Simcha Isseroff (b.1900) - The Bernstein-Dahne Genealogy Wiki

# Simcha Isseroff (b.1900)  > 🔵 **Bernstein — Ozzy's side** · Relationship to Ozzy: **2x great-grand-uncle · also 5th cousin 6x removed *(2 ancestral lines)*** ![[I500063.jpg|220]] **Born** 01/01/1900 — [[Berdychiv]] **Died** 03/11/1969 — [[Israel]] **Parents** [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] · [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]] **Spouse** [[Baila Brinker (b.1900)]] **Children** [[Yaakov Isar (b.1927)]] · [[Arie Shimshon Isar (b.1928)]] **Siblings** [[Nutta Cholodenko Iserov (b.1886)]] · [[Avram Isseroff (b.1888)]] · [[Baila Isseroff (b.1894)]] · [[Yehuda Leib Isseroff (b.1898)]] · [[Ezra Isseroff (b.1904)]] **📸 Media — from MyHeritage** ![[I500063_1.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_2.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_3.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_4.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_5.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_6.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_7.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_8.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_9.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_10.jpg|180]] ![[I500063_11.jpg|180]] ### How you're related — 2 distinct paths *These are genuinely separate bloodlines (the family intermarried), not the same line counted twice.* - **2x great-grand-uncle** — [[Simcha Isseroff (b.1900)]] → [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]] → [[Yehuda Leib Isseroff (b.1898)]] → [[Hadassah Isseroff (b.1928)]] → [[Chaya Goldfischer (b.1950)]] → [[Avi Bernstein (b.1977)]] → [[Azriel Yosef Bernstein (b.2000)]] - **5th cousin 6x removed** — [[Simcha Isseroff (b.1900)]] → [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] → [[Yosef Iserov (b.1841)]] → [[Rukhlya Chmelnicky Auerbach (b.1818)]] → [[Udel Horodenker (b.1787)]] → [[Nachman Horodenker (b.1772)]] → [[Simcha Weinberg (b.1750)]] → [[Yechiel Tzvi Horodenker of Krementchik and Tcherin (b.1771)]] → [[Baila (b.1787)]] → [[Rivka Miriam (b.1790)]] → [[Rochel Rosenberg (b.1825)]] → [[Maryim Rivka Perlman (b.1845)]] → [[Sura Yuta Reiter (b.1855)]] → [[Shalom Goldfischer (b.1878)]] → [[Miriam Goldfischer (b.1902)]] → [[William Bill Goldfischer (b.1923)]] → [[Chaya Goldfischer (b.1950)]] → [[Avi Bernstein (b.1977)]] → [[Azriel Yosef Bernstein (b.2000)]] *GEDCOM I500063 · Bernstein tree · synced 2026-07-01*  ## Narrative Simcha Isseroff (Simcha Issarov; Simcha ben Shimshon Aryeh) was the fifth child of [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] and [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]], and brother to [[Nutta Cholodenko Iserov (b.1886)]] (who used the name David Cholodenko), [[Avram Isseroff (b.1888)]], [[Baila Isseroff (b.1894)]] (later Weinberg), [[Yehuda Leib Isseroff (b.1898)]] (called Leibish), and [[Ezra Isseroff (b.1904)]] (biography by his son Prof. Arie Issar, and yahrzeit note, in the MyHeritage biography). He was born in the Russian Empire around 1900–1902 — the family's own accounts leave the year and place uncertain, naming Berdychiv or Medzhybizh as possibilities [?] (yahrzeit note; the frontmatter records 01/01/1900 at Berdychiv, while his son's memoir gives 1902). While still a small child, about 1906, his parents brought the family on Aliyah to Ottoman Palestine and settled in Jerusalem (Arie Issar biography). In Jerusalem his father, a Breslover Chassid, earned a living as a melamed teaching young children Hebrew reading and writing in a cheder, and the household also ran a bakery until the outbreak of war in 1914 (Arie Issar biography). That year, when Simcha was about twelve, his father died and he was placed in the Diskin Orphan's Home; conditions there were harsh enough that he and his older brother Leibish ran away (Arie Issar biography). He continued his schooling at a Talmud Torah and then at the Mizrachi Seminar teachers' school, supporting himself with work throughout, and finished his studies with honours at seventeen (Arie Issar biography). His early career took him abroad and then back into the institutional life of religious Zionism. At about seventeen he was hired to teach at the Jewish School of Alexandria, Egypt, and after three years returned to Jerusalem to serve as secretary to Rabbi Berlin, president of the Mizrachi Party (Arie Issar biography). Active among the party's younger members, he was elected their delegate to the 1936 World Zionist Congress in Basel (Arie Issar biography). He was among the founders of the settlement of Neve Yaakov north of Jerusalem, and in the 1940s established a cooperative for transporting and distributing ice on behalf of a syndicate of Jerusalem ice makers (Arie Issar biography). Through the years leading up to the War of Independence he was, like his brothers [[Avram Isseroff (b.1888)]] and [[Ezra Isseroff (b.1904)]], an active member of the Haganah (Arie Issar biography; yahrzeit note). He married [[Baila Brinker (b.1900)]] — the family record notes it is not known where or when — and they had two sons, [[Arie Shimshon Isar (b.1928)]] (Prof. Arie Issar, author of the biography) and [[Yaakov Isar (b.1927)]] (yahrzeit note; Arie Issar biography). After the War of Independence, in 1949, Simcha was appointed general manager of the Ministry for the Rehabilitation of War Casualties. In that post he resettled hundreds of displaced Jewish families from the Old City into homes in the Talbieh and Katamon neighbourhoods (Arie Issar biography; memorial tribute by Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen). He later joined the Halvaa ve'Hisachon ("Loaning & Saving") bank in Jerusalem as deputy to its director, rose to general manager when his predecessor retired, and held that role until failing health forced him to retire in 1976 (Arie Issar biography). The bank, according to the memorial tribute, grew out of the charitable union he helped lead. Charity and communal leadership ran through his whole life. He was a founder and chair of the "Sons of Zion" (Benei Zion) organization, which supported Jerusalemites in need and had branches in many communities, and he helped establish the "Meir" charitable foundation alongside the bank (Arie Issar biography; memorial tribute). Widely addressed as "Reb Simcha," he was remembered as a tzaddik and a "hidden" Breslover Chassid — outwardly a clean-shaven modern European in dress, but privately rising at dawn to study a daf of Talmud and leaving behind, at his death, many notes and stories of tzaddikim and the Sages (memorial tribute by Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen). Rabbi Cohen, who considered him a teacher, recorded Simcha's Yiddish distinction between fraternal societies: others "have the nice Jews, but we have the good Jews" (memorial tribute). After the Six Day War, Simcha located the Isseroff family graves on Har HaZeitim (the Mount of Olives) and had them repaired (yahrzeit note). He himself died on 23 Adar and is buried on Har HaZeitim near his parents [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] and [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]], his sister [[Baila Isseroff (b.1894)]], and his aunt Bina Isseroff (yahrzeit note). His son's memoir records that he died in 1980 at his desk while writing charity checks meant for distribution that same evening (Arie Issar biography). The date of death is unsettled in the sources: the frontmatter records 03/11/1969, while both the yahrzeit note and his son's memoir place his death around March 1980 (23 Adar 5740) [?] — see Open questions. A memorial fund, first "Keren Meir" and renamed "Keren Meir Ve'Simcha" after his death, continues to award prizes each year to students from poor families (message from Arie Issar, MyHeritage biography). ## Research *(your reasoning — preserved across every rebuild)* ## Evidence ## Open questions