Nissell Schick (Heller Segal) - Shmuel and Nissel Schick

I am back in this family, trying to resolve some potential confusion.

There is a man called Wolf Slawes d. 1630 Prague who is pretty important for us to figure out.

Here is his profile on Geni.
Rabbi Benjamin Wolf Spira

One source, which I added just this week, are personal letters from Wolf and his wife Chava written in 1619 that were found (undelivered, apparently) and published in 1911. Jüdische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619 (Landau & Wachstein). See https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000078559969717

Another source is an article published by Ludwig Lazarus in 1912, Nueue Beiträge zur Geschichte der Familie Fränkel-Spira, which includes a 1734 letter from Samuel Porges to the head of the community Samuel b. Wolf Fränkels Spira about their common family background. See https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000120835939887

According to the Porges letter Michel b. Simon Spira had three sons: (1) Wolf (called Slawes after his wife) d. 1630, father of Rabbi Aharon Simon Spira. (2) Rabbi Chaim of Posen, and (3) Rabbi Man of Brisk.

In the Privatbriefe we find a letter (#9, page 28-29) from Wolf Slawes to his in-law Jekel Schick in Vienna, who is Moses Jacob "Jekel" Schick. I have made the wives of Wolf and Jekel into sisters, but I don't yet have proof of that, although it makes sense from the context of the 1619 letter.

In any case, there is a family relationship between this Wolf Slawes in Prague and Jekel Schick in Vienna.

Now take a look at this Wolf who is called Heller Slavis-Segal. Rabbi Benjamin Wolf Spira

This Wolf Heller Slawes is married to Nissel, the daughter of Tosafot Yomtov Lipman Heller.
In Hock-Kaufman her grave inscription is described as
240 Nissel e' r' Wolf Slawes bto shel haGaon byl Tosafot JomTov 1639/40

Note that Wolf does not have a SeGal on her insccription so he may not be a Levi.

There is a grandson of Wolf Slawes Horowitz who dies in Prague in 1700 and his inscription is

240 habachur Juda [bn Manes seGal] neched hajashish Wolf Slawes Horwitz seGal 1700/01

Right now we have a son of Wolf and Nissel listed as Nathan Halevi Heller SeGal. Rabbi Nathan Flekeles Horowitz

Nathan and his wife Chana Katzenellenbogen have a daughter Nissel d. 1689 Prague married to Shmuel Schick. Nissel's grave inscription says
240 Nissel nechda shel r' Wolf Slawes ?Flekeles? 1689/90

Samuel Schick dies in Pruzany, Belarus. His father is listed on Geni as Menachem Schick, recently added, no source, and a wife named Heller, daughter of Moshe Halevi and sister of Meshulem Feivish and Avraham Heller.

I am very suspicious of the idea that there are two Wolf Slawes in Prague. Should be the same person. He may not be a Levi, so no SeGal. He is connected perhaps to Horowitz and/or Flekeles, perhaps through his wife's mother, who could be the original Slawe? His wife Chawa, who is alive in 1619, may not be his only wife. Although someone added a death date for her, I haven't found a source for that. Chawa may have died and Wolf remarried Nisssel, the daughter of Tosafot Jomtov,

I am not sure if the young Nissel is connected, but it looks like she may not be the daughter of Nathan Heller SeGal and Chana Katzenellenbogen. What is the source for that?

And Nissel's husband Shmuel Schick should probably be from the Prague Schick family, perhaps closely related to her grandfather Wolf's in-law Jekel.

Anyone have any thoughts? I want to move this around and play with it. Hatte Rubenstein Blejer last time you objected, but I really think we need to review and revise this area and not rely solely on the late 19th century sources from before the two publications in 1911-12.

Very interesting to me since the present Geni tree calls Rabbi Wolf my 9th Great Grandfather with his descendants in the Wedeles family line. Wedeles are also questionable with no data to support their insertion into the tree.

Sorry I can't help as I lack the skills to do so.

