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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
Introduction: A Tradition of Reticence
For a long time, mapping the Vilna Gaon's family tree posed a
formidable challenge. Part of the problem lay in the fact
that there are many families of Lithuanian descent with oral
traditions of descent from the Gaon. The vagueness of these
traditions led to doubts about their accuracy and an air of
mystery consequently surrounded the whole topic.
YN: Why has there always been such difficulty in
assembling family trees of the Gaon's descendants?
C.F.: Lithuanian families typically refrain from
giving prominence to their ancestry. Lithuanians are self-
effacing by nature and discussing one's forbears was not a
favored pastime. It was also viewed as a form of bitul
Torah. Around ten years ago, I called an elderly,
Lithuanian-born rov who lived in Yerushalayim to check some
sources with him. His rebbetzin answered the telephone
and the rov wouldn't even agree to take the call. "It's
bitul Torah," he protested. In the end he consented,
albeit unwillingly, to tell me what his mother had heard from
her mother about their connection to the Gaon's family but he
immediately cut the conversation short saying, "This kind of
research is bitul Torah."
YN: But there's a tradition that an elderly relative
in Vilna possessed a book in which the Gaon himself
transmitted his family's ancestry.
C.F.: Considering the Gaon's personality, that can be
dismissed as a fiction. At best, it's an embellished claim
for some other book that the family possessed.
YN: How accurate then, are traditions that have been
conveyed orally?
C.F.: With modern advances, the new Jewish
genealogical research is mainly based on records of births,
marriages and deaths and there is a tendency to play down the
importance of oral traditions. But they do — and always
will — play a substantial role in Jewish genealogy.
Searching for Proofs
In order to verify a tradition, the conditions under which it
was conveyed have to be investigated — particularly,
whether it was offered spontaneously or in response to
leading questions that might have put ideas into the
speaker's mind that are not based on solid fact.
Sometimes it's justified to ask a loaded question. For
example, if the person being interviewed doesn't remember the
name of a forbear one can ask him who he is named after and
he might remember that he's called after a certain great-
grandfather. This is one way in which an oral tradition can
point research in a new direction.
The more generations that have elapsed since the lifetime of
the ancestor in question, the greater the uncertainty around
an oral tradition concerning him. If someone's grandfather
claimed that his grandfather was a fourth generation
descendant of the Vilna Gaon, this opens thirty-two
possibilities for the family link to the Gaon. Additional
information about where the grandfather's grandfather lived,
or his date of birth can limit the field, but many possible
relationships will still remain.
If the relationship isn't identified by one of the present
day members of the family, the tradition gets passed on to
the next generation, by which stage it encompasses sixty-
four possibilities. This calculation alone justifies the
decision to gather all the reasonable traditions into one
volume about the Gaon's family, which could help future
generations in determining missing links to the Gaon.
Chaim Freidman has done just this, publishing his book
Anfei Eliyohu to mark the Gaon's two hundredth
yahrtzeit. The book, which took many years to
research, contains the names of twenty thousand of the Gaon's
descendants. Although its main purpose is to present the
family tree, Reb Chaim also included biographical notes on
various personalities because, as he puts it, he "didn't want
to produce a mere `stamp collection' of names."
Several attempts were made in the past at solving the riddle
of the Gaon's family tree. The most comprehensive listing
previously made was Sefer Hayachas Lemishpachas Rivlin
Umishpachas HaGaon MiVilna, by Eliezer Rivlin z'l,
published in Yerushalayim in 1935. The book lists those
branches of the Gaon's family that were known then and
includes only three hundred names. In those days, information
was much harder to gather and the list probably relied
heavily, if not exclusively, on family traditions.
Research was renewed some twenty years ago in a conversation
between Rabbi Shmuel Gorr z'l and the son of Eliezer
Rivlin. Rabbi Gorr was asked to persuade Reb Chaim Freidman
to undertake the project. The work of gathering all available
information about the Gaon's family began eighteen years ago.
