Another review of Bartov raises sensitive Judenrat question

Thanks to Walter for posting the Danny Rubinstein review of the book by Hanoch Bartov that covers the story of the Rabinowitz-Elhanan family in Kovno and Israel. Here is another review that addresses the question about the role of Jewish councils in Nazi ghettos, such as the committee Yitzhak Rabinowitz served on in Kovno during the terrible years between June 24, 1941, when the Nazis invaded Lithuania, and August 1, 1944, when the Soviet Army entered Kovno.

The author of this review reaches the conclusion that men like Yitzhak had acted honorably in their unwelcome roles in administering Nazi policies while also acting to preserve lives and a historical record.

Here is a link to the article "Compelled to Collaborate" at The Jerusalem Post website. The text follows:

Compelled to collaborate
Nov. 9, 2006
SHIMSHON ARAD , THE JERUSALEM POST

Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street (in Hebrew)
By Hanoch Bartov
Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan
287 pages
NIS 84

This book may look like just another chapter in the seemingly infinite story of the Holocaust, but the reader is instantly captivated by an extraordinary tale of an unusual Jewish family, told by an outstanding writer.

The deeper you delve, the more you realize that the story raises questions capable of shaking old perceptions of those who "collaborated" with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

I ought to declare a slight involvement in this story, having witnessed the beginning of the dramatic saga while serving as a young soldier in the Jewish Brigade with both the author and one of the five members of the exceptional family he describes.

The tale begins shortly after the end of World War II.

The Jewish Brigade had moved from the Adriatic coast of Italy, where it had participated in combat, to a point touching the Austrian-Yugoslav border. The brigade's three battalions were spread around the nearby villages, and some of these towns - Brasigella, Ponteba and Camporosso, on the way to the border town Tarvisio - became a sort of transit camp for thousands of Holocaust survivors. These Jews were assembled there, away from the prying eyes of the British.

The war against Nazi Germany was over by then, and the first priority of the unofficial leadership of the brigade (under the guidance of David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem) was to get the survivors to Italy's ports for transportation - legal or "illegal" - to Palestine.

It was in Brasigella that Amos Rabinowitch, of the brigade's third battalion, met his father Yitzhak and 15-year-old brother Shmuel one day in the summer of 1945.

Unaware that her husband and son Shmuel were alive and that Amos, the eldest son, would be found with the brigade's soldiers in northern Italy, the mother, Shulamit, was walking 350 km. from the Baltic Sea toward Italy. She, too, finally met her family in Brasigella. Yitzhak and Shulamit arrived in Palestine six months later.

Hanoch Bartov knew Amos; they had served in the same regiment. After the war, Bartov attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and there he met Benjamin, brother of Amos and Shmuel Rabinowitch. Benjamin served at that time in the Palmah, and the testimonies of those who knew him reveal that he was endowed with a fine mind and wide intellectual interests. He was killed in the War of Independence.

Amos and Benjamin knew Hebrew since their childhood in Lithuania, and being the sons of a devoted Zionist family, they made their way to Palestine in April 1940. The parents assumed that they would follow their kids, but the myopic Soviet regime, not known for its humane virtues, didn't allow them to leave the country even though they, like their sons, had British certificates to enter Palestine. When the Germans invaded Kovno in 1941, the parents were thus forbidden to leave. Though they were separated from their son, Shmuel, they all miraculously survived the misery, persecution and death the Germans directed against the Jews.

Bartov is keen to explore the great stories of the past. He demonstrated this impulse when he toiled to produce the volumes on Dado (David Elazar), chief of staff during the Yom Kippur War. His handling of the Rabinowitch family's survival is indeed proof of his integrity. It took him years to pursue this story.

What troubled him for so long was the role of Yitzhak Rabinowitch under the German occupation. Suspicious that Rabinowitch had in some way collaborated with the Germans, Bartov often wondered how he could have survived the Gestapo's barbaric rule. Was his behavior kosher?

Our perception of such Jews, who were as a rule compelled to collaborate with the German authorities, is harsh. Bartov, like many of us, shared this severe attitude.

In 1989, he was helped by an unexpected book - Natan Alterman's Over Two Roads, Pages from a Notebook. Bartov felt as if he had been extricated from hell. This dilemma of how to interpret the Judenrat phenomenon had also been excruciating for Alterman, and when he recorded his heretical reflections in a confidential notebook in 1954-55, his thoughts were a voice of defiance.

Abba Kovner, the poet and a heroic survivor of the resistance, reported in a book published in 1981, On a Narrow Bridge, that in a conversation he had with him, Alterman said: "Had I been in the ghetto, I would have been with the Judenrat."

This was shocking to Kovner, but not to Bartov.

The story of the Rabinowitch family slowly eroded his earlier harsh judgment, but it took years for him to sit down and write it all with a trembling hand and a torn conscience.

Alterman stated it unequivocally: "The Judenrats' route was necessary." Yes, there were many occurrences of abuse and criminality, but there were also cases of compassion and helping hands. Bartov did not seek to pass judgment, but found himself overwhelmed by empathy and ready to come to terms with Yitzhak Rabinowitch.

Joanne, Lani, Dan skype it up with Sharons of Afeq

I spoke to Joanne a little while ago and was touched to hear of the skype phone call she and Dan held with the entire Sharon clan--more than 25 of them according to Jo--gathered in Afeq together with Lani. Good for Jo and Lani for making this happen for all of us.

I'll let Jo and Dan describe it, but Jo's account to me was of a magical coming together and of love and appreciation of each other on all sides. Great that patriarch Ze'ev and matriarch Penina could be there and that Lani got to meet them and all the rest of the wonderful Sharons; Raya and Amiram, Ruti (who I havent seen in 30 years) and her son Yuval, sweet Dalit and Tal and their brood, Ahikam and Gali and their katanchik Netta, and Karmit (with a toddler not yet born when I was in Israel in 06) and Nir, who was then in the army--all of them and more (sorry to those I didnt mention) gathered improbably at Raya and Amiram's small house of the edge of the kibbutz with that view acorss the fields to the hills of Galilee, all there to appreciate Lani and to reconnect--all very powerful stuff.