Randy Schoenberg -- the family tree of Nissel Schick is from The Unbroken Chain. Volume 1, Third Edition, page 40-42. It's Chapter Two, Section B.

Nissel is the sister R. Moses HaLevi Heller. The source is Schick, R. Solomon Zvi Mi Moshe Ad Moshe, Kahn and Fried Publishers (Munkacs 1903), 20 for Moses and his sister, Nissel.

Their mother was Hanale, married in 1643 to R. Nathan HaLevi, son of R. Zeev Wolf HaLevi Segal (he married Nissel, daughter of R. YomTov Lipman HaLevi Heller).

Nissel was named after her paternal grandmother and born about 1670 and married R. Samuel Schick.

One of their daughters married my ancestor Mordechai Margolis. The source for this is a Margolis cousin, David Tebele Efrati, who wrote Toldot Anshe Shem, 1875.

This specific ancestry was researched by Neil Rosenstein for the first edition of The Unbroken Chain and has remained constant for all three editions.

Neil stands by this work as I remember, since I contacted him last time we had this discussion.

As for Samuel Schick, I believe that there is no ancestry given for him in The Unbroken Chain.

When my Margolis cousin, David Tevele Efrati wrote his genealogy, both Nissels were still in the memory of the family so I'm not sure why you think much later works from people unrelated are preferable?

The other relevant book to consult is The Feast and the Fast by Rabbi C.U. Lipschitz and Dr. Neil Rosenstein. It is the life of Yom Tov Lippman Heller and has extensive trees for Tosfos Yom Tov. I can photograph them and send them to you Randy Schoenberg.

Chart 3 -- Nissel d. 1639 daughter of Yom Tov Lipman Heller m. Zeev Wolf Slavis-Segal. They have a son Nathan haLevi Heller who married a daughter of Moses Wahl.

This chart differs from The Unbroken Chain I believe in positing Moses as the father of Nissel who married Samuel Schick, rather than as her brother.` Since it was published in 1984, I assume the 2017 third edition of The Unbroken Chain takes precedence.

Yes, I saw that and wrote to Neil, who says he's too busy to figure it out. I asked Avraham Marmorstein to take a look at the Schick source from 1903. Very likely it won't have any real sources in it. We have a lot more access to things now than they did back then. Also Jacobi refers to the Schick source, but also says another source has a different father for Samuel Schick (Moses and not Nathan). So this is an area with obviously a lot of speculation. Pretty sure we can do better now with the Popper notebooks of the Prague cemetery (which are more complete than the published Hock-Kaufman).

It's an important area, and I am surprised that no one has looked more deeply into it. I have a very strong feeling that there is one Wolf Slawes, that Nisssel bat Yom Tov LH is his second wife (first is Chawa, as confirmed by their letters from 1619). Chawa's mother must be Slawe Horowitz, whom we still need to research.

Still a lot of question marks.

I appreciate your research, Randy Schoenberg, and I'm sure that other descendants do as well.

Neil didn't work on the ancestry of the Schick family of Pruzhany, so I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but I feel confident that the ancestry of Nissel Schick is correct or at least well sourced. That's not to say that there might be new facts uncovered, but as I said, both Nissels were "fresh" in the minds of their descendants in the mid 1800s which Toldot Anshe Shem was written by my Margolis - Efrati cousin.

I am starting to play around with it and started by disconnecting the Schicks from the Tosafot Jomtov tree. What exactly is the evidence for the connection? The problem is that the Nissel that is supposed to be the Schick wife (granddaughter of Tosafot Yomtov's daughter Nissel) dies in Prague and no husband is listed for her in the Popper cemetery index from 1880 (which was never published). And it seems odd that her family would have ended up in Pruzhany. So this connection may have been invented. Or else there were two granddaughters named Nissel. But what is the evidence for her existence in the Schick tree? Can we start with that?

