Playing catchup with the Spektor files

Thanks to Morris Spector and also to Jeff Spector of Colorado Springs, I now have my hands on the famous first chapter of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor — Life and Letters by Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Shimoff published in 1959 by Yeshiva University.

Also in hand are a dozen pages of hand-written research results prepared in 1990 by David Einsiedler of Los Angeles, who was engaged by Morris Spector to research the family of Isaac Elchanan Spektor. There are also various Hebrew source documents that Einsiedler provides, which will further document the Israeli descendants of R. Spektor's brother Jacov David Spektor.

These documents are rich with new information — or I should say information that is new to me and my attempts to synthesize all available sources to document the immediate family members and descendants of R. Spektor. On first read, I see several brand new pieces of information and several other things that will help us interpret facts we already know.

To do that will require line-by-line reading of the new materials that is likely to take me a few days to accomplish. The Hebrew translations will take longer (any volunteers?).

Until I report back on my analysis of the new papers, here is a glimpse at a section of page 24 from Shimoff in which he mentions our great grandfather Joseph Rabinowitz.