MARGOLIOTH

MARGOLIOTH (Margoliouth, Margulies, Margolies, and various other spellings), family that traditionally traces its descent   from rashi . The name derives from margalit (מרגלית), Hebrew for "pearl." The earliest identifiable member of the family was Jacob of Regensburg (see jacob margolioth ). Jacob's son Samuel may be identical with SAMUEL MARGOLIOTH, nominated elder of Great Poland and Masovian Jewry in 1527 by Sigismund I. Samuel's son was anton margarita , the apostate anti-Jewish writer. Another son, MOSES (1540?–1616), was rabbi at Cracow and head of the yeshivah there. NAPHTALI MARGOLIOTH (b. 1562) embraced Christianity in 1603, as Julius Conrad Otto. He became professor of Hebrew at Altdorf and later returned to Judaism. Samuel's grandson MENDEL (d. 1652), rabbi at przemysl , had eight sons, all distinguished talmudists. The most outstanding member of this line, which was widely dispersed throughout Eastern Europe, was ephraim zalman margolioth . There was a MOSES MARGULIES among the first inhabitants of the Vienna ghetto, founded in 1620. His son, MORDECAI (Marx Schlesinger), was leader of the Vienna community at the time of the 1670 expulsion. Some members of the family settled permanently in Eisenstadt. Those who later returned to Vienna called themselves Margulies-Jaffe and registered themselves as "Schlesinger." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Mieses, Die aelteste gedruckte deutsche Uebersetzung des juedischen Gebetbuches aus dem Jahre 1530… (1916); B. Wachstein, Die Grabschriften des alten Judenfriedhofs in Eisenstadt (1922); L. Loewenstein, Geschichte der Juden in der Kurpfalz (1895), 93.