Jacob Samuel Maragovsky Also known as Zeidel Rovner, (named 'Zeidel' by his mother, Sarah, for his late grandfather, Zeidel is the diminutive for the yiddish Zeide, meaning "grandfather" and Rovner is for the city of Rovno) was born in 1856 in the Ukranian city of Radomsk, in the Province of Kiev.

His father, Isaac, was a merchant, probably in grain, who died early, leaving a young widow, and the eighteen-month old 'Zeidel'. The mother took a small room in the house of the local Chazan, Moshe Shpalinsky, known as 'Moshe Radomsker', where she eked out a miserable existe