missing link to Chernobyl dyansty

Perhaps some of these projects will help you find missing links, or connect you to the Geni members who might be able to help you.

1. http://www.geni.com/projects/Twersky-Rabbinic-Dynasty - Includes The Twersky Chernobyl Dynasty.

2. http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Jewish_Dynasties - Rashi and The Rabbinal Dynasties.

3. http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Ancestry-Research-Guide

4. http://www.geni.com/projects/Memorial-to-European-Rabbis-that-Peris...

5. http://www.geni.com/projects/Revered-Rabbis-Kabbalists-Sages-and-Sc...

Chanie - have you joined the Rabbinical Special Interest Group (SIG) on JewishGen? That is another good place to pose this question.

I would not post your email here, rather let people answer you in discussion or in a private email on Geni. In general, it's better not to post email addresses on the Internet, except in a closed group like the SIG I mentioned above.

Good Luck. I think I am a Twersky descendant but as they say, most of us are descendants of a small number of rabbinical families. I'm sure we will end up being 8th or 9th cousins :)

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Good call, I didn't even notice the email.
Excellent advice. In fact, Chanie, I think Hatte means that you might want to delete this post with your email address right away.

You can copy the post to Word and then delete the post and then re-post it without your email :)

Chanie Levertov Weiss Remember to do the same as Hatte suggests with your other discussion thread too.
http://www.geni.com/discussions/95529

My name is Chanie Levertov Weiss. My father's grandfather Nachum Ephraim Levertov married a Klingberg (Komarno Dyansty). Story I heard was that his yichus was that his mother was a descendant from Chernobyl and from the Besht, but there was an orphan (her or her mother) daughter, raised by an uncle from Chernobyl. It also lists him as having come from Turisk. His matzevah in the Miodowa cemetery, Krakow mentions the Chernobyl and Besht ancestry. On JRI-Poland it lists his mother's name as Ayta Estera and his father as Mortko. Unbroken chain had no unknown women in their version of Dhernobyl dyansty. THis caught my eye., especially the leve in parentheses. I was also always told that through this side I am related to Friedmans and Rabinowitz's. Do you have any additional information that would help me fill in the blanks?

Thanks for your responses. I deleted my email address as you advised. ( I have put together a website in memory of my father, Menashe Yaakov Levertov, (son of Yitzchak Eizig Yehuda Yechiel Levertov, son of Nachum Ephraim Levertov, descendant of Chernobyl and Besht.. The link to that is www.levertov4ever.com )

And yes I imagine we will end up related as well.

Chanie Levertov Weiss, Your family tree also appears on Daniel Loeb's Loebtree Website: http://www.loebtree.com/halbes.html

I found your listing in Dr. Neil Rosenstein's opus,
"The Unbroken Chain", Illustrious Jewish Families from the 15th - 20th Century. Chapter XlV - "Halberstam Cousinhood" Branch A, Page 894 Generation 18.1

Your famiily is already connected to Geni's Big One World Tree via a duplicate profile for your parents and you. I will send you a link to the duplicate so that you can merge your profile with those and gain instant access to the great illustrious rabbinical lines connected to your branch.

I was deeply touched by the website about your father Chanie.

This is part of why I worked so hard on the Margolis and Frankel project, to bring life to the world lost. Many of my family left by 1900 but they went back to Poland to visit their parents and cousins until 1929.

You are my 13th cousin. Our common ancestor is http://www.geni.com/people/Meir-Wahl-Katzenellenbogen-MaHaRaSH-%D7%...

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Randy S. has a duplicate copy of Chanie's revered father's profile Rabbi Menashe Yaakov Levertov on Geni, so I updated it and added it to some of our current projects.

You are absolutely right about the website, it is so moving, and the music is soul searing.

Thanks to you and Chanie Malka, I went back to The Unbroken Chain and found new information about families we intermarried with. It turns out the we are the Moshe Katzenellenbogen branch - which I knew already. Several of the Margolis family (Levine and Rosenberg) were early settlers in Charleston, SC, as was the Visanska family which is ALSO on the Moshe Katzenellenbogen branch. So interesting. I knew that they were from Suwalki also so assumed that that's how we all ended up in South Carolina before the American Civil War! But they were also ~ 6th cousins.

