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Rappaport family

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Rap(p)aport, Rap(p)oport or Rapa Porto (רפפורט) is a family name from an Italian (Jewish) Kohenitic pedigree. It takes its origins in the Rapa family of Porto located in Verona, Italy.

The names of Rapa or Rappe ha-Kohen(-Tzedeq) (Rapa Katz) are met with in about 1450. At that time Meshullam Kusi (abbreviated from "Jekuthiel") Rapa ha-Kohen Tzedeq, the earliest known member of the family, lived on the Rhine, probably in Mayence. Several decades later the family disappeared from Germany, probably on account of the Jews' expulsion from Mayence on October 29, 1462. In 1467, in Mestre, near Venice, the wealthy Chayyim Rappe is found as alms' collector for the poor of the Holy Land. In Venice, the physician R. Moses Rap was exempted in 1475 from wearing the Jew's badge.

The Polish branch of the family explains its name through the following legend: one Easter a certain Jew, to prevent his enemies from smuggling the body of a Christian child into his house, closed all possible entrances and openings except the chimney. Down the chimney however, the dreaded corpse fell, but when a crowd stormed the house nothing but a partridge (Old German, "Rephuhn" or "Raphuhn") was found in the fireplace. But the "Von den Jungen Raben" (the house shield name of Judengasse "From the young crow (cf. raven)") in the signature of Abraham Menahem ha-Kohen Rapa von Port (see below link) at the end of his Pentateuch commentary, and the additional fact that the coat of arms of the family bears two ravens, clearly show that signifies "Rabe" (Middle High German, "Rappe"). The family name, therefore, at the end of the sixteenth century seems to be clearly established as Ha-Kohen Rabe. Part of the Polish branch changed their name into Wrona, which is Polish for crow.

In the middle of the sixteenth century, appeared in Italy a Kohenitic family of the name of Porto. On March 18, 1540, R. Isaac Porto ha-Kohen obtained from the Duke of Mantua permission to build a Ashkenazic synagogue. The name of the family is to be derived neither from Oporto (Portugal) nor from Fürth (Bavaria), but from Porto, near Mantua, where undoubtedly the above-named Isaac Porto ha-Kohen lived. An alliance between the Rabe and Porto families explains the combination of the two family names in Rapoport; indeed, in 1565, officiating in the above-mentioned synagogue of Mantua, there is found a Rabbi Solomon ben Menahem ha-Kohen Rapa of Venice, while a Rabbi Abraham Porto ha-Kohen (1541-76) was parnas of the community. See Rapa.

However this may be, in the middle of the seventeenth century authors belonging to the Rapa-Port family were living in Poland and Lithuania, the name having meanwhile undergone the following modifications: Rapiport, Rapoport, Rapperport, and Rappert. The family spread principally from Cracow and Lemberg (Lviv); in the latter place, in 1584, was born the famous Talmudist Abraham Rapa von Port (called also Schrenzel). In 1650 Rapoports lived in Dubno and Krzemeniec; in the eighteenth century descendants of R. Judah Rapoport are found in Smyrna and Jerusalem. About 1750 there were two Rapoports in Dyhernfurth (Silesia) — one named Israel Moses and the other R. Meïr: the former came from Pinczow, the latter from Krotoschin. Both found employment in the printing establishment at Dyhernfurth.

(see image, the Arms of the Rapoport Family)

Rapoport of Krotoschin's sons who settled in Breslau and Liegnitz adopted, in 1818, the name of Warschauer. During the last 450 years, members of the family have been found in eighty different cities of Europe and Asia.

Rappaport

Rapaport

Rappoport

Rapoport

see also Jewish Encyclopedia article

External links & Other articles

Article references

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

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