This is the last chance to preserve all the oral traditions
and analyze them in the light of relevant archival material,
for their memory will soon be lost and they are the key to
the research.
Families that trace themselves to the Gaon can be divided
into three groups: those whose relationship has been
conclusively proven, those whose traditions have been
investigated and found reliable beyond reasonable doubt and
those whose traditions cannot be verified from existing
sources. Rabbi Gorr would often quote Chazal's statement
(Zevochim 103), "Never to have seen it is no proof"
(i.e. lack of evidence does not prove that something does not
exist), when people disparaged certain families' oral
traditions about their ancestry. Even if as of yet there is
no known corroborating evidence supporting a family tradition
that has been passed down from generation to generation, it's
no reason to lose hope and assume that the ancestral claim is
false.
You Might Be A Descendant Yourself!
The very fact that substantiating claims to descent from the
Gaon is so difficult is in itself strange because his
petiroh was only two hundred and eight years ago,
which is recent in genealogical terms. One explanation for
this is that in the Russian Empire, a law requiring births,
marriages and deaths to be recorded only applied from 1804
onwards. Since all of the Gaon's children and most of his
grandchildren were born before that year, there are no
official records to confirm their identities. Another factor
is the aforementioned tendency among Lithuanian families to
keep quiet about their ancestry.
"In Lita," says Chaim Freidman, "traditions about
ancestry were transmitted by the women. I am an eighth-
generation descendant of the Gaon but I only heard about it
from my grandmother, not my grandfather. To this day there
are families who are known to be descended from the Gaon that
refuse to reveal their family trees, for personal reasons.
One well-known rabbinical family in Eretz Yisroel has
approximately five hundred descendants but they refuse to
record their names.
"One of the granddaughters of one such family published a
pamphlet in which she mentions an incident that took place at
a granddaughter's wedding. The women of the family were
sitting at the table together discussing the family ancestry.
Suddenly the grandmother banged her hand on the table and
said, "Yichus alein iz nisht genug! Yichus iz
mechayev! (Good lineage by itself is not enough to
confer distinction! It confers obligations!)"
YN: Would anyone standing up today and claiming
descent from the Gaon be taken seriously?
C.F.: "I calculated how many descendants the Gaon
ought to have today. After taking the Holocaust and other
factors into account there still ought to be approximately
one hundred and fifty thousand of them. The book that I
published eight years ago lists twenty thousand names. Since
then, another ten thousand need to be added to the list."
*
Maybe you are one of the hundred and twenty thousand
descendants that have not yet been identified! But before you
start searching for proofs, it's worth your while to be aware
of some of the obstacles that you might encounter.
One rather prosaic source of confusion is the title `Gaon.'
Some families had a tradition that they were descended from
"the Gaon Eliyohu" and wrongly assumed that this was the
Vilna Gaon. They might be descended from some other famous
rov who was known as Gaon, or even from a different `Gaon
Eliyohu' such as the gaon HaRav Eliyohu Lunz
zt'l of Kruz (or the gaon HaRav Eliyohu
Rabinowitz zt'l). Moreover, Rav Eliyohu Lunz actually
was connected to the Gaon's family: he was his brother-
in-law (the Gaon's second wife was his sister).
C.F.: "A certain family conveyed information to me
that they were descended from the Vilna Gaon. I was unable to
make the connection but the problem was solved when the go-
between apologized profusely. The family's ancestor was the
Baal HaTanya zt'l."
Another misunderstanding arose when a researcher used the
English translation of Eliezer Rivlin's book. The similar
sounding names of two towns were confused, with the result
that two people were rolled into one and three hundred new
names were mistakenly added to the list of the Gaon's
descendants. Historians who are not fluent in Hebrew have
misled several families into claiming descent from the Gaon.
These families were unaware that the researchers they engaged
based their conclusions on the work of translators who were
not used to slight differences in pronunciation that really
indicated different places entirely.
Exploding Some Myths
Even if you possess a definite tradition of descent from the
Gaon it is wise to think twice before embarking on a search.