I know Ahikam and others in our Israeli family have connected palpably to the genealogy search and has contributed a lot of information and so that project as pushed forward by Dan has made a major contribution to us all coming together. Wow, zeh mamash kef, be'emet yotzei meen ha klal--the whole thing is a real high, totally out of the ordinary. Family, I love all of you, those with us now and those who have departed, our dear parents and so many others and dare I say, those yet to come. What a compelling sense of connection and belonging.

Love,

Walter

Review of Hanoch Bartov's Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street

See below review of Hanoch Bartov's Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street sent to me earlier today by Dan, after we learned of the book in an email from Shmuel Elhanan.

At its core, the book is a history of the Spektor-Rabinovich-Elhanan family from the days of the Gaon of Kovno to World War II and the Holocaust. It tells the story of the two older Elhanan boys, Amos and Binyamin, who had moved to Palestine as youths in the 1930's and who Bartov came to know as comrades in the Jewish Brigade in World War II. The family was reunited after the war when Amos found them in a refugee camp in Italy, having miraculously survived the Holocaust in the Kovno ghetto and the death camps.

Unfortunately, the book itself is only in Hebrew. Just reading about it is very powerful as it so palpably connects our own family with the larger sweep of Jewish history of the past 150 years from Isaac Elchanan Spektor and the shtetl through the horrors of the Holocaust and the emergence of the Jewish state. And, of course, the review helps to answer many of the questions Dan and I had for Shmuel whom we hope to interview by phone in the coming days, though there will be plenty more to ask him.

The excerpt follows. Go here for the original.

2006: In an article entitled “Another Page from an Epic Chapter,” Danny Rubinstein reviewed Mihutz laofek, mi'ever larehov (Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street) by Hanoch Bartov.

"In 1943, at the age of 17, Hanoch Bartov, a native of Petah Tikva, joined the Palestine Regiment of the British Army, which was fighting Nazi Germany and which features prominently in his novel "Pitzei Bagrut" ("The Brigade"). In the Jewish soldiers' barracks at the end of World War II, one heard tales of emotional encounters between a Jewish soldier and a member of his family who had survived the Holocaust. At the time, Bartov heard, but did not have a strong recollection of, one story. It was about a man named Amos who had immigrated to Palestine, joined the British Army's Jewish Brigade and found his parents and younger brother, who had been in a displaced persons camp in Italy and had miraculously survived.

After the war, Bartov moved to Jerusalem, spending much of his time with a group of university students who were commanders in the Haganah (pre-state militia). One of them was Binyamin, nicknamed "Rabi," who was killed during the summer of 1948 in a battle in the Negev. Rabi was Amos' brother and he was also astounded to learn, after the war, that his parents and younger brother had survived the Nazi inferno after being thought dead for some time.

Many years later, in May 1978, on the morning of Israel's 30th Independence Day, the telephone rang in Bartov's home. He was busy completing a biography of David "Dado" Elazar, chief of staff during the Yom Kippur War, whom many see as one of its victims. The older man on the other end of the line introduced himself: "I am Rabi's father."

The reason for the call was the obituary Bartov had written about Rabi and the members of his generation - the "1948 generation," who fell in the War of Independence. Bartov recalls that he was surprised to hear from the bereaved father. "I was thunderstruck," he wrote. Following the telephone call, Bartov felt he must continue writing about and preserving the memory of his many comrades-in-arms who had died in that cruel year of 1948.

That call thus led to a connection spanning many years, between Bartov and the two parents who were Holocaust survivors. He began visiting their North Tel Aviv home and heard about their experiences in their native city of Kovno in occupied Lithuania. He interviewed relatives and friends of this couple, and perused letters and memoirs. The result is "Mihutz laofek, mi'ever larehov" ("Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street"), which has appeared 25 years after the conversation with Rabi's father and presents one East European Jewish family's fascinating story. The family's life revolves around the destruction of Europe's Jews and Israel's establishment - namely, what is sometimes termed "Holocaust and rebirth."

"Holocaust and rebirth" is an epic chapter in Jewish history, although many consider it to be an overused, anachronistic topic. Bartov relates the saga of an intriguing family that enjoyed considerable social status and whose history he finds moving. He has been able to convey some of that emotion to his readers. Although he avoids excessive emotionalism, some passages will cause the readers to feel goose bumps and a lump in their throat.

The family is Rabinowitz-Elhanan. The father, Yitzhak Elhanan, was a descendant of Yitzhak Elhanan Spektor, a prominent 19th-century Jewish leader who was Kovno's chief rabbi under the Russian czarist regime. In 1924, in Berlin, Yitzhak married Shulamit Rosenblum, daughter of a wealthy Jew who was proud to be a descendant of the great Rashi, loved Zion and was related to Israel's third president, Zalman Shazar, and to supreme Court chief justice Dr. Moshe Zmora.

While Yitzhak and his wife remained in Kovno to manage their extensive family business, Shulamit's elderly parents moved to Palestine in 1933, investing in private property and orchards (for example, the Rosenblum orchard, site of the present-day Givat Shmuel, adjacent to the Geha Highway). Their three sons were born in Kovno: Amos (1925), Binyamin "Rabi" (1926) and Shmuel (1930). When World War II broke out, the parents sent the two older sons to Palestine, where they grew up with their maternal grandparents in a spacious apartment on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard.

The parents and their youngest son remained in Kovno. Although Holocaust scholars are familiar with the story of the Kovno ghetto, readers will be stunned by the eyewitness reports on the insane cruelty of the Nazis and the masses of Lithuanian collaborators there. The book introduces us to a previously unknown document from the ghetto: a letter from the head of the Juderat, Dr. Elhanan Elkes, who considered it to be his last will and testament. He wrote it in Hebrew two days before his deportation to Dachau, where he later perished, and sent it to his children in London.

