Baba's Story - Rabbi Samuel Edels, The Machshoy, Baba's Ancestor

Esther Feigel Leibowitz was descended from a long line of scholarly Jews and could trace her ancestry back to the 1600's to Rabbi Samuel Eliezer Edels, who was born in 1555 and died in 1631. Known as the Maharsha or the Machshoy, he was a great talmudist, religious thinker and astronomer.

The following is his listing in the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 4th Edition, Roth & Wigoder, published by Doubleday & Co., 1970, pg. 587:

Edels, Samuel Eliezer (known as the Maharsha, 1556-1631). Polish Talmudist, named after his mother-in-law Edel who founded a yeshiva for him in Posen. He was subsequently rabbi in Chelm, Lublin and Ostrog. His main work Hiddushe Halakhot ("Halakhic Novellae") became a classic and was incorporated in most editions of the Talmud.

Rabbi Samuel Edels, Baba's ancestor, had a small silver wine cup that was passed down to the eldest child in each subsequent generation. Until it was handed down to Esther Feigel hundreds of years later. She brought it with her from Jerusalem to Egypt and then to Brooklyn, New York. Baba would use this cup at our Passover celebrations in her Brooklyn apartment and I always took it for granted that it would be there.

A few years before she died in 1988, one day when Baba was working in her office a few blocks away from her apartment, her apartment was broken into. In addition to other items, this little wine cup was stolen. It was never found. Perhaps it was melted down for silver?.... This was very sad, and I think it was very hard for her to lose this cup and it affected her health.