(Ha'aretz) Eetta Prince-Gibson - Israeli President Reuven "Rubi" Rivlin's family traces their history back more than 450 years, across at least 22 generations, to an early ancestor in Vienna in 1550 and to the revered Gaon of Vilna in the 18th century. Hillel Rivlin moved from Shklov, Lithuania, to Jerusalem in 1809 (about the same time as the disciples of the Gaon of Vilna - and more than 70 years before the first wave of Zionist immigration.) Rivlin's father, Yosef Yoel Rivlin, was the author of the first Hebrew edition of the Koran. More than 35,000 members of the Rivlin family are thought to live in Israel. At an international family reunion in 2009, between 3,000 and 5,000 Rivlins took over Jerusalem's largest convention center and organized a massive family walk around the Old City walls.
2014-06-11 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive