The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (3 of 6)

Part 3 of 6 — R. Loebel Jonas (Arjeh Jehuda Leib) LANDAU

I think I made no real progress on my LANDAU research from 1998 to 2008 — though that gap didn’t have to be that long.  In 1998, I reviewed all the Kempen birth, marriage and death records available on the LDS microfilms.  In early February 2008, I was looking at them again, and probably not for the first time since 1998.  But this time, in the death records, an item caught my attention — the entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU (ca.1780-1838).

In late January 2008, I had added a lot of the family of the Noda b’Jehuda to my family file based on information in Neil ROSENSTEIN’s “The Unbroken Chain” (2nd ed. 1990).  The “hook” for including the LANDAU family was that R. Joseph LANDAU of Klimontov, brother of R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague, had married a daughter of Bezalel KATZ of Ostra, son of Naftali KATZ (1649-1719), my father's 6x great uncle, and great great grandson of the MaHaRaL of Prague, R. Jehuda Löw ben Bezalel (ca.1520-1609), my 10x great grandfather.

Having just added R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, son of R. Israel Jonah LANDAU, to my extended family tree a few days before, when I ran across the death entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU in the Kempen records, it was easy to see the connection; that he was Loebel “ben” Jonas, more formally, Arjeh Jehuda Leib ben Israel Jonah.

That alone would have been a nice coincidence, running into the Kempen death record just days after learning about this man from “The Unbroken Chain”.  But the amazing thing about that death record was that it included all of the then living children of R. Loebel Jonas LANDAU, starting with Nesche (age 34), wife of Haskel LANDAU — most Kempen death records did not come with such complete family information.

Now, I had a link from Amalie through her mother Nesche to R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, and from him into the rabbinic LANDAU family.  Amalie could not claim descent from the Noda b’Jehuda, but she was part of the same family — her great great great grandfather R. Jitzhak LANDAU of Opatow (Apt), Lemberg (Lwow / Lviv) and Krakau (Krakow) was the uncle of the famous R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague.

I could easily imagine that being from the same family as R. Ezekiel LANDAU could have, over a few generations, been remembered as being descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.

And that could have been the end of that trail if not for the fact that Amalie LANDAU’s father Haskel was also a LANDAU.

The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (2 of 6)

Part 2 of 6 — Haskel LANDAU & Nesche LANDAU

In 1996 when I first learned about my great great grandmother Amalie LANDAU, I had known about the Mormon’s huge microfilm archive of European records for many years, but I ignored it because I could not imagine that that collection could have anything relevant for research on Jewish family history.  Of course, I was wrong about that.  For their own reasons, the Mormon’s amassed a huge collection of birth, marriage and death records, residents’ books, census records, etc, including records from Jewish communities all over Europe.  In 1998, I finally started to look at these materials, starting with Breslau records, but quickly moving on to other towns in Silesia and in Posen Province — Brieg, Myslowitz, Kempen, etc.

The first new information came from the birth entry for my great great aunt Regina BACH (who later married David RITTER) in Myslowitz Jewish community birth records.  That 1864 entry not only had Regina’s birth date and parents Jakob BACH and Amalie LANDAU, but for some reason also included how long Jakob and Amalie had been married (4 years; actually, in their 4th year), Amalie’s age (26; b.ca.1838) and, most interestingly, that Amalie was from Kempen and that her father was Haskel LANDAU.

That, of course, led to review of Kempen Jewish community records.  There were eight birth records for children of a Haskel LANDAU and his wife Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU:  Taube (1825), Israel Jonas (1827), Juda (1830), a stillborn son (1832), Elke (1833), Zorel (1834), Jette (1836) and Samuel (1842).  Amalie’s name did not appear in that set of births from 1825 to 1842.  Still, since it seemed unlikely that there would be two Haskel LANDAUs having children in Kempen at the same time, I concluded that this Haskel was probably Amalie’s father, and, therefore, that Nesche LANDAU was her mother.  These were my new great great great grandparents.

With both of Amalie’s (presumed) parents being LANDAUs, the search for a link back to the Noda b’Jehuda had twice the chance of success; but still, a journey of a 1000 (or a few) generations starts with finding the parents.