Preserved by a Holocaust survivor, this letter describes the events leading to Elkes' appointment as Judenrat head and notes how, with "shaking, worried hands," he and the other Judenrat members tried to steer the "mad ghetto boat in the middle of the ocean" to save as many Jews as possible. Elkes addresses his son Yoel: "My beloved Yoel! Be a loyal son to your people! Concern yourself with the welfare of other Jews, not with the welfare of the gentiles. In our long exile, they have not given us even a fraction of what we have given them. Try to settle in Palestine."

Elkes' children did not settle in Israel, but instead made their homes in the United States and England. Bartov believes this is the reason why they avoided publishing their father's last will and testament for so many years. Along with the letter, Bartov summarizes the debate in the Israeli public on the role of the Judenrats (many books and research studies exist on this topic).

In addition, he presents not only the memoirs of Elhanan and Shulamit; he also describes the adolescence of their sons Amos and Binyamin. The drama's climax is the chance meeting between Amos, a soldier in the Jewish Brigade, and his survivor-brother Shmuel. Amos was looking for his parents (who were separated when the ghetto was liquidated and did not know the other's whereabouts) and arrived one day in Pontebba in northern Italy to meet a friend.

That evening someone told him that a truck had just come in from Munich "and there might be somebody there who has heard something about your father." Amos approached the truck and that very moment Shmuel, his younger brother, jumped to the ground. Although in this passage Bartov tries to offer a simple description, without emotional clichés, there will almost certainly be a tear in the reader's eye.

Rabi, Bartov's comrade, was killed in 1948. Amos died from a fatal illness at age 40. Shmuel, who immigrated with his parents, fought in the War of Independence, serving with the elite Palmach strike force and participating in the battle of Malkiya. He may have been one of the "last ones on the ridge," to use a term coined by Yitzhak Tischler, who describes the battle in a book and is also mentioned by Bartov. Shmuel accompanies Bartov on his meetings with Shmuel's parents.

Certainly one of the most important of the "1948 generation" writers, Bartov has always been considered an excellent reporter. Few have perhaps read his superb reports for the Lamerhav newspaper, some of which appeared in books, which I enjoyed very much and made me laugh. In "Beyond the Horizon," the writing is somewhat heavy, perhaps due to a sense of awe for the book's contents. Sometimes Bartov burdens the reader with details that do not contribute to the protagonists' dramatic saga, which definitely deserves to have been written.”

Sad news of passing of Zippora Elhanan z"l

I have just gotten off the phone with our wonderful relative in Rehovot, Shmuel Elchanan, who had informed me shortly before by e-mail of the passing of his beloved wife Zippora last December at the age of 76. As Shmuel explained, Zippora suffered a stroke at the Weizmann Institute where she had been a faculty member for 50 years while chairing a session at an International meeting on Photosynthesis, her subject of research for years. If I understood him correctly, she was rushed to the hospital and remained in a coma for five days before passing.

Shmuel, whom I have never met face to face, but have had several extended phone conversations about our family history, is a wonderful man with I feel an instinctive kesher (connection). His warmth, understanding, deep empathy, primal Jew to Jew connection and sheer humanity amidst all the horrors he and our people have endured, is emblematic of what I have loved about Israel and Israelis all these decades; indeed, what keep my love for Israel unconditional though I have spent far too little time in Israel over the past decade and despite my disappointment with Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, etc. I am so sorry we never got to meet Zippora, who must also have been a wonderful person.

Shmuel urges us to come to Rehovot to talk family history and we really should all do that as soon as possible. It is so moving to me that he is so connected to Rehovot and the Machon Weizmann which is of course where Jo, Danny and I spent that mind blowing life transforming year of 1961-62 as children, when our father Stan was there on sabbatical. Rehovot is a kind of lodestone for us and here it is again.

In the meantime, Shmuel has agreed to a conference call with Dan and myself to help us to better understand many things, including that 'last letter' from his parents to his elder brothers of June 6, 1944, when they thought they and Shmuel himself were about to be liquidated by the Nazis. Kol hakavod (all honor) to Dan for getting hold of Ethical Wills and finding those letters as well as gthe last will and testament of our common ancestor Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor. Thanks also to Moshe Spector and Jeff Spector for connecting with Dan and providing us with so much new information.

Shmuel also mentioned a book by a well known Israeli writer, Hanoch Bartov, entitled "BEYOND THE HORIZON, ACROSS THE STREET" published in 2006, about our family. Apparently the book focuses on the stories of young men killed in the 1948 War of Independence, including one of Shmuel's older brothers, who had apparently served alongside Bar-Tov, It is unfortunately only in Hebrew which I read with great difficulty but I'm sure we will find a way to get the relevant sections translated.

Tomorrow, July 27, I will finally make it to the Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Queens and, God willing, see the graves of Joseph Rabinowitz and Lena Lincoff Rabinowitz, our great grandparents.

Walter

Schija Ringel birth record image

The hits keep on coming. Marian Rubin's package arrived today with four printouts of Ringel birth records from the Rzeszow archives. I'll have some comments about this later. For now, feast your eyes on the June 13, 1856 birth record of another of our great grandparents, Schija Ringel, the man who would later move to Berlin, marry Feigla Kaufler, and raise three children, Hermann, Rosa, and Bette Ringel.

Schija's record is highlighted. Click to enlarge.

Unexpected "will" in book from Shmuel's mother Shulamit

[Update: Following Walter's call with Shmuel Elhanan, we know there are errors in the original post, which I will leave to preserve the context for future posts. Yitzhak Rabinowitz did not change his name; his sons change theirs. Shulamit's family should be Rosenblum. Other spellings are in error.]

