Lea Wiener

marat Lea bt Jehuda Loeb Chalfen e' hr'r Moshe Chasan m'Wiena (died in Av TY"Ch) {1718}

From: Nancy High <Hitzel@comcast.net> Subject: An intriguing discovery Date: January 7, 2021 at 1:56:05 PM PST To: E Randol Schoenberg <randols@bslaw.net>, Randol Schoenberg <randols912@gmail.com> Cc: "thomas.high@verizon.net" <thomas.high@verizon.net>, Nancy High <tantesar@att.net>

Dear Randy,

Continuing to go through those amazing Worms cemetery extracts (I’m calling them R&R, like Steinheim does, short for Rosenthal and Rothschild), while still in the part of the cemetery where all of the relatives of Rabbi Ahron Darschan Theomim are buried, I came across a woman who is very intriguing. The first possibility was that she might have been the first wife of the man whose second wife was this Leah: Geni - Lea Wiener (Chalfan) (b. - 1718)- Worms He has the surprising distinction of being the only person in Worms to be referred to with Wien or Wiener, unless the first-mentioned lady was not his first wife, in which case there are two Moses Wieners. As you will see below, that is how it looks at the moment.

But back to Lea (Lia): Like Moses himself, she is not in Epidat, but she dies on 16 Av 1718, with her husband’s name showing as just Moshe Chasan m’Wien. We have her in the Gruene Buch also (p.251b), and she is described there as just wife of Moshe Chasan. I’m hoping she will be in the cemetery extracts I’m currently looking at, because they will show exactly how her husband is described on her tombstone, which may be very helpful.

But now we come to the first woman, probably not the wife of the same Moshe Wiener. In fact, we have nothing to indicate that he is a chasan, just like we have nothing to indicate that the other Moshe is a Levite. Anyway, Nucha is in the Gruene Buch (p.215b) and shows there as Nucha eshet mhvr"r Moshe Wiena d. 2 Adar 1683 She is in Epidat wrm-973 as the wife of Moshe seGal Oettingen and in the set of extracts I’m working on now “R&R” she is #588 “bt Rabbi Juda Wolf m'Krakau”. I would love to find him, too!

When Moses Chasan dies in Worms, he is buried very simply, and neither the name Oettingen nor any seGal or haLevi indication appear. He is in the Gruene Buch on page 265b, dying 8 Tishri 1726 and just called hr”r Moshe Wiener, and he is in the Memorbuch (p.35) as chr”r Moshe bn hr”r Shlemo z”l nkro r’ Moshe Chasan m’Wiena. So if only Lea is a wife of his, then we have to just call him Moshe Chasan m’Wien. But if Nucha were also his wife, he would become the object of a fascinating search in the seGal Oettingen family along with his father, Salomon, who would be even more difficult, since Salomon was so rarely used in that family. But help is on the way, and you will see by the following that it is likely that our only search (difficult though it will be) will be for a Moses in the Model Oettingen family who had already lived in Wien by 1683 (or whose parents had already lived there) and who probably lived in Worms at some point. I love this man for the role, but his death date would have to be wrong, and he would, I imagine, have to have lived in Worms at some point. I’ll see what I can find.

So the clincher was this enormously helpful entry in Wachstein Wien II, page 410:

Hirschl was so kind to us. By dying at an old age in a year which really could not stretch to fit Nucha as his mother, and only barely as his father’s first wife, and, more important, dying in Vienna where I can’t begin to imagine a Levite (especially one of the Model-Oettingen family) being buried with none of those indicators, he effectively proves to us that there were two Moshe Wieners in Worms, one a Chasan with roots in Vienna and one, a generation older, who was a Model Oettingen seGal.

Wasn’t that thrilling? I’m exhausted. I’ll report back as soon as I find more clues.

Nancy