Rabbi Menachem Man, of Brisk (Brześć Kujawski)

Dear Randy,

One of the entries under Porit made reference to a Rabbi Man of Brisk. It rang a bell, and, sure enough, we had seen him mentioned before, here:

54 Kele bt haGaon Man AB”D dk”k Brisk (hu haGaon Menachem bn Benjamin k”Ts), e’ Koppel seGal Brandeis z”l shammesh 1690 As it turns out, I will need to put a note in this record to show that the part marked in red is incorrect, but I don’t want it to be too wordy, for obvious reasons.

Here is the situation: Kele had been married first to Loeb Porit. Their son is the Shmuel Porit, sofer in Bumsla, who wrote (see attached) that his mother, Kele, had told him that her father was haGaon Man of Brisk, son of Jechiel Spira. However, when Kaufmann saw that Kele was a daughter of Rav Man of Brisk, he assumed a) that the town was Brest Litowsk and b) that the Rabbi in question was Menachem bn Benjamin k”Ts, whom he found on page 28 of the book of the Rabbis of Brisk (I’ve downloaded it). The fact that that Rabbi Menachem was even younger than Kele and the Brisk was the wrong one slipped by unnoticed. HaGaon Man was actually Rabbi of Brześć Kujawski, a much smaller town, which was mercilessly attacked by the Cossacks, who killed about 100 families and caused Rabbi Man to flee, all of which is mentioned here http://www.kirkuty.xip.pl/brzesc_kujawski_eng.htm and confirmed in the notes of Shmuel Porit. So this Rabbi Man looks like he really is a son of Jechiel Michael Spira, and Kaufmann just jumped to a wrong conclusion. Gosh. I’ve never done that....

And Rabbi Man’s wife, Jiras/Jaret (attached) died in 1657/58. We’ll get to her when we do that part of the alphabet.

Had I said the Porits weren’t exciting?

All the best

Nancy

Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der Familie Fränkel-Spira Ludwig Lazarus Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Jahrg. 56 (N. F. 20), H. 5/6 (Mai/Juni 1912), pp. 334-358