Nissel who dies 1689 in Prague is at Nissel Schick

I guess her inscription was published in Hock-Kaufman Die Familien Prags
240 Nissel nechda shel r' Wolf Slawes ?Flekeles? 1689/90

There's another Nissel dying 1725-26
Notes Nissel bt Moshe Shalom Schachna Horwitz z"l neched haGaon byl tosafot JomTov z"l e' chr"r Loeb bn r' Meir Karpeles z"l 1725/26

I cannot figure out who her father is.
Nissel Karpeles

R' Shmuel Schick

Let's start with the source for his wife.

And also his parents are a bit suspect (also a Heller connection for his mother?)

Need some real sources to sort this out. No way there was any "memory" of these people 175 years later when Toldot Anshe Shem was written.

Private User fyi

I should note that I haven't read Toldot Anshe Shem (1875) by David Tevele Efrati, but he is born 1849.

Rabbi David Tebele Ephrath

On Geni we don't even have the first name of his great-grandmother who is his link to the Schick family.
[Kaila] Margolis

I should note that I am putting back the family tree based on 40 years of Dr. Rosenstein's work.

You should wait until you hear from him. You are being arrogant and crossing the line, messing with profiles that I curate. You don't read Hebrew. You don't have copies of any of the sources that I cited.

I have let Geni management know that you are being impulsive, impatient, and discourteous.

You can read Mi Moshe Ad Moshe 1903 since I had previously attached it to Nissel Schick when we first had this conversation. I have attached an image of page 40 of Vol I The Unbroken Chain.

Regardless of letters from the 1600s and tombstones, you do not read Hebrew or rabbinical literature. You are not the expert on the Katzenellenbogen family, Neil Rosenstein is. I find it arrogant to upturn his 40 years of research arbitrarily while you "play around." I curate these profiles from my family and I do not appreciate your not waiting before you dismantle everything based on The Unbroken Chain (all three editions).

I did reach out to Neil so I assume he'll also engage. He spent decades on the early Katzenellenbogen tree and on the family of Tosfos Yomtov, so if those two trees are going to change radically, he should be involved.

I am in regular contact with Neil. And I am an expert on Prague. So give me a little room to work on this. I disconnected again because Wolf Slawes is not Halevi, so he really shouldn't be the father of Rabbi Nathan Flekeles Horowitz, the husband of Chana Katzenellenbogen. If their daughter Nissel is the same as the Nissel who dies in Prague in 1689, granddaughter of Wolf Slawes, there has to be another solution. Or else it could be a different, unrelated or related differently, Nissel, which would also make sense.

I re-attached. I can make it work if we remove the SeGal/HaLevi from Nathan, the son of Wolf Slawes Spira and Nissel, daughter of Yom Tov Lippman Heller. Wolf was not HaLevi, so the son Nathan would not be HaLevi (and is there evidence that Nathan and his descendants used the surname Heller? It's very possible, but I'd want to see some evidence for it.) It's a small concession losing the Heller HaLevi (at least for now) because by identifying Wolf Slawes, I have added major connections to this family. Wolf's son from his first wife Chava is Rabbi Aaron Shimon Spira Wedeles, Chief Rabbi of Prague and Bohemia.

Ok, now we have to sort out all the crazy dates among the descendants of Nissel and Shmuel Schick. https://www.geni.com/list/descendants/6000000006712300196#5

Looks like the ones under Aryeh Yehuda Laib Lobi Schick don't belong there and need to be moved further down.

Randy Schoenberg You wrote that Wolf Slawes, son in law of Yom Tov Lipman Heller was not Halevi.
I must disagree, as the Tosfot Yom Tov himself wrote in his autobiography, Megilas Eivo, that his daughter Nissel is married to his son in law Wolf Slawes Segal (as is known segal stands for Sgan Leviya) which indicates that he definitely WAS a Levi.
They (Wolf and Nissel) where the parents of Noson (named after the TY's father Noson Segal) who in turn married the daughter of Moshe (the ABD of Hehlim) son of Mayer (the ABD of Brisk) son of Shaul Wahll (who is known as the one-day-king of Poland and who's original name was Katzenellebogen)
For those who read Hebrew, the source is here https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=3840&st=&pgnu...=

On the next page on his autobiography, the TY also mentioned his late daughter Doberish and her two daughters Raizel and Nissel who were in his custody.
So the TY not only had a daughter Nissel, but also a granddaughter by the same name.

