Tzemach Tzedek and the Fate of his Family
Exclusion of Boruch Sholem from the list
Russian State Historical Archive (St. Petersburg)
Fund 1343: THIRD DEPARTMENT OF THE SENATE (Department of Heraldry of the Senate).
Inventory 39: 1830-1890. On the assignment of the rights of hereditary honorary citizenship.
Case 5580: On the elevation of personal honorary citizen Mendel Schneerson and his family to hereditary honorary citizenship.
Document 110 [original, Расшифровка Василий Когаловский]
To: The Most Serene, the Most Sovereign, Great Sovereign Emperor
Nikolay Pavlovich [Tsar Nickolas the 1st]. All-Russian autocrat, most merciful sovereign!
From: 2nd guild merchant and honorary citizen Mendel Shakhnov son Schneerson about the following (o возведеніи меня съ семействомъ въ потомственное почетное гражданство) raising me and my family to hereditary status honorary citizenship for the settlement of one's coreligionists, 60 families for the land I bought in Bobruisk district.
27 October 1850. Mogilovsky Gubernia, Orshansky district, Lubavitch Society.
Men:
All Merchants of the 2nd guild [TT and his sons, except Boruch Sholem who was Merchant of the lower 3rd guild]:
Mendel Shachnov [his father's family name] Schneerson [his grandfather’s name] 66 yo [the Tzemach Tzedek].
1st son, [of TT] Leible 42 and his sons Zalman 21, Sholom 15, Shmerka 3
2nd son, Zalman 38 and his son Berka 18.
3rd son, Yisrael 35 and his son from the 2nd marriage Schneer 17
4th son, Yesel 33 and is sons Zalman 13, Nochim 8, Aron 8 [twins?]
5th son, Yankel, died in 1848, Yankel’s son Zalman 12
6th son, Shmuyla 15 [the youngest son who will become the next Lubavitcher Rebbe, 30 year distance between the youngest and the firstborn Boruch Sholem, listed below. His mother Mushka had him when she was 45 yo. Boruch Sholem was born when Mushka was 15 yo.]
Total men 15
Listed on the bottom of the table, counted separately, not part of the son’s numeration count:
The oldest son of Mendel, Boruch Sholem, merchant of the 3rd guild, 45 yo.
His sons: Levik 17, Morduch 13, Leiba 8.
Total men 4
There are two columns, records from the current survey and the survey 17 years ago. In the 1st column it says, “newly born” for the children who didn’t exist 17 years ago, in the previous survey. For example, TT was 49 in the 1st survey and 66 in the second survey. TT’s 5th son Yankel was 15 in the previous survey but died in 1848 (so written). So he died when he was 30. He left a son, Zalman [10 yo when he died] 12 yo by the time of the current survey, and a wife, Freida, now 33 (table below).
Women:
Tzemach Tzedek’s two daughters and their children are not part of the “honorable citizenship” count? Only Mushka, the wives of his sons and their children listed here.1 Probably when married, the girls assume the legal domain of their husbands and follow his citizenship or honorable citizenship.
Merchant of 2nd guild Mushka 60 yo [wife of TT]2
2nd wife of Leibl, Sora 35, and their daughter Rivka 8
Wife of Zalman, Chana 19, Wife of Zalman Chaya 37 [he had 2 wives?] and his daughter Roda 14.
Wife of Yisroel, the 2nd marriage, Zlata 25. His daughters from the 1st marriage, Perla Dvera 15, Ester Liba 6.
Wife of Yesel, Chana 33
Wife of Yankel, Freida 33
Total women 11
Wife of Boruch Sholem, Roda 45, her daughters Beyla 19, Leya Sora 12.
Total women 3
11 women are listed and then summed up. At the bottom, separately again Roda, wife of Boruch Sholem and their daughters, Beyla and Leya Sora. Counted 3.
