--- title: "What we still don't know" url: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/history/open-questions/ lang: en work: "The Smud Family: A Jewish Family History from Ludza, Latvia to Entre Ríos, Argentina" author: "Mateo Smud" licence: CC0-1.0 summary: "Whether Khana Reizel descended from the Vilna Gaon, where Felix was born, why Marcos was born in Mariupol, where the Noels came from and what lies above Falk. Six unanswered questions." --- # 9. What we still don't know > Whether Khana Reizel descended from the Vilna Gaon, where Felix was born, why Marcos was born in Mariupol, where the Noels came from and what lies above Falk. Six unanswered questions. This story is not finished. These are the questions that remain open, from the most important to the least. ### 1. Whether Khana Reizel descended from the Vilna Gaon Khana, David Zmud's wife and Koppel's mother, is the person through whom this line would enter the Vilna Gaon's descent. The hypothesis is Chaim Freedman's: that Khana belonged to the Komisaruk family of Rassein (now Raseiniai, Lithuania), whose descent from the Gaon he considers proven. If so, Felix and all his descendants descend from the Gaon. If not, the connection does not exist. The question is not whether the Komisaruks descend from the Gaon: Freedman supports that with Lithuanian records, an inscription in a family book and genetic tests between branches. The question is whether Khana was a Komisaruk, and whose daughter she was. #### What is documented That Khana existed and was David's wife. The list of families who moved from Vitebsk province to Novy Zlatopol, of 1850 and 1852, records her as “Chana”, aged 32, with no father's name (as Freedman transcribes it; this research has not seen that sheet). The Novy Zlatopol census of 26 May 1858, household 47/92, records her as “Хана Залкова”: Khana, daughter of Zalka, aged 38. The patronymic can be read on the original sheet, published on JewishGen. The 1858 lists add the father's name to women, and “Zalka” is a common form of Zalman. Nothing more. No known document gives her maiden name, her birthplace or the second name, Reizel, which Freedman attributes to her on the strength of family tradition and of a great-granddaughter who bore it. #### What Freedman proposed, and how it changed In 1997, in Eliyahu's Branches: daughter of Velvel (Zev) Komisaruk and of Ester, a granddaughter of the Gaon through her father, Yehuda Leib of Serhei; and therefore a sister of Rabbi Shlomo-Zalmen Komisaruk. It is the version many published trees repeat today, FamilySearch among them, and the one this site's tree still draws. In February 2020, in the Komisaruk family report: the same place in the tree, but the father is now called Berel (Dov-Ber), as the Lithuanian records of 1784, 1816, 1846 and 1847–1848 name him. For Khana, the report cites no document linking her to the Komisaruks: its only note points to the National Historical Archive of Belarus, in Minsk, for her year of birth. In October 2020, in his study of the relationships between the Komisaruks, the Zmoods and the Yovels: with the full 1858 census in hand, Freedman rules out that she was Shlomo-Zalmen's sister, since she would then have been recorded as “Berelova” and not “Zalkova”. He proposes instead that she was his daughter, and therefore a sister of Rabbi Pinkhas Komisaruk. He presents it himself as a theory. #### What supports the hypothesis The 1858 patronymic is compatible with the October 2020 version: Shlomo-Zalmen Komisaruk was born in 1798 and married around 1812, so a daughter born around 1820 fits the ages. The oral tradition of several branches. Maurice Zmood of Melbourne told Freedman that the Zmoods, Grinblats and Komisaruks came from a common ancestor, and a Grinblat had been told they descended from “a Gaon” in Lithuania. In the Argentine family it was said for generations that the Smuds descended from a rabbi or a rabbinical family, without naming the Gaon. The name Chana-Reizel, which recurs in later generations of both families. #### What is missing, or contradicts it There is not a single document naming Khana's parents. The patronymic gives the father's given name and nothing more, and Zalman was a very common name. The 1997 and February 2020 versions, which make her a daughter of Velvel or of Berel, are contradicted by the 1858 census itself. Geography. Khana appears married in Ludza, Vitebsk province, where Koppel was born around 1839. The Komisaruks lived in Rassein, Kovno province, some three hundred and fifty kilometres away. No document places her in Rassein, and the birthplace some trees give, Rassein, comes from the same hypothesis. The tradition of kinship has another possible explanation, one the genealogies do document: the marriages between the two families in the following generations. Tybel, Koppel's daughter, married Meir Komisaruk, and a grandson of Koppel, David Zmood, married Tsiporah Komisaruk. Those relationships existed, and they are enough for two families to remember themselves as related without Khana having been a Komisaruk. Genetics has not confirmed it. Freedman writes in 2018 that the Zmood line is “yet to be verified by genetic testing”, and in 2020 that only one Zmood has taken a test. #### Where it stands It is a hypothesis, proposed by Freedman, that no document confirms. The version this site's tree shows, daughter of Dov-Ber (Berel) and Ester, is contradicted by the 1858 census. Freedman's most recent version, daughter of Shlomo-Zalmen, is compatible with that census but not proven. The Smud family's link to the Vilna Gaon depends entirely on this question. #### What document could settle it The 1834 revision list of Rassein, in the Lithuanian archives. If Shlomo-Zalmen Komisaruk's household includes a daughter Khana aged about fourteen, it would be the first paper placing her in that family. If she does not appear, that is not enough to rule her out, but it weighs against. The Ludza lists of 1834 and 1850, in the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Minsk, which are the ones Freedman cites. They may show Khana in David's household, and they sometimes note where a person came from, as the 1816 Rassein list notes that Shlomo-Zalmen “came from over the border in 1812”. The record of David