Rabbi and principal (menahel) of Yeshivath Rabbi Chaim Berlin, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, per his son's account. At one point he had to appeal to…
F-64 · Documented
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…
F-61 · Documented
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…
F-11 · Documented
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…
F-12 · Documented
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…
F-41 · Documented
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…
F-42 · Documented
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…
F-17 · Family tradition
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…
F-20 · Family tradition
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…
F-21 · Family tradition
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…
F-30 · Documented
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…
F-31 · Documented
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…
F-32 · Corroborated
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…
F-33 · Documented
The spelling that hid it. HaDoar spells the town אולשאד, with an aleph and a vav. Nearly every search in this project used אלשאד…
F-68 · Educational reading
Alonei Mamre 122, page 164: educational reading only
F-34 · Documented
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…
F-35 · Documented
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…
F-36 · Documented
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…
F-43 · Documented
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…
F-71 · Unverified
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…
Open questions & review
36 retained items
Q-01 · Disputed
Descent from Rav Chaim himself, or from the wider family? The family tradition says the brothers descended from Rav Chaim Volozhiner personally, through their…
Q-02 · Family tradition
Moshe Tzvi, Sara's father The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, and that he was the link to Rav Chaim. The family tradition…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
Q-03 · Disputed
One missing generation, or two? The family tradition places two generations between Rav Chaim and Sara. The arithmetic says one. Family traditions preserve the…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
Q-04 · Unverified
The family tradition has one channel, not two The Moshe Tzvi tradition and the family dates both come from one branch: Ilia Doubinskii and…
Q-05 · Unverified
Why the surname changed twice One brother stayed Dubinsky. The other published as Shmukler in 1909 and died as Shapiro in 1962. Name changes…
Q-06 · Corroborated
The kinship word in the 1903 approbations All eight approbations to the 1903 sefer are printed together on a single page, pdfpager.aspx?req=14897&pgnum=3. An OCR…
Q-07 · Documented
The descendants chapter of the brothers' own 1909 book The descendants chapter of תולדות רבנו חיים מוואלזין runs pdfpager.aspx?req=46885&pgnum=67 through 70, printed pages 61 to…
Q-08 · Corroborated
The 1920 letter on page 65 of Zikaron BaSefer זכרון בספר, published by Ezras Torah and Agudas HaRabbonim, New York 1922, 343 pages, is…
Q-09 · Disputed
The Jerusalem reprints and who paid for them Shemen Rokeach was reprinted in Jerusalem twice, 1940 and 1969, and Shem MiShimon again later. Nobody reprints…
Q-10 · Corroborated
What Shem Tov actually is The title page itself, read directly, settles it: שם טוב, דרושים נהמדים לרוח הזמן מיוסדים עפ"י מדרשי חז"ל, ונלוה להם…
Q-11 · Corroborated
The Russian translation on Toldot.com Fifteen chapters of a Shem Tov by Rav Shimon Mordechai Dubinsky were published in Russian on toldot.com between 2014 and…
Q-12 · Disputed
Rav Yitzchok Dubinsky, died 1903, as Yeshaya's father The family names Rav Yitzchok Dubinsky, died 1903, as Yeshaya's father. Shimon Mordechai's son born in…
Q-13 · Family tradition
The dates for Yeshaya and Sara Yeshaya 1836 to 1916. Sara 1836 to 1915. Sara's 1836 and 1915 match the family's own information…
Q-14 · Disputed
What position Shimon Mordechai actually held He is called "rav of Smorgon" in places. That is disproven. The Smorgon Yizkor lists every rav of the…
Q-15 · Corroborated
How long he ran Chaim Berlin Three figures are in circulation: about thirty years, approximately twenty-five years, and 1927 until 1950. The…
Q-16 · Family tradition
Simcha, the eldest son who stayed The family says an eldest son, Simcha, remained in Europe and was murdered with his family. It comes…
Q-17 · Corroborated
The third brother, now named R' Shimon Zak's biography says their mother educated three sons. He is now named: Rav Shlomo Yosef, from Shimon…
Q-18 · Corroborated
The Alshad reconciliation The father-in-law was displaced from Alshad in the First World War, Moshe Shmuel held the seat in his absence, and gave it…
Q-19 · Corroborated
Rav Avraham Abba Zak's birth year 1862, now agreed by two independent sources: toratcha, and the 1912 rabbinic directory אהלי שם, which gives…
Q-20 · Disproven
Is the Dr. Shimon Zak who died in 1975 the same man? Almost certainly not. A death notice for ד"ר שמעון זק ran in Maariv…
Q-21 · Disputed
The Leoni chart is a generation off on Relka Leoni makes Rav Zeev Soloveitchik and Yankele into Relka's sons without naming her husbands. Lipman has…
Q-22 · Corroborated
Chasa's husband, once the blank page in the chart Rav Chaim's daughter Chasa appears in the Leoni chart with no husband and no issue recorded.…
Q-23 · Corroborated
Who were the first and second sons-in-law Lipman calls R' Yosef Soloveitchik the third son-in-law. Somebody was counting, and knew the order. The brothers'…
Q-24 · Corroborated
The two unnamed children of Rav Itzele: two husbands matched firmly, three more on a weak source Rav Itzele's row in the chart reads: Eliyahu…
Q-30 · Unverified
A Tzvi in the right generation: Rav Itzele's son-in-law of Ivenets The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, Q-02, and that two generations…
Text/source record; no public image is attached to this item.