The Possible Horror
Boruch Sholem, the oldest son (great-grandfather of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe) listed at the bottom of the men’s list. His wife and daughters listed separately at the end of the women’s list. There is a spacer underline in between. He has the lower merchant rank than the rest of the brothers (only 3rd guild), the oldest son who wasn’t a Rebbe after the death Tzemach Tzedek and “his women” are listed and counted separately on the bottom. Could this be because he was a Merchant of the 3rd guild and the rest of the brothers the 2nd guild. Even 15 yo Shmuyla!? Still unlikely reason to single him out. I heard like Rashab he had some issue with his hand, also not the reason to slide to the bottom of the list. This is before everyone became a Rebbe.
Was he the black sheep of the family? Why was he so demonstratively singled out in the list? Not even counted with the sons, his brothers.
I will be extra sad and careful. Was there a mental issue? I know it’s a losing game to speculate about historic documents. But how else a firstborn would merit a separate count on the bottom of the list? Not counted as the 1st son or even 7th son? OK, I don’t know. You come up with a better explanation. It wasn’t his religious zeal, as he is the only brother to have frum offspring in “our generation”. Not like his youngest brother Shmuyla Maharash, who became the Lubavitcher Rebbe and seemed to specialize in producing Marxist revolutionaries.
I imagine the Rebbe tending to his crazy brother in Kharkov. Nothing changes your life so irrecoverably than a care for a mentally ill relative or demented relative. Everything goes by the wayside. And there is not a thing in the world you want to forget more, so urgently.
There was another secret in Paris… (and it has nothing to do with Zalman or even Monsieur Shushani). Nobody will know about it soon… Let the whole thing disappear like a mad dream. Occasionally, a sleep is the only temporary break from this nightmare.
Let’s have more Bénédictine! Did the Rebbe develop a taste for Bénédictine in Paris?3 What are we trying to forget? Perhaps everything…
One Night I woke up Sweating
I remembered that Tzemach Tzedek destroyed Russian Jews with his maskilim fight. He robbed Russian Jews twice. First he robbed them through taxation, snake oil of Godly rule, so his sons, the merchants, can become a monopolistic vodka salesmen. I know it’s a little harsh, but work with me here.
And the second time, when he fought with maskilim to prevent taxes from flowing back to the community for the education of Russian Jews. The damn purist.
In a sign of poetic justice, the angel of destruction will come for his family first. As you review the table, you can’t escape the feeling that this royal family disappeared without a trace… And it’s not only the feeling.
In only about 50 years from the time this table was written, the last two religious male members of his mishpoche will be born. Both will be decendants of Boruch Sholem. One will carry Tzemach Tzedek’s name Menachem Mendel and the other the name of his grandfather, Schneur Zalman (Zalman’s older brother was comminist and martyr Boris/Boruch Sholem). In ironic mockery of Tzemach Tzedek’s stand on secular education, one will be an engineer educated in Berlin and Paris and the other will be a closet brilliant Russian writer. And the two, the Last of the Mohicans, will not get along. Both will be far from mother Russia at the same time in Paris and then again in New York. So typical for a Russian aristocrat (not the NY part).
The fate of the family, the complete assimaltion, the Gulag, the Holocaust will be a dark, unspoken secret (like a meshuge in a family). The invisible history that we don’t talk about in America. As if nothing happened. Magically, just wipe memory clean. Forget, like a bad dream. Physically impossible to remember.
When they celebrate Rebbe’s father every year, it also a way to forget thousands of others. Compartmentalized memory is the best trick in forgetting. But the fall is impossible to grasp. And the fake American Chabad that Ramash built only highlights the dark family secret(s).
P.S. Do we know why Yisroel Aryeh Leib died young? We know nothing.
The daughters are not listed: Deborah Leah and Radze. Both married their first cousins, grandsons of Mitteler Rebbe. Out of Deborah Leah came violinist Yehudi Menuhin, out of Radze came Sir Shayele Berlin of Oxford.
I retire my Musia claim as the correct name. I was wrong. Clearly written Mushka in Russian.
The Rebbe used to drink Benedecktine by farbengens. Probaly a habit he picked up in France. Older Russian Chabadniks objected. The legend it was produced after a recipe developed by Benedecktine monks. That’s when the Rebbe coined the term Schpitz Chabad, for the Chabad zealots. The term previously didn’t exist.