and Khana's marriage, around 1837 or 1838, if any book of the Ludza community from those years survives: it would give the bride's father's name and where she came from. The record of her death in 1885, in Andreyevka, Berdyansk district, Taurida province. Jewish death records of the period give name and age, and sometimes the father's name. #### What DNA could contribute, and what it could not No genetic test that says anything about this question exists today. Between a descendant of Felix and a descendant of another child of Shlomo-Zalmen there are, if the hypothesis is true, about six generations: they are distant cousins, and at that distance it is common to share no detectable segment of DNA. Among Ashkenazi Jewish families, moreover, two people with no recent relationship often share small segments inherited from much earlier ancestors. A single match proves nothing, and the absence of a match does not refute anything either. What could strengthen it is a pattern: several descendants of Khana, through different children, sharing the same segment with several descendants of Shlomo-Zalmen, also through different children, with that segment absent from unrelated families of the colonies. For this to count, those compared must descend from Khana without passing through the later marriages with the Komisaruks. Felix's Argentine descendants are useful for that: none of their known ancestors married a Komisaruk. Even so, DNA can show that two branches are related, but not where the link lies: it cannot reliably tell a daughter from a niece or a cousin. That is why it has to go with the documents, not replace them. Y-chromosome DNA is of no use, because the link runs through a woman. Mitochondrial DNA, passed only from mother to daughter, would help only if an unbroken female line from Khana were known, and none is: her documented children are sons. #### Other possible explanations That Khana was a daughter of Shlomo-Zalmen Komisaruk, as Freedman proposes in October 2020. That she was the daughter of another Zalman, unrelated to the Komisaruks, and that the tradition of kinship comes from the marriages between the two families in later generations. That she was related to the Komisaruks some other way, as a niece or a cousin, which would also give a link to the Gaon, but a different one from the one proposed. Sources: The 1858 census — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/#censo-1858 · Relationships among the Komisaruk, Zmood and Yovel families, according to Freedman (2020) — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/#freedman-2020-parentescos · The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/#freedman-2020-komisaruk · Chaim Freedman's work — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/#freedman ### 2. When and where Felix was born This is the largest gap. We know the approximate range —between 1860 and 1868, probably closer to 1860— but not the date or the place. The record would be in some synagogue register of the southern Ukrainian colonies. Finding it would close the line for good. ### 3. Why Marcos was born in Mariupol The family lived in Berdyansk, but Marcos was born in Mariupol in 1899, according to his birth record. They are two different cities, about eighty kilometres apart and in different provinces. The family may have moved, or may have been passing through. We do not know. ### 4. Whether Felix and Leon Moises Zmud were brothers This is the question that started the whole research. For generations the family said that Felix and a certain Leon Moises Zmud were brothers, and that Ana Zmud —Leon Moises's daughter— was Alejandro's first cousin. To this day no document confirms it and no document disproves it. The tradition stands, unsupported and unrefuted. **An important warning.** Among Koppel's sons there is one named Moshe. He is not the same person as Leon Moises Zmud, and the two must not be confused. Names repeat constantly in this family —there are at least four different people called Falk or Falik, and as many called Moshe or Moisés, spread across different generations. Confusing two of them is the easiest mistake to make and the hardest to detect afterwards. ### 5. Where the Noel family really came from The Sephardic tradition of Malke's family is not documented. It is the most attractive of the open lines of research. There is one point of support, and only one: the 1899 record names Ester Malka's father. His name was Meyer. The record gives no surname for that branch, and so far none of the databases consulted returns anything that can be attributed to him. Any record from Berdyansk or Mariupol naming an Ester Malka, daughter of Meyer, would be the first document of the Noel family. ### 6. What lies above Falk The documented line reaches Falk, born around 1797. Above him there is, for now, nothing firm. Family trees published online propose three more generations: Alexander Zhmuydya, around 1778; Yehuda Zhmuydya, around 1750; and Leizer Zhmuydya, around 1725 in Lithuania. It is worth being honest about this: they are a reconstruction, not a finding. In the tree Chaim Freedman uploaded to JewishGen, updated in 2017, those three generations appear with details the published trees do not give: Aleksander Zhmuydya (1778–1834), son of Yehudah (Idel) and Eva, with several children, among them Falk (1797–1840) and Aba (1802), Dvorka's father. The death years have the shape of those that come from the Ludza revision lists, but the tree does not say which document each comes from: they are the most concrete lead there is, not an answer. The document that would settle the question exists and has been located: an 1816 census of Ludza, held in the historical archive in Minsk, where Falk would be about nineteen and would appear identified by his father's name. Until that file is consulted, everything before Falk remains open. If you are researching any of these surnames or have found a record that may be related, any of these questions is a good place to start. The [sources](https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/) show where each piece of evidence is kept. --- The Smud Family · genealogical research by Mateo Smud, published under CC0 1.0. Machine index: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/llms.txt