Levitt

Levitt Family

16 January 2017

Hi Eli,

I am answering your call for descendants of Vobolnikers. My paternal grandfather, Michael, was born in Vobolnik, along with a brother, Benzion, and a sister, Batya Leah. Their parents, Menachem Mendel and Taube Levitt, lived there after they married, at least from 1891 – Menachem Mendel is listed at that date as a rabbi elector in the town.

Menachem Mendel was born in Dusiat, where many of our related Levitts lived. He married around 1822. How and at what stage is unclear, but eventually Menachem Mendel became a wealthy merchant in Vabolnik. He must have been very successful, because he built a stone house on a prime central site, opposite the town’s church. Muza Bar Nahum, one of Menachem Mendel’s descendants through his daughter Batya Leah, said, “Once an elderly lady told me that Mendel’s house was the first private stone house in Vabalninkai. And my mum [Tova] told me that Batya had explained her where it was located; it was opposite the church.” The house still stands, though it is now part of a factory complex, and Muza visited in 2007. She was met with suspicion by locals who, presumably, feared she was trying to reclaim her property. I attach a photo of the house taken then.

Family lore was that Menachem Mendel was a talmid chacham and a mitnag, and after the death of his wife (who I presume is buried in Vobolnik, though I have found no record yet) and the emigration of all his children to South Africa (though Batya Leah returned to Vabolnik at one point with her family), he sold up and made his way to Jerusalem some time after 1911. He died in November of 1914, and was buried on the Mount of Olives in a plot he must have purchased at some great expense.

I found evidence for his piety from none other than fellow-Vabolniker, the late Rav Eliezer Menachem Mann Shach. As a teenager, I visited Rav Shach with an elderly family friend at his offices at Hechel Schlomo in Jerusalem when he was in his nineties, and asked him if he remembered the Levitts in Vobolnik, where he had lived until 1909 when he left, at the age of eleven, for the yeshiva at Ponevezh. Rabbi Shach indeed remembered them from his childhood, and said that they had been scholarly people and learned in Torah.

I have only two photographs of Menachem Mendel – attached – who has had a huge influence in the family to this day, as a role model of aliyah (my wife and I and our children are the latest example). His grave was damaged during Jordanian rule, but was located on the Mount of Olives by Tova Burshtein, one of Batya Leah’s daughters – it is only metres from a mosque which the Jordanians, notoriously, built over Jewish graves, smashing and reusing many of the graves in the process. Tova had it restored in the 1990s and I attach a picture: it mentions Vobolnik.

Of the two attached group photos, that with the mount included shows, from left to right, Taube, Michael, Bentzion and Menachem Mendel, Vabolnik, around 1885. The torn and creased photo in bad condition shows Menachem Mendel (centre) with (left to right) grand-children (through Batya Leah) Zina, Toby, Charlie and Eddie, probably taken around 1911, when Batya Leah returned with her children from South Africa, before he made Aliyah.

I hope this information is of interest – please feel free to include it in the developing KehilaLinks page.

Best wishes,

Michael

Michael Levitt מייקל לויט

Liverpool (UK) to Eshchar: 2012 מליוורפול לאשחר:

Mendel & grandkids Zina, Toby, Charlie, Eddie, 1911

Levitt House Vobolnik

Helene’s father Benjamin and uncle Michael Levitt with their parents

2007-Mount-of-Olives-Mendel’s-grave