Hello Val,
I thought the others might be interested, so here's the text of my PM to you.
I've done some further investigating for you.
The ancestral town is today called Zagare, and is located on Lithuania's northern border to Latvia.
Zhagare (as it was called in Russian) was on the northern border of the Kovno gubernia (in the Shavli district).
This link shows you where it is:
http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~shtetm~-2620841Nowadays, the Jews of Zagare are referred to as Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) as a genealogical distinction. In the 19th century, they were simply Jews living in the Russian Pale of Settlement.
Unfortunately, our friends the Mormons have not microfilmed any of the Jewish records from Zagare, which was quite a sizeable town with a few factories. Records may be held in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, but they would be in Russian and Hebrew/Yiddish - a bit of a challenge.
To really find out the status and availability of vital records you should join the Litvak Special Interest Group (SIG) on jewishgen.
http://www.jewishgen.org/Litvak/
I'm guessing that the surname was originally Sadoksky or Shadovsky, but I could be wrong. The name Sadaski does not appear anywhere.
Michael's father's name was Lipman, without the 'o'. Can you post a snippet to rootschat showing both his parent's names; you may have misread his mother's name.
Regards,
Justin