So after reading YES' will several times and reflecting that our family maybe held up his hopes in item 3 if having failed him in most of item 2, I began leafing through the other chapters of the book. Imagine my surprise in finding as the last item in the Holocaust section the text of the letter written by Shmuel's mother Shulamit Rabinowitz from Kovno on June 6, 1944 to her two older children just days or hours before she expected to perish along with her husband Yitzhak and eight-year-old son Shmuel.

This letter (and a shorter one that follows by Shmuel's father Yitzhak Elhanan Rabinowitz) is incredibly moving. She remains proud, though she is accepting of her likely fate. Her biggest regret is that Shmuel (whom she calls by the pet name Muka) will have his life cut short. Beyond that, rather than summarize I will let you read for yourself.

We know that in fact Shulamit, Yitzhak and Shmuel did not perish in Kovno. At this time, I do not know the full story of how they escaped and made their way to Palestine. I believe that Walter knows at least a short version of the story and perhaps he can fill us in. He may also follow up directly with Shmuel for more of the details.

What I do know based on Shmuel's 1996 correspondence with Morris Spector is that Yitzhak Elchonan (he later dropped the Rabinowitz name) died in Tel Aviv in 1992, Shulamit died in March 1996 in Haifa, and that Shmuel is alive and well in Rehovot at age 78 with his wife Zippora. They have two sons Benjamin and Ofra.

The two older sons to whom the letter was written both went to Israel as well. They were not in the United States when Shulamit wrote to them, but in Palestine. Benjamin was felled in the Israeli war of independence in 1948. Amos lived until 1965 and died in Tel Aviv of natural causes.

Here are the two documents, three pages by Shulamit and one page by Yitzhak. (Click to enlarge.)

By the way, Riemer's introduction to Shulamit's letter contains several errors. First, Shulamit became a Rabinowitz when she married Yitzhak, who was a great-grandson, not a grandson, of YES. Shulamit's last name was Rozenbloom before she married. When she mentions "your grandfather, grandmother and Aunt Jennie" in the letter, those are Rozenbloom family members.

Isaac Elchanan Spektor ethical will

There is much that can be said about this document. Perhaps readers will want to contribute their reactions in the comment section.

(For legibility, I have cropped in as tightly as possible on the text. You can click the images for a larger view.)

"Ethical Wills: A Modern Jewish Treasury""

Well, we had heard some time ago from Shmuel Elchonan, our third cousin in Israel, that the Rabbi Spektor's "ethical will" had been published in the 1980s in a book titled "Ethical Wills: A Modern Jewish Treasury." I finally got around to tracking down the book and ordering a copy.

Here's a quick plug for Alibris.com, a online book source that aggregates the used book collections in independent bookstores around the U.S. (maybe the world). When I went looking for this title on Amazon, they had it listed but no new or used copies were available. Then I tried Alibris, and found at least six copies available at a range of prices. My copy cost $14.15 plus shipping and was actually sent from Sea Shell Books, a bookseller in Clearwater FL. It is in very good condition with a handwritten inscription by the previous owner.

Anyway back to the contents of the book. It is a collection of Jewish ethical wills, categorized into four groups for Traditional Wills (mostly written by rabbis), Wills from the Holocaust, Wills from the Land of Israel, and Wills of Modern and Contemporary American Jews.

The book was edited and annotated by Jack Riemer with translations by Nathaniel Stampfer. The frontispiece is shown below. Rather than try to summarize the Rabbi Spektor will, I will post images of the full translation in the next post, and then after that tell about the other surprise that awaited in the book.

Schulim Kaufler death record

Schulim Kaufler was born in 1798 or 1799, son of Izaak and Beili (Bayla) Kaufler. He married Reisel Bluma Singlust in 1825 (see their marriage record in a previous post). They were very prolific, producing 10 children, including Abraham Mojzesz Kaufler, their third. Abraham was the father of Feigla, our great grandmother.

Schulim passed away in 1847 at age 48 or 49. Here is his death record.

Bayla Kaufler death record

Bayla, also called Beili in some records, goes way, way back. She is Feigla's great-grandmother, thus our GGGG grandmother. She was born in 1773, married Izaak Kaufler, had four children including Schulim Kaufler, and she died at age 58 in 1831.

Here is her death certificate, full size and detail.

Schulim Kaufler and Reisel Bluma Singlust marriage record

This is from June 20, 1825. Separately, there is also a marriage bann (a pre-marriage legal announcement) that I am not posting for now. The marriage record fills a full ledger page, as opposed to birth and death records that are partial pages.

The complete page appears first, followed by a detail section with the names of the bride and groom highlighted.

Advances on several fronts

Yesterday was another red-letter day for me, so I want to get some updates in here before other news arrives. I have to hurry, because there is lots to do today for Festival Preview.

Okay, first in the morning I got email from Marian Rubin of the Rzeszow Research Group that she has some of our Ringel birth records, including Schija's, and that she is making copies and sending them to me by mail. She warns in advance there is no new information beyond what is in the index data we have already seen. Even so, it will be exciting to have images of those records. I'll wait to discuss them in more detail after Marian's mail arrives.

Next came a delivery from Alibris.com of a book I had ordered, Ethical Wills: A Modern Jewish Treasury. I was thrilled to finally read the words written for posterity by Isaac Elchanon Spektor in 1888, but found an even greater treat elsewhere in the book. I will report in the next post.

In the evening, I visited the Mormon Family Research Center again, ready to locate and scan images of the Kaufler family vital records (described here in previous messages—use the label tags at right to find related posts). There are quite a few records to capture, so here I focused on a few "high-value targets."

The following images include the 1825 marriage certificate of Feigla Kaufler's grandparents, Schulim Kaufler and Reisel Bluma Singlust; the 1831 death record for Schulim's mother Bayla (also Beili), who was born the daughter of Abraham in 1773; and Schulim's own death certificate from 1847. All of those mentioned are our direct ancestors.

