Ester Komisaruk

The personal names of the parents of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Komisaruk were not recorded clearly in family tradition. However, given the prevalence of the name Ester amongst her descendants, together with the fact that her mother was the daughter of Ester Jaffe, it seemed likely that this was the name of Shlomo Zalmen's mother.This was confirmed by the 1816 Revision List for Rassein city which recorded her name as "Estera, aged 39". Women were recorded in the 1816 list without their patronymic.

Ester's identity as the daughter of Rabbi Yehuda Leib of Serhei was established as follows. Oral tradition conveyed by several of the branches of the descendants of Berel Komisaruk claimed descent from the Gaon of Vilna. An independent source is the memoirs of Marcus Joseph Weinkle who was personally acquainted with Rabbi Pinkhas Komisaruk (lived 1830-1897). Weinkle records in his memoirs that Rabbi Pinkhas claimed descent from the Gaon: "Feigel married Wolf Komisaruk, a Rabbi's brother, descended, as it is said, from the great Jewish scholar, the Gaon of Vilna."

The exact nature of the link between the two families was established by an inscription in an old book passed down through the generations of the Komisaruk family. This was a copy of "Khokhmat Adam" dating from the early 19th century. Next to the name of the author, Rabbi Avraham Danzig, was a faded handwritten inscription in Hebrew "Av Dodi" meaning "the father of my uncle". Other family inscriptions establish that the book was brought from Lithuania by Ester's son, Rabbi Shlomo Zalmen Komisaruk, when he settled in the Ukraine in about 1847/8.

The father of one's uncle could either be one's grandfather, in which case he would have been referred to as such, or the father of one's aunt's husband. Since Avraham Danzig's son Yitskhak was married to Gittel, a daughter of Yehuda Leib of Serhei, the second son of the Gaon of Vilna, it can be established that this was the link between the family of the Gaon and the Komisaruk family. Given that the Danzigs were not Leviim and that the Komisaruks were, and following research of the other children of Avraham Danzig, Shlomo Zalmen Komisaruk's mother Ester had to be a sister of Gittel Danzig, and thereby, a grand-daughter of the Gaon of Vilna.

Some material about the relationship was sought in the archive of Benyamin Rivlin (Jerusalem) which includes a file of material on the family of the Gaon of Vilna. This material includes copies of lists prepared by Rabbi Eliyahu Landau (a great-great grandson of the Gaon) who was the major source for that section pertaining to the Gaon in Eliezer Rivlin's genealogy "Sefer Hayakhas". The names and number of the daughters of Yehuda Leib of Serhei is ambiguous. Landau wrote several versions of his lists, which state that Yehuda Leib had four daughters and not two as recorded in "Sefer Hayakhas". One version indicated a son-in-law Velvel, which might have supported an early tradition in the Komisaruk family for that name. No one list included all the daughters of Yehudah Leib and at least six were identified in "Eliyahu's Branches."

Discovery in Ukrainian and Lithuanian archives of documentation firmly establishes the names of Shlomo Zalmen Komisaruk's parents as Berel and Ester. The name Ester passed down tin the family to two of Ester Komisaruk's grand-daughters: Ester Luban, daughter of Rabbi Pinkhas Komisaruk, and Ester Pogorelsky, daughter of Pinkhas's brother Velvel Komisaruk, both of Grafskoy, Ekaterinoslav (Ukraine).

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