The results might be disappointing and you might have
preferred to remain in blissful ignorance with your
unsubstantiated tradition.
The Gaon's first wife was Moras Channah bas Yehuda Leib
a'h, of Kaidan. After she passed away he married Moras
Gittel bas Rabbi Meir Lunz a'h, of Kruz, Lithuania. The
fact that the Gaon was married twice is the source of a great
deal of confusion. There are families with traditions of
descent from Rebbetzin Gittel, his second wife. Since sources
in her family show conclusively that she did not bear the
Gaon any children, these families must be descended from her
first husband.
One researcher made a monumental blunder with regard to the
Gaon's second wife. He knew that the Gaon was the brother-in-
law of Rav Yechezkel Lunz of Shavli but he assumed that the
connection was through Rebbetzin Malkah, Rav Yechezkel's
wife. He drew up a hypothetical family tree of the Gaon's
family, including all the descendants of Rav Yechezkel Lunz
as being descended from the Gaon's "sister" Rebbetzin Malkah
Lunz.
Other families who believed themselves to be descended from
the Gaon discovered that they are descended from one of his
brothers or from one of his talmidim. The source of
this mistake is the term, "from the family of the Vilna Gaon"
which they found associated with their family records.
"Family" might have been interpreted broadly to include an
indirect relationship such as descent from a brother of the
Gaon or even from a relative by marriage and thus not a blood
relative.
There was a family that persisted in claiming descent from
the Gaon's daughter. Eventually, a letter came to light from
a certain rov whose son married into this family. In the
letter he lists the descent of his mechuton's family
back to the Gaon's sister — not his daughter.
One of the Gaon's ancestors was the rov of Vilna, HaRav Moshe
Kramer zt'l. Kramer was not a family name — it
means "shopkeeper" and was a nickname owing to the fact that
his wife ran a shop in the market. Several families named
Kramer nevertheless believe themselves to be descended from
the Gaon. While a number of them can trace their ancestry
back to a brother of the Gaon's whose descendants adopted the
family name of Kramer, this was never the family name of the
Gaon himself. Similarly, there are family names that sound
similar to Vilna, which led their members to believe they
were descended from the Gaon solely on the basis of their
surname.
YN: Surely you've also had the merit of verifying
traditions, not just of dismissing them
C.F.: Fortunately, I have verified many traditions.
One case was in Australia, where a certain family settled in
1854 and to this day kept a tradition that they are descended
from the Gaon. A great deal of effort was invested in
researching the family's roots and in the end a photograph
turned up of the headstone at the grave of the forefather who
had first settled in Australia. The headstone no longer
existed but its picture was kept by the Jewish Historical
Society of Australia and it showed that the gentleman in
question was indeed a grandson of the Gaon. Details of an
address fit with a tradition in the possession of another
family, in England. It was thus possible to work out the
connections between several families that had hitherto been
unaware of each other's existence but that shared the same
traditions.
The Gaon's Ancestry
Chaim Freidman recently discovered a significant piece of
information about the ancestry of the Gaon himself. It was
always known that the Gaon was descended from some of Vilna's
distinguished families — among his forbears were HaRav
Moshe Ravkesh zt'l, author of Be'er Hagolah and
Rav Moshe Kramer zt'l — but the family line
could not be traced very far back. This is unusual, because
rabbinical families have always tended to intermarry, usually
making it simple to follow the line back for many hundreds of
years.
Several weeks ago, Chaim Freidman managed to identify a new
link in the family tree of the Gaon himself, according to
which he is descended from Rashi and from Dovid Hamelech.
Reference had been made for years of the Gaon's descent from
Dovid Hamelech but in the absence of any lead as to how, it
was impossible to deal with. The present discovery is the
result of intensive research and integrating various
sources.
A gathering of all those whose ancestry leads back to Dovid
Hamelech is to be held in Yerushalayim in a year-and-a-half.
Reb Chaim has been following the preparatory research and he
revealed the details of his discovery to the descendants.
