BRODSKI:

By: Herman Rosenthal, Peter Wiernik

A family which has produced many rabbis and notable men in the last three hundred years. It is a branch of the Schor family. Meïr Schor of Brody, Galicia, married and settled in Zlatopol, government of Kiev, Russia, where he assumed the name "Brodski" (from Brody). His father, Alexander Ḥayyim Schor, was a son of Deborah Babad, daughter of R. Alexander Schor, author of "Simlah Ḥadashah," who lived in Zolkiev in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Meïr had five sons, all of whom became very wealthy; and the Brodskis are now considered the richest Jewish family in Russia. Israel (b. 1823; d. 1889), who surpassed his brothers in wealth and philanthropy, settled in Kiev, where his sons, Lazar and Leon, who are practically at the head of the sugar industry in Russia, now reside. They own 22 sugar factories, including 3 refineries. They are both councilors of commerce, and have been decorated by the Russian government and by the French government with the order of the Legion of Honor.

The best known of the other sons of Meïr was Abraham, who was born in 1816 and settled in Odessa in 1858. He, too, was prominently identified with the sugar industry and other large enterprises, and was for many years the most influential member of the city council of Odessa, occupying for a long time the position of vice-mayor. He, like his brother Israel, distributed large sums for various charitable and educational purposes, and founded important benevolent institutions in Odessa and in Zlotopol, where he died Oct. 28, 1884. His son Samuel (b. 1846; d. Dec. 28, 1896) married a daughter of the journalist and author Ossip (Joseph) Rabinovitch. He was also a member of the Odessa city council (by appointment, for no Jew can be elected to that position).

H. R. P. Wi.