Eliyahu's Branches: The Descendants of the Vilna Gaon (Of Blessed and Saintly Memory) and His Family

After decades of research, a noted Israeli genealogist has produced a book about the Vilna Gaon that contains a rare portrait of the illustrious 18th-century Eastern European sage, a discussion of his substantial influence on the Jewish world and a thoroughly-documented family tree listing more than 20,000 descendants of the rabbi and his siblings. A small portion of the tree--the first four generations--is available on the Web. For Chaim Freedman, who has lived in Israel since 1977, the compilation of Eliyahu's Branches: The Descendants of the Vilna Gaon and His Family was more than just a scholarly obsession that took hold of him as a child in his native Australia. Freedman is an eighth-generation descendant of the Vilna Gaon who was spurred into researching his own roots after growing up hearing countless tales about his many cousins in Russia and their celebrated common ancestor who died in 1797.