In each case, I will show the full size image and one or more detail sections of the image. Note that these are second-generation scans. I printed them at the LDS and scanned them at home—next time I will bring a thumb drive with me to the temple and save the scans directly, so the quality will get better when I redo them next time. But these are good enough to post now.

To keep things manageable, I will post the images in separate posts.

My genealogy calling card

I needed something other than my Festival Preview business card for meetings like today and for my upcoming Chicago trip, so I put this together this morning before going to the meeting.

I couldn't find the more recent headshot I have been using, so this one is my old New Media column photo. The research names and towns are meant to make it easier for people to connect me with researchers interested in the same subjects.

Sunday afternoon at the SF Bay Area JGS meeting

Today I attended my first SF Bay Area JGS meeting and had a wonderful time putting faces with names of people I have met online, plus meeting new people I will want to follow up with in the future. The guest speaker for today was Schelly Talalay Dardashti, the blogger who runs the Tracing the Tribe blog.

The meeting was held at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in the lower Fillmore area of San Francisco. The society alternates its meetings among sites in San Francisco, Berkeley in the East Bay and Los Altos on the peninsula.

There were about 25 people attending, and I got a chance to chat with several of them over instant coffee and cookies before the meeting got underway. Jeremy Frankel, the president of the group whom I had met a month ago at the Oakland Mormon research center, greeted me warmly and began to introduce me around.

I was especially pleased to see Dave Howard, with whom I have corresponded a good deal about his Rezekne research. We found that we had as much or more to share in person than by email.

I was wearing a nametag, and as I waited for a chance to introduce myself to Schelly, she read my tag and said, "So here's the famous Dan Ruby." I guess that is a case of one's reputation leading the way, which surprises me since I feel like such a neophyte in this world.

Also in attendance were luminaries in the Jewish Gen world such as Steve Morse, Judy Baston and others. After the meeting, I chatted some with Judy at the Jewish Community Library, just down the hall. She is an leader of both the Litvak and Poland JRI interest groups, and I hope to get to know her more in the future.

Some new people I met who are active locally were Dale Friedman from Berkeley and Kathryn Doyle, who works at the California Genealogical Society and Library in Oakland and lives in my town of Piedmont. In fact, she thought I might have been the husband of the more famous Ruby resident of Piedmont, Eileen Ruby. (Eileen is the mother of Mike Ruby, who works for me part time at Festival Preview, but is otherwise unrelated.) I explained to Kathryn that the other Ruby family are Rubinsteins and we were Rabinowitzes.

Anyway, I'll look forward to seeing several of these people in Chicago next month, and at future meetings of the Bay Area group.

I enjoyed Schelly's presentation, even though a lot of it was pretty elementary. I was surprised that when she asked who in the room was writing a blog, mine was one of just a couple that went up. This in a room of people who have made considerable contributions to online Jewish genealogy, and also are tech-savvy Bay Area residents.

For example, Steve Morse's One Step page is commonly acknowledged as among the most useful online research tools anywhere. But blogging is evidently viewed as more of a young person's medium, and most of these folks make web sites or publish to email lists or moderate bulletin boards — online formats that may be friendlier to the generally older crowd that is interested in genealogy.

Nevertheless, I got some good ideas and leads from Schelly's talk. Her suggestions about the leading genealogical blogs will point me in some useful directions. I was interested to hear the story of how her blog got started as a project of the Jewish Telegraph Agency, and thus its relationship to the wider world of Jewish media.

Schelly came to blogging from a career in publishing, so I wasn't surprised to hear of her sometimes bumpy adjustment to the style and voice of blogging versus newspaper journalism. I have made that same transition. She sees her role as mainly a "just the facts, Ma'am" informational blogger, rather than what she calls a "muser," someone who riffs in a more personal style.

She described her caution about covering possibly controversial subjects and her discomfort in voicing her personal views. While I'm sure such discretion is a useful survival skill in the world of Jewish journalism, I quietly urged Schelly after the meeting to embrace the blogging ethic and let loose with her opinions.

Of course, I have the luxury of writing a blog hardly anybody reads, whereas Tracing the Tribe is the most widely read blog about Jewish genealogy, so that's easy for me to say. In my other life, though, I run a group blog and news aggregation service about music festivals, so I have some expertise about online media. When I next see Schelly, perhaps in Chicago, I'll look forward to exchanging ideas some more.

What we learn from Einseidler, Part 3

In part 1, I summarized the Einseidler papers. In part 2, I covered Einseidler's discoveries about the descendants of Moshe Joseph Spektor. Here, I will do the same for the descendants of Jacob David Spektor.

The most surprising thing we learn about Jacob David is that he marries a woman 31 years his junior (to be continued).

What we learn from Einseidler, Part 2

But back to Einseidler. What is new and different that we learn from the papers? Most of the new information relates to two brothers of Isaac Elchanan. We know from Shimoff that Isaac had two older and one younger brothers. Of second brother Abraham Aaron, Shimoff writes that he was accomplished in the rabbinate, but he died young before having children. Shimoff tells us Spektor was deeply affected by his brother's death.

According to Einseidler's reading of the literature, the eldest Spektor brother, Moshe Joseph, then married Abraham's widow, in observation of the law of chalitza, in which an unmarried brother of a deceased married brother is obligated to marry the widow (unless he is released from the obligation in a ceremony involving the taking off of the brother's shoe).

In this case, Moshe kept his shoe and married the unnamed widow and they later had a daughter Shifra. From here, things get a bit surprising as Shifra marries a man named Aryeh Spector. This could be an example of a husband assuming the wife's name, if she had an honored name they wanted to carry on, or it could be coincidences of two unrelated Spektors finding each other, or it could be some kind of intermarriage.

In any case, Shifra and Aryeh have at least two children, Chaim Shmuel and Meir (born in 1884). Meir goes to Palestine in 1910, marries Esther and has three children, Jacob, Emanuel and Rachel. Rachel later marries David Belkin.