The granddaughter Nissel is at Nissel Bassevi

Would be great if people could add the documentation to all these profiles as we sort them out.

As for the Segal. My guess is it refers to Slawes, which was Wolf's first wife's name, Chava Slawes, presumably after her mother, Slawe, who may have been a Horowitz (who were haLevi). This might explain the confusion.

I'll check the children of Aryeh Yehuda Laib Lobi Schick against Vol 1 Third Edition shortly.

Here' the latest from Alexandr Putik of the Jewish Museum in Prague. He has Nissel married to Wolf b. David Fleckeles Horowitz, not Wolf Slawes, and with the other granddaughter Nissel who married Leib. b. Meir Karpeles.

From: Putík Alexandr <alexandr.putik@jewishmuseum.cz>
Subject: RE: Wolf Slawes
Date: February 5, 2020 at 3:18:04 AM PST
To: Randol Schoenberg <randols@bslaw.net>
Cc: Jewish History <jewishhistory@jewishmuseum.cz>, Cermanová Iveta <iveta.cermanova@jewishmuseum.cz>, Polakovič Daniel <daniel.polakovic@jewishmuseum.cz>

Dear Randol,

I am under time pressure, so that I cannot delve into the matter, assess and reassesss the sources. According to my datebase, husband of Nissel bat Yom Tov Lipman ( d. 1639 ), was mekubal Wolf ben David SGL Horowitz Fleckeles (d. 1671). Nissel died young in the plague. Wolf and Nissel had son Schalom Schachna. Schalom´s daughter was named Nissel after her grand-mother, Nissel, who married Leib Meir Karpeles, died in 1726. It is almost sure thar Wolf ben David remarried.
Best regards.

Alexandr Putík

One thing we should investigate is how the memoirs of Tosafot YomTov were published, when and by whom, because there could be an editor who made a mistake about Wolf Slawes. Also, can someone help translate what exactly his memoirs say in the section where he mentions Nissel and Wolf? https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=3840&amp;st=&amp;pgnu...

Private User, can you help?

Moved things around to fit a new theory.

Whoever published Tosfot JomTov's memoirs incorrectly inserted Slawes in the name of Wolf Segal, probably confusing him with the father of Rabbi Spira Wedeles. Was it published before Megillat Ebah, Breslau, 1836? See http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7542-heller-yom-tob-lipm...

Then Hock/Kaufman used that source to put three people incorrectly under the name Slawes on page 240 of Die Familien Prags (1892). http://www.hugogold.com/prag/DieFamilienPrags.pdf

240 Nissel e' r' Wolf Slawes bto shel haGaon byl Tosafot JomTov 1639/40
240 Nissel nechda shel r' Wolf Slawes ?Flekeles? 1689/90
240 habachur Juda [bn Manes seGal] neched hajashish Wolf Slawes Horwitz seGal 1700/01

In the Popper handwritten index of the old cemetery in Prague, made contemporaneous with Hock before 1880, I think none of these people appear with the name Slawes.

New info. I found a German translation and publication history of the memoirs of Tosafot YomTov published in 1929 in Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik. See https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000121861881821&amp;

On page 440 it refers to his מחותן (machaten) R. Wolf Salwis.

And here's an 1861 version in Hebrew and German translation (I would guess the original was in Judeo-deutsch, like the Privatbriefe). https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000121880173881&amp; .

The German, top of page 25, says Wolf Slawis is the son-in-law of Yomtov Lipman's friend Henoch. Can someone compare with the Hebrew at top of page 24?

""Und jener verehrte Freund Herr Henoch, der mit mir von Prag nach Wien gereist war, verehrte mir hundert Reichsthaler und verbürgte sich, auf die Hälfte der übrigen Summe, mit seinem Schwiegersohn Wolff Slawis."