# Yehuda Leib Isseroff (b.1898) <!-- AUTO:BEGIN — generated from GEDCOM; do not edit, overwritten on rebuild --> > 🔵 **Bernstein — Ozzy's side** · Relationship to Ozzy: **2x great-grandfather · also 5th cousin 6x removed *(2 ancestral lines)*** ![[I500042.jpg|220]] **Born** 01/24/1898 — [[Berdychiv]] **Died** 12/12/1988 — [[Brooklyn]] **Parents** [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] · [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]] **Spouses** [[Freide Sarah Veksler (b.1897)]] · [[Tziporah Hershcovitz (b.1904)]] **Children** [[Sampson Isseroff (b.1920)]] · [[Esther Isseroff (b.1922)]] · [[Moshe Eliyahu Isseroff (b.1925)]] · [[Yaakov Isseroff (b.1926)]] · [[Hadassah Isseroff (b.1928)]] · [[Shoshana Isseroff (b.1931)]] **Siblings** [[Nutta Cholodenko Iserov (b.1886)]] · [[Avram Isseroff (b.1888)]] · [[Baila Isseroff (b.1894)]] · [[Simcha Isseroff (b.1900)]] · [[Ezra Isseroff (b.1904)]] **📸 Media — from MyHeritage** ![[I500042_1.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_2.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_3.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_4.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_5.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_6.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_7.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_8.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_9.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_10.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_11.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_12.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_13.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_14.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_15.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_16.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_17.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_18.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_19.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_20.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_21.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_22.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_23.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_24.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_25.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_26.jpg|180]] ![[I500042_27.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-grandfather** — [[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** — [[Yehuda Leib Isseroff (b.1898)]] → [[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 I500042 · Bernstein tree · synced 2026-07-01* <!-- AUTO:END --> ## Narrative Yehuda Leib Isseroff — called Leibush (also "Leibish"/"Zaidy Leibush" in the family) — was born 24 January 1898 in [[Berdychiv]], then in the Russian Empire, one of at least six children of the teacher [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] and [[Soshe Greenberg (b.1869)]]. By his own account the family held a tradition of descent from the Ba'al Shem Tov, which surfaced when they began discussing a move to Eretz Yisroel. His father ran a cheder in the family home; an aunt, Bina, and her short-lived son Yitzchok lived with them, and his mother's brother milled flour at Konstantinov, where the young Leibush once visited (memoir). The memoir's central event is the family's emigration to Ottoman Palestine in 1906, when Leibush was four. Traveling with his siblings [[Avram Isseroff (b.1888)]] (then newly bar mitzvah and the eldest along), [[Baila Isseroff (b.1894)]], [[Simcha Isseroff (b.1900)]] and the infant [[Ezra Isseroff (b.1904)]], the children crossed by ship — changing vessels at Istanbul, holding a Shabbos minyan aboard, and landing at Yaffa by an Arab-rowed boat before continuing by wagon to the Hachnosas Orchim in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem (memoir). His older brother Natan (the [[Nutta Cholodenko Iserov (b.1886)]] of the vault) had stayed behind, and the parents later returned to Berdychiv to try to free him from army service (memoir). His childhood in Jerusalem was marked by illness and hunger. The family moved to the Old City for his father's health, suffered malaria ("kadachas") treated with quinine, and cycled through apartments and small enterprises — his mother ran a store and then a restaurant near the yeshiva, his father kept a seforim store, and they baked and sold bread through the deprivations of the First World War, when Turkish requisitioning left only bran to bake with (memoir, Letter 1). Leibush studied at Yeshiva Chai Olam from age four and remembered the mashgiach Rav Shlomo Baruch and rebbe Rav Mordechai feeding him when he came to cheder starving. After his father died at Bikur Cholim hospital, he and his brothers were briefly placed in the Diskin orphan home, from which they climbed the fence and ran home (memoir). As a Russian subject in wartime Ottoman territory, the teenaged Leibush was repeatedly seized as a suspected deserter or draft-evader — jailed, made to haul wood, and twice marched