His older brother, Chaim Shmuel, also appears to marry another Spektor, Frieda daughter of Shlomo. The same possibilities apply here as above, though in this case Einseidler indicates that Chaim and Frieda are indeed cousins.

These possible Spektor-Specktor marriages would be one way for the family to expand to support claims of other Spektors to a relationship with the rabbi. We'll have to look more closely at the origins of Aryeh Spektor and Frieda Spektor to determine what other Spektors can claim a relation by marriage to the family of Isaac Elchanan's older brother.

Whatever turns out there, we know from the Pioneers book that Chaim and Frieda have another son Aryeh in 1909 in Halle, Germany, his grandfather having evidently previously passed away. Aryeh also goes to Palestine in 1933, and has two children Chaim Samuel (named for his predeceased father) and Simcha.

If all that is right, then we have five descendants of Moshe Joseph Spektor living in Palestine in the pre-war years. If we are next able to track Jacob, Emanuel, Rachel, Chaim Samuel and Simcha Spektor, we will be closer to identifying living descendants from that line.

Okay, on to part 3 for the information on brother Jacob David Spektor.

What we learn from Einseidler, Part 1

While Morris keeps feeding me more information, I am trying to catch up with his earlier fax transmittal of the David Einsiedler papers. These include not just the three installments of the researcher's handwritten reports but also copies from nine source documents that are cited in the research.

I've now had a chance to process the information and will do my best to sift out what is new to us. Einsiedler draws on mostly published information. The most well known are the Shimoff biography and Lifshitz's Toldot Yitshak. But there are four or five different biographical encyclopedias that have listings for members of the Spektor/Rabinowitz family. Several are comprehensive works of important rabbis in history. There is one for Lithuanian rabbis only, and another for the rabbis of Novogrodok. David Tidhar's encyclopedia of pioneers of Israel is especially helpful, with three substantial biographies of Spektor descendants in Israel.

There is one problem. They are all in Hebrew. I have been able to identify which document is which using Einsiedler's list as an index. With a number of the documents, I have been able to see where words like Spektor and Rabinowitz appear. I was actually pretty pleased with myself that I was able to call on my inferior Hebrew skills to sort through the papers.

As far as I know Morris does not have translations for the documents. If not, we should think about economical strategies to get that done. There are probably about 40 pages that we would want to have translated. I just found a Bay Area Hebrew translator listed on Craigslist. She charges $39 a page. I hope we can do better than that.

There is one source that is of greatest interest to me — the page from the Novogrodok book with entries for Isaac Elchanan Spektor and his successor Baruch Mordecai Lifshitz. (I don't know the relation, if any, between that Rabbi Lifshitz and Spektor's later secretary and biographer Jacob Halevi Lifshitz.) Anyway, the Spektor entry on that page also mentions Zvi Hirsch Rabinowitz. Zvi was born the year Spektor took up the rabbinical post in Novogrodok.

Perhaps we can find a way to get this one page translated as a way to get the ball rolling on the whole set.

In addition to the Einseidler collection, there is another important Hebrew document in our collection, Shmuel Elchanan's compilation of his family information that he sent to Morris Spektor in 1996. While I am unable to decipher most of it, it appears that it is the source of all of the detail information for the descendants of Benyamin Spektor that is in Morris' Spektor descendant chart. Surely I will want to get a full translation, but for now I will assume that the key information in it has been reflected in that chart.

Actually, as a further reality check, I have an annotated version of the Morris descendant chart that was marked up by Shmuel Elchanan. This mainly corrects spellings in the English translation of names and places that Morris must have rendered from the original Hebrew.

Since there is a lot to write about the Einseidler papers, I will continue in the next post.

Big surprise: Joseph Rabinowitz had a brother

Morris Spector and I spoke on the phone again today after he had sent me another important document — six pages of information about the SPEKTOR/RABINOWITZ/ELCHANAN family faxed from Shmuel Elchanan to Morris Spector in 1996. It is in Hebrew, mostly typed but some hand written, so it gets added to the stack of papers that need Hebrew translation — the top of the stack since Shmuel's family knowledge is more complete and reliable than anyone's.

Morris is excited because news of our Rabinowitz family has revived a research project that he thought he had taken as far as he could a decade ago. What he didn't understand at the time was the importance of some of the Spektor descendants using the Rabinowitz name. Even savvy David Einseidler doesn't know what to make of it when he writes "Again that name!" after noting Zvi Hirsch and Joseph are both named Rabinowitz instead of Spektor. (I have not yet introduced the Einseidler research, but this is one of the few places the LA genealogy researcher misses the mark. I'll have more on this in the near future.

We don't really have an explanation for why some Spektor children and grandchildren became Rabinoviches. Walter says that Shmuel told him it was an accident of the census — that a census taker wrote Rabinovich when told that the children playing outside were sons of the rabbi. By the way Zvi Hirsch and Joseph are close to the same age, even though they are a generation apart, so they might likely be the sons playing outside. I am going to check and see what census was being taken in Grodno guberniya in the late 1850s.

Anyway, in our conversation you could almost hear the wheels turning in Morris' head as he tried to place several pieces of dimly remembered Rabinowitz information that he has encountered over recent years. One is that he thinks he was contacted by another Rabinowitz other than us with questions about a connection to Rabbi Spektor. Since he didn't know of Joseph's family at the time, he didn't give the claim credence, but now it is likely that the other Rabinowitz would be family of ours. If this is a descendant of one of Walter Ruby's siblings, then we'll have found a new American second cousin. If it is an Israeli Rabinowitz, then we'll have another third or fourth cousin to visit on an upcoming trip.

That assumes that Morris is right and he did receive such a message, and also that he is able to find it. He said he would look for it.

The other Rabinowitz thing bothering Morris was something about Tel Aviv cemetery records. I didn't pay too much attention to that when he mentioned it, but a short while later, he followed up with an email containing a most startling revelation. He found a 1929 burial record for Eliyahu Isser Rabinovich, who was born in Kovno in 1859. His father was Rav Chaim Aryeh.

