Well known and/or successful Raseiniai son's and daughters and other well known people who once called Raseiniai home.

Raseiniai has produced some well known rabonim and lay people and has also been home to others that were born outside of the town.  This list is not restricted to only Jewish people and is divided into three categories.

Whilst the Kehils page is not the place to post family tree's, any of our ancestors who have done well in any field, should be recognised.  Let us all bask in the glory of our grandparents and great grand parents friends and acquaintances. 

Please let us know about the successful people that you know.

We would recognise them here.  In no particular order.

1:- Rabbi's and religious leaders: (Scroll down) 

Rabbi Pinkhas Halevi Komisaruk 

Nosson Zvi (Nota Hirsh) Finkel     

2:- Business, Science and Education

Joseph Zubin

Alexander Sachs

Marx and Harry Bashew

3:- Arts, and Sports and others not included above

Nijolė Sabaitė  

Rabbi Pinkhas Halevi Komisaruk   

Born 1830, Rassein  (now Raseiniai), Lithuania.   

Died 26^th Adar Rishon, 5697/1897 Grafskoy , (now Prolotarsky), Ukraine   

Son of Rabbi Shlomo-Zalman Halevi (1798-1853) and Yokhved Komisaruk.   

Great-Great-grandson of the Vilna Gaon.   

Husband of Khaya-Sarah Levin (1834-1873)   

"Reb Shlomo Zalman was the son-in-law of the great Rabbi, the Kabbalist, our teacher Rabbi Menakhem Mendel from Rassein who was Shokhet in the Holy Community Girtegola and afterwards left the labour of Shekhita and sat learning in our city in the Great Beit Midrash 20 years until his last day and died in 5596 (1836)".  

Nosson  Zvi (Nota Hirsh) Finkel   

Born 1849   in  Raseiniai   

Known as the Alter of Slabodka  (Yiddish   der Alte = “The Elder”.)  Was influential  leader of Orthodox Judaism     Eastern  Europe and founder of the Slabodka   yeshiva.   Many of his pupils were to become major leaders of Orthodox Judaism in  the USA and Israel  

Rabbi Samuel Nathaniel Deinard

Born 1873 in Raseiniai 

Died 1921 in Minneapolis,

Rabbi and Zionist.  The efforts of people such as Deinard perhaps help to explain why, during the critical years of World War I, so much was accomplished in the United States in such a short period. Deinard was born in 1873 in Raseiniai, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, into a family that had been influenced greatly by Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, inspired by Moses Mendelssohn.  Samuel’s father, David Menachem Deinard, like many other maskilim (adherents of the Haskalah), believed that Jews should be educated in secular as well as religious subjects, which then would enable them to compete successfully in the modern world beyond the confines of the “ghetto.” 

The Minneapolis Journal observed: “In the demise of Rabbi Deinard the Jewish citizenship of Minneapolis loses one of its most outstanding leaders, the Zionist movement one of its most zealous friends.” His friend and colleague Dr. George Gordon called him “more than the minister of Temple Israel. He was the spiritual leader of the Jews of the city and the state.” Indeed, five thousand people attended his funeral, the largest such assemblage to attend a funeral in Minnesota until that date.                See more