toward a ship for deportation before his brother Avram bought his release with a bribe (Letters 1–3). To find work he trekked on foot with the young Ezra to the colonies — Petach Tikvah (picking oranges, sorting almonds) and Tveria (Tiberias), where the family kept a tiny lakeside store as their home; Avram supplied charcoal to the government, contracted cholera, and Leibush himself nearly died of a swollen fever, saved by a German doctor's then-novel injection (Letters 1–3). A recurring family fortune-turn was his finding ten gold Napoléon coins in the Tveria market, after which they returned to Jerusalem (Letter 2). At his brother Avram's urging, Leibush enrolled at the modern Yeshivat Rav Kook, where instruction was in Hebrew and his teachers included a Gemara instructor, "Dr. Chacham" (Tanach/history) and "Dr. Shor" (Ivrit/arithmetic) — a path meant to qualify him as rabbi or teacher over his mother's preference for a traditional yeshiva (Letter 2). There he studied under Rav Kook, became a shochet, and received semicha from him (memoir). The memoir gives two overlapping accounts of the matchmaking that led to his marriage to [[Freide Sarah Veksler (b.1897)]] ("Freyda Sarah"): in one telling she is the daughter of Reb Noach Meller of Bais Yisroel, met after shadchanim pressed his mother while he was about 17–18; consistent across versions is that he barely spoke a word to his kallah before or during the engagement, "crossing the street" to avoid her as a yeshiva bochur was expected to, and that her father pledged two years' support (kest), the wedding, and a shtreimel (memoir, Letter 2). He describes his wife as a direct descendant of the Shelah HaKadosh. Their first children, [[Sampson Isseroff (b.1920)]] (Shimshon Aryeh, named for Leibush's father) and [[Esther Isseroff (b.1922)]], were born in these hard early-married years in Bais Lechem (memoir). On the counsel of the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Pinchos Horowitz — whom the memoir names as a cousin of his wife — Leibush emigrated to the United States, going ahead alone despite his lifelong dread of ships; his wife and son followed and were detained six weeks at Ellis Island until, with the Bostoner Rebbe's money, guards were bribed to release them (memoir). In America he worked as a rabbi, teacher and shochet, moving "from state to state" to support a household that grew with [[Moshe Eliyahu Isseroff (b.1925)]], [[Yaakov Isseroff (b.1926)]], [[Hadassah Isseroff (b.1928)]] and [[Shoshana Isseroff (b.1931)]] — the six children who appear in the vault. [?] The move to the U.S. is generally consistent with the family's naturalization paper trail (a Declaration of Intention, a Naturalization Petition dated 28 Jan 1929, a further Declaration of 27 Jan 1933, and an Oath of Allegiance of 15 Feb 1937), and with census images (1930, 1940, 1950) held on the profile — though those documents have not yet been read directly (see Open questions). The vault also records a second marriage, to [[Tziporah Hershcovitz (b.1904)]], not addressed in the memoir; the sequence and dates relative to Freide Sarah are not established here. Yehuda Leib Isseroff wrote these memoirs on 17 August 1983 (8 Elul 5743) at his daughter Hadassah's request, closing with a charge to his descendants to remember their descent "from the holy Ba'al Shem Tov and the ShLa"H HaKadosh" and to remain Shomer Shabbos. He died 12 December 1988 in [[Brooklyn]], aged 90, and is the profile-holder's 2x great-grandfather (with a second, distinct collateral line making him also a 5th cousin 6x removed). His father [[Shimshon Aryeh Iserov (b.1864)]] is recorded under the earlier surname spelling *Iserov*; the family variously appears as Iserov / Isseroff across records. ## Research *(your reasoning — preserved across every rebuild)* ## Evidence ## Open questions - **Naturalization records — needs browser pass.** Three Ancestry-hosted records linked in the MyHeritage biography return HTTP 403 to automated fetch and were not read directly: [Naturalization Declaration - 27 Jan 1933](https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2361/records/1231185), [Naturalization Petition - 28 Jan 1929](https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61195/records/717746), [Naturalization Oath of Allegiance - 15 Feb 1937](https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2361/records/1231187). A logged-in browser pass should confirm residence, occupation, arrival ship/date, and physical description, and reconcile the naturalization dates with the memoir's emigration account. - **Second marriage.** The vault lists a second spouse, [[Tziporah Hershcovitz (b.1904)]], not mentioned in the 1983 memoir. The timing relative to [[Freide Sarah Veksler (b.1897)]] (widowhood vs. remarriage, dates) is unestablished here. - **Census / manifest images.** The MyHeritage media gallery includes 1930/1940/1950 census images, a 1951 Italy manifest, and Massachusetts/Connecticut naturalization images — none transcribed into the narrative yet; a browser/OCR pass would firm up U.S. residences and moves.