In the comments field of the record is written: "From the family of Rabbi Elchanan Spector of Kovno and Rabbi Yosef of Slutzk. Merchant. Came to Israel in 1923." Here is the link to the relevant page in the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry.

So here we have the first indication that Joseph Rabinowitz had a younger brother. There is only one Rav Chaim Aryeh married to the daughter of the Rabbi of Slutsk, so now it could be that there would have been three Rabinowitz boys playing in the yard.

Now it may well be that Eliyahu's existence is covered in Shmuel Elchanan's Hebrew document. I hope so. He has already told us about another sibling Bluma Rabinowitz who was a school teacher in Kovno. That he did not also tell Walter about Eliyahu may suggest that he does not know about him.

Eliyahu's burial record doesn't mention anything about a wife or children. Hopefully with more searching we will be able to learn more about his life and even turn up living descendants, another possible batch of Israeli third cousins.

Much to digest here, but one thing I am thinking is that of all the Spektors and Rabinowitzes who left Kovno before the Holocaust, almost all went to Israel. Only Joseph Rabinowitz that we know of came to America. We would like to learn how and why it was decided by Joseph and his grandfather Isaac Elchanan that he and wife Lena should set sail in 1875 for a new life in New York.

Feigla birth record deciphered

It was a big day today. I will save the most exciting news for the next post. First I want to report on a further exchange I had with Dan Hirschberg, the Krakow historian whose work led us to a trove of information about the family of our great grandmother Feigla Kaufler.

After Achikam Finkel used Geni recently to update information on the family of our mother's first cousin Zeev Sharon, I thought I should pass that information along to Hirschberg. He tracks all the descendants of Krakow Jewish families until 1945. So I wrote to him with the information that Feigla's daughter Rose Ringle's husband was named David Shatner. Also, that the surname of Rose's son Ze'ev's wife Penina was Dorfman.

Dan wastes no time. Within minutes, he replied that his Kaufler family page has been updated with the new information.

So then I took a chance and asked him in another email if he would take a look at Feigla birth record and tell me the types of information it would contain. This time his reply took a couple of hours to come back, but with more help than I had expected. He gave me the following translation from the Polish of the important information contained in the record. Here it is:

The date of the document: Apr 23, 1854
Reporting witness (also is the father): Abraham Mojzesz KAUFLER, age 25
is a dayworker or laborer,
residing in district 9, house number 189
Birth of daughter at: Mar 29, 1854 (3:00 am?/pm?)
Mother: Hai Ester GRUNBERG, age 24
Name of daughter: Faigla

So this gives us several new things — an occupation and exact address of her father, a time of day for Feigla's birth, age confirmations for her father and mother, and alternate name spellings for Feigla and her mother. Nothing very surprising but nice to know. Thanks again to Dan Hirschberg.

Playing catchup with the Spektor files

Thanks to Morris Spector and also to Jeff Spector of Colorado Springs, I now have my hands on the famous first chapter of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor — Life and Letters by Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Shimoff published in 1959 by Yeshiva University.

Also in hand are a dozen pages of hand-written research results prepared in 1990 by David Einsiedler of Los Angeles, who was engaged by Morris Spector to research the family of Isaac Elchanan Spektor. There are also various Hebrew source documents that Einsiedler provides, which will further document the Israeli descendants of R. Spektor's brother Jacov David Spektor.

These documents are rich with new information — or I should say information that is new to me and my attempts to synthesize all available sources to document the immediate family members and descendants of R. Spektor. On first read, I see several brand new pieces of information and several other things that will help us interpret facts we already know.

To do that will require line-by-line reading of the new materials that is likely to take me a few days to accomplish. The Hebrew translations will take longer (any volunteers?).

Until I report back on my analysis of the new papers, here is a glimpse at a section of page 24 from Shimoff in which he mentions our great grandfather Joseph Rabinowitz.

Moshe Spector's barbershop

Our new friend Morris Spector from Hamden CT has quite a range of talents — professionally he is a graphic designer, he is an accomplished genealogist (read his account of his roots journey in Poland), and he has a devilish sense of humor.

Here he combines those skills by giving Isaac Elchanan Spektor a Photoshopped haircut and beard trim, and then dispensing a Spektor-like Halachic responsa on the question of whether Photoshopping of facial hair is permissible under Jewish law.

The bottom line: "Since Moshe Spector didn't use a razor it is definitely permitted."




COMICUS RESPONSUM AD NAUSEUM

by Moshe DeFoliant Spector

She'elot u-Teshuvot
Here is my response to the Photoshop trimming dilemna. Actually, I was removing the beard to see what he looked like sans beard. However, the neat look made him look younger so I stopped with the airbrush. But . . .

Here is my opinion.
My understanding is the prohibition against shaving was something to do with the Egyptians who practiced the clean Savalas image. Also, another reason was you wouldn't risk cutting yourself. To overcome this, there are some of the orthodox community who use some type of powder to defoliate the punim.

Here is the "official" opinion.

"Ye shall not round the comers of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the comers of thy beard" (Leviticus 19:27) is understood by the talmudic rabbis not to mean that it is wrong for a man to be cleanshaven, but only that facial hair must not be removed with a razor. The standard code of Jewish law, the [16th-century work by Rabbi Yosef Karo,] Shulhan Arukh (Yoreh De'ah, 181:10) rules that it is permitted to remove all facial hair with scissors even when this is done as closely as if with a razor. On the basis of this, many Orthodox Jews shave with an electric razor on the grounds that technically this machine, with its two blades, is not to be treated as a razor.

The reason for the prohibition of shaving is not stated in the Bible, but [the 11th-century Spanish/North African sage] Maimonides understands it as a protest against idolatry, conjecturing that the heathen priests shaved their beards. Others have seen it as a means of distinguishing between males and females. Neither of these reasons would explain why the distinction is made between shaving with a razor and by other means, but this distinction still holds as a matter of law, although some later authorities do invoke both reasons not as a matter of law but of piety.