Other discoveries he has made include the ages of the Gaon's
sons. This piece of research showed that the year of birth of
Rabbi Avrohom ben HaGra that previous researchers had been
using was wrong by fifteen years. After the Iron Curtain
fell, records of a population census that came to light
verified the precise year that Reb Chaim had arrived at.
That discovery also sheds light on several hitherto obscure
references in seforim. The Be'er Hagolah mentions
relatives in a number of places, among them the Sheloh. How
were they related? Rabbi Avrohom ben HaGra refers to the
Oruch and the Baalei Hatosfos as "our ancestors." How?
Apparently, a distant ancestor of the Be'er Hagolah belonged
to a family that was descended from Rashi, thus making the
Sheloh a relative, as well as the Oruch and the Baalei
Hatosfos.
So, anyone who manages to trace his ancestry to the Gaon will
have the added satisfaction of knowing that he is descended
from Rashi and from Dovid Hamelech!
Until a few years ago, genealogy was regarded as a rather dry
scientific discipline; today it has become a popular pastime
with many families trying to trace their roots. The collapse
of Communism has made huge and hitherto inaccessible stores
of information available. Many countries have records of old
population registers that are increasingly being pulled off
the shelves to satisfy both the committed and the merely
curious researcher. A family tradition of descent from a
distinguished Torah personality is a powerful spur to try to
uncover forgotten or lost information.
One elderly lady who investigated her family's roots
discovered that she had a brother living ten minutes away
from her! She had assumed that he was no longer living.
There have been many cases where lawyers have discovered
previously unknown heirs after searching in genealogical
information banks. One amateur genealogist related that his
family was once visited by a lawyer who told them that a
distant relative had left them a large inheritance. They all
provided documentation showing their relationship to the
deceased and after the lawyer made them sign on documents
that were in a foreign language he disappeared, never to be
heard from again. Apparently they put their signatures to
statements that they had received the money.
There are gentiles, particularly in South America, who claim
descent from the Jewish exiles from Spain and try to
substantiate this claim. A Portuguese monk recently produced
genealogical records that showed that he had Jewish roots
among his distant ancestors.
Shmuel Gorr z'l, who passed away eighteen years ago,
is mentioned in the article as having been the first to try
to have the Gaon's family tree investigated. The following
paragraphs offer a thumbnail sketch of his fascinating and
relatively unknown personality.
He was born in Melbourne, Australia and as a bochur
was sent to learn in Yeshivas Telz thus becoming, as he put
it, "the first yeshiva bochur in the history of
Australian Jewry." Later he learned in Gateshead.
After returning to Australia he joined in studying
horo'oh from the son-in-law of the Pappa Rov
zt'l. When his father, who was a well-known artist,
passed away, the burden of supporting the family fell upon
him. He had picked up a great deal of knowledge about art
from his acquaintance with his father's work and as an
outgrowth of his activities in drawing his fellow Jews closer
to their heritage, he opened a Jewish museum that became a
regular meeting place for Jewish youth. No few Australian
Jewish families were saved from the catastrophe of
intermarriage by Reb Shmuel's kiruv work.
One day, Reb Shmuel was surprised to receive a letter from a
lawyer inviting him to pay him a visit. It turned out that
one of Australia's greatest poets, whom he had gotten to know
through his work in the Jewish museum, had died and
bequeathed him an antique typewriter that dated back almost
two hundred years to 1730. The typewriter arrived at his home
on erev Purim and he obtained Hebrew typing heads
which he fitted onto the keys. "The first thing that I typed
was a greeting card for mishlo'ach monos," he related.
Reb Shmuel went on to type his seforim on the
typewriter.
He started engaging in genealogical research while he lived
in Australia and later, after settling in Eretz Yisroel,
he became seriously involved in it. He became a world
expert in Jewish genealogy and would compile ancestral
records for his talmidim in Yeshivas Or Somayach in
Yerushalayim. He discovered that one of his talmidim
was a tenth generation descendant of the Baal Shem Tov
zy'a. Another was descended from the Maharam Shick
zt'l. That talmid bought all the Maharam
Shick's seforim and would say, "I won't stop learning
until I know all of the Maharam Shick's seforim." Reb
Shmuel also compiled the family tree of the Soloveitchik
family at the request of HaRav Refoel Soloveitchik
zt'l.
