After the massacre of October 7th, I needed a distraction. I turned to genealogy. What started as a side project became a full investigation into the origins of the Saranduk (later Shore) family.

The Premise: Don’t Trust, Verify

Family memory is useful, but not trustworthy. My guiding principle was simple: write everything down, but don’t believe anything without evidence. Someone says we’re related to the Illui of Poltava? Great. Let’s see how. A cousin claims we’re Levites? Wonderful. Let’s try to corroborate that.

The Method: Archives, Manifests, and Mistrust

I started with JewishGen, FamilySearch, and the Ukrainian Revision Lists. These tsarist-era censuses gave me concrete data from the 1800s—ages, locations, household structure. From there, I triangulated:

• Census records from the U.S.
• Immigration documents, especially manifests like the S.S. Gerty
• Naturalization and citizenship applications
• Death certificates
• Gravestone inscriptions
• Church books from Cherkasy
• Family oral history, treated as suspect until proven

Where records contradicted each other, I assumed the problem wasn’t memory—it was bureaucracy. Immigration officials didn’t care if you were Saranduk or Shore. You became whoever they wrote down.

(See below for the data from the Ukrainian Revision Lists.)

My great Aunt Ruth Mondlick OB"M and my cousin Rabbi Shmariya Shore יבלחט"א, also did a great deal of research and left notes.

Handling Name Changes and Bad Leads

“Saranduk” didn’t survive America. My great-grandfather Hyman (Chaim Zvi) Saranduk became Hyman Shore. Why? According to Ruth Mandelik, his son Asher Shore told her: “It’s the name the damned Russians gave us.” Fair enough.

Most of the family changed their name to Shore - however - Shmariya Shore’s brother Mordekhai Ze’ev / William - changed it to Serin

Other name oddities popped up too. Tuba bat Avrum Yudel is listed in one census as a “granddaughter” of Avrum Saranduk. She wasn’t. She was Shmariya Shore’s wife. This is why I keep the “[sic]” label in the family chart. We’re not editing the record to make it clean. We’re documenting the mess.

The Tools: Markdown, Spreadsheets, Sanity

I don’t use fancy genealogy software. I use:

• Obsidian for linking data points and contradictory reports. I keep my notes in Markdown.
• CSV spreadsheets for tracking relationships, aliases, and source confidence
• Python Jupyter Notebooks in Google Drive for checking the data with Pandas and other tools. (As well as parsing raw data files from Aunt Ruth’s Genealogy software database.)
• My blog, as a central place to present raw findings, theories, and family context

I update posts rather than rewrite them—if I got something wrong last year, I mark it. This is history, not PR.

Dealing with Conflicting Testimonies

Over the course of this project, I came across a number of claims about our family’s lineage—some relating to tribal status, others to famous figures in Jewish history. One tradition held that we were Levites, based on a remark passed down from a relative referred to as “Uncle Bill.” A rabbi in Boston reportedly ruled the statement could be relied upon as מסיח לפי תומו. I explored the claim further and consulted Rabbi Nachum Eisenstein in Jerusalem, who advised against treating our family as Levites from a halachic standpoint.

Beyond the halacha, I looked for corroborating evidence: our family names are listed throughout Bnei Yaakov Synagogue in Providence, but none include “הלוי.” The same is true for the gravestones. I also couldn’t find any corroborating evidence consistent with us being Levites. My father told me that he heard from his grandfather (Asher Shore - also born in Talne) that we are related to the Illui of Poltava — Rabbi Yoel Shurin — a figure of note but not a Levi. That line of inquiry has so far gone cold.

Other family stories include various colorful tales that seem more legendary than literal. I try not to dismiss any of it outright — but I do separate what’s verifiable from what’s cherished lore. When I add commentary, it’s to signal which parts are evidence-based and which are best held loosely.

What I Found

The Saranduks lived in Talne, Ukraine. Before that, they lived in Torgovitsa. They appear in the Talne in census rolls in 1850, 1858, and 1897. The family patriarch was Leyb, then Avrum, then Chaim Hirsch, then Avrum (Nikem), then Hyman (Chaim Zvi), and then Shmariya. They were tailors, grocers, and Torah-observant Jews. Most came over in 1904. Tuba’s mother is said to have died en route and was buried at sea—with a note identifying her as a Jewish woman. Miraculously (or mythically), her body is said to have been discovered and buried in Israel.

What This Project Gave Me

I’m not chasing prestige lineage. I’m chasing coherence. This work gave me a way to connect past and present without mythologizing either. It’s a table I can set for my kids — one where they can know who they come from, even if the people at that table once punched horses or renamed themselves out of spite.

Final Thought

No one’s going to do this for you. And once your relatives are gone, their stories are gone too. Write it all down. Sort it out later.

Ukrainian Revision Lists Entries

A partial family tree based on the Ukrainian Revision Lists: