An extract from Chaim Freedman’s

“The Pen and the Blade - The Super Family”

Pages 32-33.

(now out of print)

There was a precedent for people from Vilna to settle in Lutzin. A brief history of the famous Levin family of Lutzin 1 records a family legend, which told that the first members of the family to settle in Lutzin were two Yeshiva students from Vilna, Yitskhak and Yaakov Halevi, who had come there from Vilna prior to their marriages. That would have been about 1750. Yet at that time no formal community existed in Lutzin. Although there is evidence of some isolated Jews living in Lutzin, it was not until 1786 that the community was officially established 2. Initially a small community, it gradually developed institutions and gained such a reputation for it’s Talmudic scholarship that it was known as the“Jerusalem of Latvia”, just as Vilna was known as “Yerushalayim de Lita”. The first Rabbi was Zev Altshul around the end of the eighteenth century. He was succeeded by Rabbi David Tzioni whose descendants occupied the seat of rabbi of Lutzin for one hundred and fifty years, the last being Rabbi Bentzion Don Yechia who perished with the whole community at the hands of the Nazis in 1941.

(Courtesy Elizabeth Reinhart)

The following population statistics give an indication of the growth of the Jewish community 3

Year Total Jews %Jews

1772 227 66 34

1802 582* *includes villages

1815 1800 1176 67

1847 2299

1868 3578 1915 55

1897 5149 2803 55

1900 6000 3000 50 approximately

1914 7100 3500 50 approximately

1920 5044 2050 41

1925 5559 1907 34

1935 5546 1518 27

The fall in population between 1847 and 1868 was due to the emigration of large numbers of Lutzin families who settled on the Jewish agricultural colonies in South-Eastern Ukraine (YekaterinoslavProvince). Likewise the fall by 1920 was due to the First World War when many left Lutzin, either for larger cities such as Riga, or settled overseas in South Africa, England, Australia and Canada. A further fall in the mid-1930’s was due to a move to the cities and a number who settled in the Land of Israel.

(Courtesy Elizabeth Reinhart)

Lutzin Jewry had a longstanding affiliation with the Land of Israel. And there are records of a number of Lutzin families, which settled in Israel in the early and mid-nineteenth century. In particular, Rabbi Yaakov-Zev (of Mendel Raises) of Lutzin first came toJerusalem in 1838 4 and then traveled back and forth to Lutzin collecting money to support the settlers inJerusalem.

In the main the Jews of Lutzin were prosperous merchants trading in cattle, forestry and agricultural produce. They constituted 60% of the shopkeepers according to the 1936 census 5. The community boasted a number of synagogues: ‘The Old Beit Midrash’; ‘The Great Synagogue’ built in 1801; ‘The Green Synagogue’; ‘The Beit Hamidrash of the Rabbi’ located in the house of Rabbi Aharon-Zelig Tzioni; and a Chassidic minyan, although the Chassidim constituted a minority in an otherwise strongly Misnagdic community. There were numerous charitable organizations, study circles, a Jewish library and a school.

(Courtesy Elizabeth Reinhart)

Being a small close-knit community many of the families of Lutzin were closely interlinked by repeated intermarriages such that cousin marriages were common. Thus the families Tzioni, Don Yechia, Altshuler, Zeligman, Lev, Levin, Falkov, Zusser, Horowitz, Kovnat, Shoyer, Druyan were all connected in some way.

The Super family was no exception when it came to cousin marriages, which were particularly prevalent in the fourth generation (the period around the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century). In fact certain personal names could be traced through the various Lutzin families, particularly Naftali, named after Rabbi Naftali Tzioni and Zelig, named after his son 6.

1 Archive of Latvian and Estonian Jewry, Kibbutz Shefaim, Lutzin File–document by Naftali-Yaakov Levin.

2 Material on Lutzin can be found four sources:

YahadatLatvia, Tel Aviv, 1963

Pinkas KehillotLatviaandEstonia, Yad Vashem,Jerusalem, 1990.

Megilat Yukhsin’Zeligman and Don Yechia, Lutzin, c1935.

The Jewish Encyclopaedia, Funk and Wagnall

3 P.H.K. p. 160.

4 Montefiore Census 1839

5 “Pilsetu apraksti” V Salnais and A Maldups,Riga, 1936.

6 "Megilat Yukhsin" Zeligman and Don Yechia.

Note - for a recent update on research into the Super family, see Pruning the Super Family Tree.

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