Everyone is descended from two parents, four grandparents,
eight great-grandparents and sixteen great-great-
grandparents. To put it another way, everyone alive today had
sixteen ancestors alive one hundred years ago, each of whom
had sixteen ancestors of their own alive one hundred years
earlier. Simple arithmetic tells us that each of us therefore
had two hundred and fifty six (16 times 16) ancestors
approximately two hundred years ago.
To continue extrapolating backwards, three hundred years ago
there were 4,096 ancestors; four hundred years ago,
1,048,576; five hundred years ago, 16,777,216; six hundred
years ago, approximately 28 million and seven hundred years
ago, approximately four billion ancestors. While
mathematically correct, this is clearly impossible —
seven hundred years ago, the number of people in the whole
world was only a tiny fraction of four billion.
To put things into perspective: if a person married his
cousin, their children will only have six — that is
three sets of — great-grandparents since two of the
grandparents are siblings. If two brothers married two
sisters (which was not uncommon, though descendants of Rabbi
Yehuda Hechosid refrain from doing so) and two of their
offspring marry, the number of great-grandparents is reduced
not by a quarter but by half. In other words, the number of
ancestors will be halved again in each generation back. The
ratio between their number and the ordinary number of
ancestors will remain constant, unless it is reduced again in
an earlier generation as a result of marriage between
relatives. The reduction in the number of ancestors thus
becomes greater moving back through the generations until the
astronomical number given by the unmodified calculation
shrinks to a number that fits the facts.
The inclusion of the Sheloh in the Gaon's family tree
provides a cross linkage with Rav Naftoli Ropshitzer
zt'l. Reb Naftoli was once pondering his illustrious
line of descent that reached to the Sheloh and back to
earlier distinguished forbears.
He commented to another tzaddik, "Why need one be
aware of one's lineage? How does it influence a person? See
now, you rise at midnight and serve your Creator in holiness
until morning. Afterwards you pray in the proper way and then
you go to have a bite to eat. You enjoy the food after all
your exertions. When a person of noble lineage tastes
something after his prayers he finds it bitter. The little
food that he takes turns to gall inside him when he thinks,
`Is this how my holy ancestors served Hakodosh Boruch
Hu? Did they make do with serving Hashem so
simply?'
"That," said Reb Naftali, "is why awareness of one's descent
is important — to heave a sigh after serving Hashem and
to find no pleasure in food or drink."
On another occasion Reb Naftoli illustrated his point with
the parable of a king who built a beautiful palace and
commissioned four artists to decorate the four walls of one
of its rooms. Three of the artists did their work and painted
the walls, while the fourth applied reflective paint to his
wall, so that the work of the other three walls would be
reflected from his.
The fourth wall will only reflect the fineness of the other
three if it is clean and free of any impurity; if it is
flecked and spotted it won't show their beauty. If someone
with noble lineage wants to reflect the luster of his
ancestors' deeds, there is a crucial condition. He must
cleanse and purify himself from every kind of impurity. Only
then can the light of his righteous ancestors' spiritual
properties shine out from him.
The Belzer Rebbe notes the comments of the Baal Haturim on
the posuk's words, "Im bechukosai teileichu"
(Vayikra 26:3), the first letters of which are alef-
beis-tov. This spells ovos, forefathers, according
to which the posuk means, `If you follow the path of
your ancestors,' you will merit the blessings that the Torah
lists. The Rebbe added that contemplating the ways of our
forefathers brings one to the level of teileichu,
whose letters, when arranged in reverse order, vav-caf-
tov- lamed, are the initials of the words, venafshi
ce'ofor lakol tihiyeh, may my soul be as dust to all
— i.e. true modesty and self effacement.
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