Q-31 · Unverified
Was Moshe Shmuel's mother a Shmukler of Ivye? The family says Sara's father was Moshe Tzvi, Q-02. The Ivye revision lists hold a Sora…
Q-25 · Disputed
One monument, or several separate graves? Mitzvat Emet has seven catalogue rows for this family in one cemetery. The best reading is that several of…
Q-26 · Unverified
Is Shimon Mordechai actually buried there? The inscription commemorates him. It does not say he lies there. He died in Kharkiv in March 1946 and…
Q-27 · Corroborated
Maria Semyonovna Rubina as his daughter Lev Rubin's wife was Maria Semyonovna, and Semyonovna is the Soviet civil patronymic from Semyon, the standard Russian…
Q-28 · Family tradition
Itzko-Meir Dubinsky as Eduard's father A relative reports that Itzko-Meir, that is Isaac Semyonovich, Dubinsky, 1893 to 1973, Shimon Mordechai's son, was the father…
Q-29 · Unverified
A second rabbinic in-law, in Brisk? On page 25 of שמן רוקח, in the middle of an unrelated halachic discussion, Shimon Mordechai calls the…
Q-32 · Disputed
The 1903 marriage record: which age belongs to the bride, which to the groom? The register's age column is headed, left to right, № /…
Q-33 · Unverified
Was Yeshaya's own mother a Zelda, daughter of Iosel? The 1858 Volozhin household that now, for the first time, places Yeshaya himself in a document…
Q-34 · Unverified
Which of Shimon Mordechai's children married into the Rosenblatt family of Slonim? F-48 already recorded, unnamed, that a 1909 letter in Shem Tov calls its…
Q-35 · Unverified
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…
The 1904 Simcha birth, the separately labelled Raina birth image, and the 1906 Raina Leye death original are now shown with the Hebrew/Russian wording and English readings. Raina, daughter of Rav Moshe Shmuel and Chaya Zak, was born 7 August 1905 (19 Av 5665) and died 8 December 1906. The birth and death acts record the same child, distinct from her cousin Raina Dubinsky.
Also retained: Moses Shapiro’s original 1936 petition, with the recorded birth dates of four surviving children. FamilySearch citation. See F-65 for the evidence entry.
Q-36 · Unverified
Is a Sapira/Shapira family documented in Volozhin itself the source of the surname? A family collaborator's film-by-film sweep of the Volozhin revision lists this week…
Telšiai State Savings Bank · citation-only index entries
Three LitvakSIG translated index entries connected to F-74. No original-language page images are held.
F-74-BANK-1903 · Citation-only
No original page image held
SMUKLER, Khaia, father Abel, age 22 - 19 Feb 1903, Telšiai. Comment: "trader; lived in Alsedziai." (LVIA 710/1/586, page 38, record 3381)
F-74-BANK-1906 · Citation-only
No original page image held
SHMUKLER, Khaia, father ZAK Abel, age 25 - 15 Feb 1906, Telšiai. Comment: "husband studied Talmud; lived in Alsedziai; contributed brother ZAK Shimon." (710/1/588, page 46, record 4458)
F-74-BANK-1910 · Citation-only
No original page image held
SHMUKLER, Khaia, father Abel, age 33 - 6 Jul 1910, Telšiai. Comment: "wife of rabbi; lived in Alsedziai." (710/1/594, page 25, record 7232)
Rav Moshe Shmuel: source material
Preface pages and an untranscribed letter. These images are source material, not new conclusions about the family.
Source material
1909 Toldot Rav Chaim: preface, page 1
Preface source material, retained scan. It provides context for the authorship question; no new reading is supplied here.
Source material
1909 Toldot Rav Chaim: preface, page 2
Preface source material, retained scan.
Source material
Rav Moshe Shmuel: manuscript letterhead, page 4
hbm1854, page 4. Website derivative with the historical telephone line omitted. The letter has not been transcribed; no claim is drawn from its handwritten text.