Falk Zhmood · about 1797 – 1840
He is the oldest documented ancestor of the direct line. No paper written by him or about him survives, but we know he existed and what he was called because his son appears in the census identified as “son of Falik”.
He died around 1840. His name was not lost: the Ashkenazi Jewish custom was to name a child after a deceased relative, which is why the name Falk —or Falik, or Folke— reappears again and again in the following generations. Felix himself bore that name.
David Zmud · about 1818 – 1880
Born in Ludza, he died in Andreyevka, in southern Ukraine. He was the one who made the journey: he left the Baltic in 1846 and settled as an agricultural colonist in Novy Zlatopol. In the 1858 census he is 40, with three sons in the household.
He married Khana Reizel, whom Chaim Freedman identifies as Khana Reizel Komisaruk, from a prominent family in the same colonies. If that identification is correct, the marriage has a story of its own.
A famous ancestor
According to Freedman’s reconstruction, Khana Reizel descended from Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon. The 1858 census, which calls her a daughter of Zalka, contradicts the version that for years made her his great-granddaughter, and leaves open the one Freedman himself proposed later: that she was his great-great-granddaughter.
The Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) was one of the most important rabbinic figures in all of Jewish history. He lived in Vilna, Lithuania, and his intellectual authority was so great that it shaped the course of Eastern European Judaism for the following two centuries. Thousands of families around the world trace their descent from him today, and the Komisaruk family is one of the established branches.
Freedman considers it proven, including by genetic testing, that the Komisaruk branch descends from the Gaon. What is not documented is the link joining it to this family: that David’s wife was a Komisaruk. It is Freedman’s proposal, based on the families’ oral tradition, and so the Zhmoods’ descent from the Gaon remains a hypothesis.
Koppel Zhmood · about 1838 – around 1900
Felix’s father. Born in Ludza, he came to the colonies as a boy with his parents. In the 1858 census he is 20 and already married to Dvorka, Aba’s daughter, of the same age. He died around 1900, in Andreyevka.
Koppel and Dvorka had several children. One of them is Felix.
Koppel’s brothers
David had at least three sons: Koppel, Falk and Leyzer.
Falk, born around 1840, two years younger than Koppel, became a merchant in Nogaysk —now Prymorsk—, a coastal town on the Sea of Azov. He died in 1904. His gravestone preserves his Hebrew name, Shlomo Falk, and the formula “son of David”, which is what places him in this branch of the family. He was therefore Felix’s uncle.