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Absolutely fascinating!

You might be interested to know that the Katzenellenbogen family descendants sometimes changed their names in the US. eg. the Katzenellenbogens of Pinsk and Vilna had descedants in the US called "Kaye". See page 644.

One of them is active Geni member, Howie Kaye. He is very computer savvy and told me that years ago he created a Gedcom for Neil Rosenstein of the Unbroken Chain, but it was not for distribution.

BTW, you can find me on page 303 G17.2 Citron Family of the Kamader Chassidic branch.

I'm on page 18 of Vol. 1. G12.7 Judah Leib Margolis. My 3rd great grandfather. What Rosenstein did was devote an entire book to our branch, The Margolis Family (1984), and my husband and I are listed there under the descendants of Judah Leib Margolis' daughter Chava Margolis Frankel or under the descendants of Judah Leib Margolis' son Issac, since my great grandparents are cousins.

The Margolis family had multiple names - some are Kalwaryisky. Some are Margolis. Some are Margolis-Kalwaryisky. And one branch became Levine and then Levin in America. I think because it was less foreign than Margolis and we are Levis.

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Wow! To be a Levi, is such a great honor and privilege! I see that Rosenstein's " The Margolis Family" edition is available at major libraries in the US. I was able to get a look at the list of contents. It is bsolutely invaluable and amazing the research that Neil managed to accomplish without computers.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/margolis-family-the-history-of-the-fa...

Well since my mother is not Jewish, I'm not a Levi! I did convert formally and further converted my children with an Orthodox rabbi.

And my husband's family is very accomplished, learned, and devout with absolutely no rabbinical yihus that we know of :)

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Actually, a convert is held in the highest regard of all. Did you know that the Torah bids the Jew to be kind and welcoming to converts - in fact, it does so thirty-six times, more than any other commandment in the Torah! They say it was from Ruth, that King David inherited some of his immense sensitivity.

- Shmaya and Avtalyon, the teachers of Hillel, were converts.
- Rabbi Akiva was descended from a father who was a convert. In fact his "pedigree" in the Talmud traces itself back to the general Sisera.
- Rabbi Meir was descended from the Roman emperor Nero.
- Onkelos, the great translator of the Bible from Hebrew into Aramaic was also descended from Nero's family.

In the Middle Ages, some of the renowned scholars of the Tosafists (twelfth to fourteenth century German, French and English Torah scholars) were converts or descended from converts.

In eighteenth century Vilna, a famous Count Potowcki, converted to Judaism and was executed by the Church for so doing. His grave was in the famous old Jewish cemetery and a great oak tree grew from his grave and it was in fact the landmark of that burial ground. He was buried adjacent to the grave of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu. (http://www.rabbiwein.com/Jerusalem-Post/2005/02/38.html)
*http://www.bje.org.au/learning/people/famous/converts.html

Ruth was the first book I read in Hebrew when I was 19 and it was lovely for me as the child of a mixed marriage to read it :)

Being a Rubenstein and having spent 4 months with my Baba every year, there has never been a time that I did not consider myself Jewish. And having lived in Israel for a number of years when I was young and having been Jewish culturally and in observance since the early 1970s, I am less of a convert (although I am one acc. to Halacha) and more of the Jewish child of a mixed marriage (which is what I am). My sisters are not.

It is great to discover new cousins!
I appreciate your comments about my website.
I am honored to hear your personal stories. Thank you for sharing them. I agree about the greatness of converts. Ruth, was privileged to be mother of the Davidic dynasty.
Also, thank you for the links. I will take a look.

Chanie,
I wrote about my family in the Margolis Frankel family project on Geni. I have met so many cousins since starting to do genealogy, including close Margolis and Frankel cousins. It has been an eye opener and great joy. Nice to meet you too Cousin :)