Welcome to the Mansbach Family Genealogy Project

There are seven MANSBACH families today that descend from one of the following MANSBACHs:

My name is Robert (Yerachmeal ben Avram Zalman HaLevy) MANSBACH.  I started collecting information on
MANSBACHs in 1979 by looking up the name MANSBACH in every telephone book in the library.

Then, having the
benefit of a free long-distance plan and time on my hands, I began to contact every MANSBACH with a telephone to see
if they were related to me.  In retrospect, this may sound strange.

In any event, after a while and maybe fifty or sixty responses from people named MANSBACH, a distinct
dichotomy developed.  One particular set of MANSBACHs, including mine, traced their ancestors to small villages
in a ten-mile radius, south-southeast of Tarnow, Poland.  In addition, all the “Polish” MANSBACHs
shared an Ashkenazy-Levite tradition.  All other MANSBACHs traced their ancestry to Germany, generally
Hamburg, Maden, Worms or Gudensburg and, with one exception (a no longer existent set of MANSBACHs from
Hamburg), none of the “German” MANSBACHs were Levites.  Thus, the Polish MANSBACHs and
the German MANSBACHs do not appear to be related, at least not in recent history.

The Polish MANSBACHs were related to my family, at least that was the theory — but no MANSBACH of Polish
ancestry knew any MANSBACH who wasn’t in his or her immediate family.  The Levite MANSBACH family had lived side
by side together in Poland in 1830, no longer knew one another 150 years later.  Other than hints in some family
documents, there was no way to know for sure whether any of us were related.

Now, in 2019, DNA submissions from several MANSBACHs confirm that all MANSBACHs who trace their
family history back to Poland are related.  They seem to share a common male Levite ancestor born around
1770 who seems to have had two sons, one named Jacob the Scribe and a second whose name we don’t know.  Jacob
the Scribe seems to have had a daughter Rachel and definitely had at least one son, “Isak Josef MANZBACH”, born around
1830, living in Rzeppenik, Poland.  Isak Josef is the earliest documented Polish Levite named MANZBACH.

In addition, Polish archival documents show that two Levite MANSBACHs, likely cousins to Isaac Joseph, named
Solomon [Shlomo] Peretz MANSBACH and Joseph David MANSBACH were living in Olpiny, just down the road from
Rzepennik.  Thereafter, the MANSBACH family in Poland lived in places like Krakow, Tarnow, Rzeszow, Nowy Sacz,
Olpini, Biecz, Dombrova and Judlowa.  Today, the MANSBACHs live in Mexico, Argentina, the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Israel; they have lived long and they have prospered.

Where did the MANSBACHs from Poland originate? A possible ancestral candidate is someone from a group of men
with the surname MANSBACH who were also Levites living and buried in Hamburg, Germany between 1600 and 1800.
(Having the surname MANSBACH in itself is extraordinary, as very few Jews had surnames prior to 1770).  In
theory, one of these Hamburg MANSBACHs then emigrated to Poland and was the forerunner of the Polish MANSBACHs.
Alternatively, and more likely, a woman named MANSBACH from Germany married a Levite man without a surname — and the
children of this marriage in Poland took the mother’s MANSBACH surname — a very common practice in those days.
DNA evidence indicates that going back to circa 1000 A.D., our MANSBACH direct male ancestor was also the direct male
ancestor of the Horowitz rabbinical family, a famous, if not the most famous rabbinical family.  The Horowitz
family were virtually all Levites, thus, the Levite tradition, confirmed by DNA results, extends in the
MANSBACH family for at least 1000 years, if not longer.

What is the derivation of the name MANSBACH itself?

There is evidence to suggest that the name MANSBACH comes from the village named MANSBACH, in Germany.
There is another possibility: the derivation of the five final letters of the Hebrew alphabet — mem, nun, zadde, pe,
and kaf (כ פ צ נ מ) pronounced MANTZBACH, is discussed in the 7th century Babylonian Talmud.  The letters
MANTZPACH stood for a group known as “The Watchmen” who were guardians of the Temple in Jerusalem.  So where does
the name MANSBACH come from?  The Talmud, the village of MANSBACH in Germany?  The guardians of the
Temple?  Or, somewhere else?

With the extraordinary assistance of my cousins Joel MANSBACH, Paul MANSBACH, Jack MANSBACH, Barbara
MANCBACH, Jane MANCBACH Fletcher, Hanna MANSBACH Weininger, Itamar Kazachinsky, Linda C. MANSBACH, my son, Eric
J.  MANSBACH, Lars Menk, Jeff Wexler, Russ Maurer and many others, this website contains the information we
shared and collected on the people who call themselves MANSBACH!

If you don’t have much time be sure to check out the pictures on the About page; we MANSBACHs are very
photogenic.

LIKELY UPPER BRANCHES MANSBACH FAMILY TREE