From Judah Lowe To Lowe Senior – A Spurious Claim To The Davidic Dynasty

July 29, 2018 – Elizabeth, NJ  – World-renowned Jewish genealogist Neil Rosenstein recently announced the on-going release of articles which appeared in various newspapers, periodical, journals, and magazines over the past three decades.

Presented here is a discussion entitled:

“From Judah Lowe to Lowe Senior – a spurious claim to the Davidic Dynasty.”

Rabbi Judah Lowe, Chief Rabbi of Prague, died in 1619.

Many researchers claimed that he was the grandson of a Rabbi Lowe who died in 1439/40 (see his epitaph). The last lines read, in part, partially …Y-SH-I… which is part of the death date and not the claim that some researchers make that it represents the name of YiSHI = Yishai or Jesse, father of the biblical King David.

According to Megilat Yochasin by R. Moses Meir Perlis (died 1739) which was first published in Mateh Moshe in 1745:–

1. Judah Lowe (died in 1439/40) the Elder’s tombstone was erected the same year as R. Avigdor Karo’s in 1439 (when Karo died).

PROBLEM:

1. The epitaph as reported by Kopelman Lieben in Gal Ed (1856, #53) as does Otto Muneles in Epitaphs From the Ancient Jewish Cemetery of Prague (1988, #37) has a different date = 1539/40 and a different inscription, making no reference to David ben Yishai but only “from the seed of gaonim.”

2. When R. David Gans (author of the historical work Tzemach David, 1543) visited the cemetery, he noted that the grave of Abraham (died 1543) b. Avigdor Karo. The stone of Lowe was nearby so that it is very likely that Gans, a student of the MaHaRaL would have noted Lowe’s stone (only two away) as being an ancestor of his mentor.

3. The MaHaRaL of Prague was born in 1512 and thus could not have been named for R. Lowe the Elder if he died in 1539/40.

4. R. Lowe the Elder’s stone stands in the part of the cemetery which is 1440 (according to Perlis) was not yet part of the cemetery, whereas a death date of 1539/40 fits perfectly.

Conclusion

Perlis, a descendant of the MaHaRaL of Prague attempted to connect the latter (R. Judah Lowe) to another earlier R. Lowe, claiming Davidic descent and making the date of death 100 years earlier!

Neil Rosenstein, a world-renowned genealogist, an expert in medieval Jewish history, continues to release old, archival articles to the public over the internet. Rosenstein says, “It is of the utmost importance for Jewish historians, researchers and genealogists to gain access to the content of the many articles and book reviews which are hidden away in numerous periodical, magazines, and newspapers over the past twenty or thirty years. The topic of the supposed Rabbi Judah Lowe’s descent from the Royal House of Biblical King David is of the utmost importance to rabbinic genealogists.”

About Neil Rosenstein:

Neil Rosenstein was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1944. He studied medicine at the University of Cape Town and interned in Israel. He specialized in surgery at the Mt. Sinai hospitals in Cleveland and New York City, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark, New Jersey. He maintained a private practice as a general surgeon in New Jersey for over 30 years.

As a result of over four decades of investigative study of rare books and manuscripts, trips to libraries and cemeteries, travel and correspondence, Rosenstein has accumulated a vast matrix of material on Jewish genealogy, especially in the field of rabbinical dynasties for which he has become world famous. His research has included travel in South Africa, Israel, USA, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, England, Italy, and France.

He founded the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (New York) in 1977, and is also founder and director of the Computer Center for Jewish Genealogy.

Rosenstein is the author of many works on Jewish Genealogy, his magnum opus being The Unbroken Chain, first published as a single volume in 1976. An expanded two-volume second edition was published in 1990. Other noted works include Saul Wahl, The Grandees of New Jersey, The Lurie Legacy: The House of Davidic Royal Descent, Avnei Zikaron (Stones of Remembrance), The Gaon of Vilna and his Cousinhood, and Latter Day Leaders, Sages, and Scholars. He has produced a CD-ROM with the indexed obituaries of the first-ever Hebrew weekly, HaMagid, which was in print from 1856 to 1903. 

In addition, he is the contributor of articles to various Jewish genealogical publications and The Jewish Press. He lectures frequently and has spoken many times to various Jewish genealogical societies, in the United States and abroad, as well as at the International Seminars for Jewish Genealogy and the annual National Summer Seminars. His biography is included in Who's Who in World Jewry (1987) and is listed in Marquis' Who's Who in America (from 1997 onwards).

Neil Rosenstein and his wife, Mavis, live in Elizabeth, New Jersey. They have five sons and more than 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.