Consequently, it has been the practice among many Jews to wear a beard and sidelocks (pe'ot). The Talmud describes the beard as an "adornment of the face" and implies that a beardless man cannot be said to be handsome.

In the kabbalah [mysticism], the beard is said to represent on earth the "beard of the Holy Ancient One" on high, that is, the stage in the unfolding of the sefirot [divine emanations] at which the divine grace, symbolized by the strands of the beard, begins to flow throughout all creation. In kabbalistic circles the beard becomes a sacred object and some kabbalists would not even remove a single hair from their beard. The statement that, according to the kabbalah, there is no need to wear a beard outside the Holy Land, is unwarranted. Hasidism follows the kabbalah and all Hasidim wear long beards and sidelocks.

Most westernized Jews do not wear beards, including many Orthodox rabbis, who shave with an electric razor but sometimes sport a small goatee beard as a bow in the direction of the tradition. Yet it can be observed that the wearing of a full beard is coming increasingly into fashion among the Orthodox. Reform Jews do not consider the prohibition on shaving with a razor still to be binding.

So all that stuff is what Rabbi's argue about. However, I'm certain if I were to ask R. YES for a ruling, he would say: "After careful consideration and a lot of beard stroking here is my ruling."

"So Photoshop or Barbershop. That is the question. Since Moshe Spector didn't use a razor it is definitely permitted. That's my carved in stone haluchic ruling. Furthermore, I order you to lay this meshugas to rest and keep your eye on the ball. The suspense in unbearable. Anyone for DNA?"

R. Spektor portrait with signature

Another treasure from the files of Morris Spector.

Ahikam Finkel expands our tree

Woo hoo for second cousin Ahikam Finkel, who accepted Joanne's invitation to our family tree on Geni and has input family information for our Sharon relatives in Israel. This fills in some important details on our Ringel side and adds wonderful new details about our Israeli cousins.

Rosa Ringel's husband, the father of Ze'ev Sharon, was David Shatner, also the brother-in-law of our grandparents Hermann and Elly. That name might help me in future research about our family in Berlin.

We also get previously unknown details about Ze'ev's wife Penina. She was born Penina Dorfman Feb. 15, 1919 in Poland. Her parents were Izik Dorfman and Sara Bahat.

Ahikam is the son of Raya Finkel, the daughter of Ze'ev and Penina. He is 33 years old, married to Gali and has a daughter Neta.

To view our tree on Geni, contact me for an invitation to join our family group.

New Spektor family information

These images are courtesy of Morris Spector, who I found through an old post on the JewishGen discussion board. They are a rare photo of Rabbi Spektor and an image of his and his son Zvi Hirsch Rabinowitz's gravestones in Kaunas.

Morris also sent his extensively researched family tree for the Spektor family, reproduced below. Notice that our great grandfather Joseph Rabinowitz is listed but without any descendant information.

I am in the process of going through his information to see what can be added to our tree. I will also be sending Morris (and also Jeffrey Spector, another Spector historian he knows of) our full data about Joseph's family.

Descendants of Elchonan Spektor

1 Elchonan Spektor b: Abt. 1761
.. +Rachel
....... 2 Israel Isser Spektor b: Abt. 1789
........... +Rachel b: Abt. 1789
................ 3 Yitzhak Elchonan Spektor b: 1817 in Rossi (Rus), Grodno Gub., Russia d: 06 Mar 1896 in Kovno, Poland
.................... +Sarah Reisel Yezerszki d: 1882
.......................... 4 Rachel Spektor b: in Isabelin, Poland d: 09 Jul 1876
.............................. +Zvi Hersz (Chiam) Sultzovsky
................................... 5 Zlota Sultzovsky
.......................... 4 Zvi Hersz (Rabinowicz) Spektor b: in Nishvez, Poland d: 1910
.............................. +Hena Saltz d: Abt. 1893
.......................... *2nd Wife of Zvi Hersz (Rabinowicz) Spektor:
.............................. +Hannah Rottner b: in Grodno, Poland
.......................... 4 Chiam Aryeh Spektor b: 1831 in Isabelin, Poland d: 02 May 1874 in Kovno, Poland
.............................. +Unknown b: in Slutsk
................................... 5 Joseph (Rabinowicz) Spektor
.......................... 4 Benjamin Spektor b: 1852 in Nowogrodek, Russia d: 1896
.............................. +Devorah Baer d: 1929 in Kovno, Poland
................................... 5 Meshulem Fishel Spektor d: 1940 in Kovno
................................... 5 Yisroel Isser Spektor Rabinowicz d: 1933 in Kovno, Poland
....................................... +Fruma Frankel b: in Verbalis, Lithuania d: 1944 in Stutthof Concentration Camp, Gdansk, Danzig
............................................. 6 Yitzhak Elchonan b: Jan 1900 in Kovno, Poland d: 1992 in Tel Aviv, Israel
................................................. +Shulamit Rozenbloom b: 1901 d: Mar 1996 in Haifa, Israel
...................................................... 7 Amos Elchonan b: 02 Jul 1925 in Berlin, Germany
.......................................................... +Sarah Davdobni
...................................................... 7 Benjamin Elchonan b: 30 Aug 1926 in Berlin, Germany d: 18 Jul 1948 in Bet Afa, Israel
...................................................... 7 Shmuel Elchonan b: 12 Feb 1930 in Kovno, Poland
.......................................................... +Tzeporah Gromet
................................................................ 8 Benjamin Elchonan b: 12 May 1958
................................................................ 8 Ofra Elechonan b: 25 Jan 1961 in Rechovat, Israel
............................................. 6 Shlomo b: 1901 in Kovno, Poland d: 1992 in Israel
................................................. +Lena Rappaport b: Abt. 1902 in Kovno, Poland d: Abt. 1989 in Israel
...................................................... 7 Gabriel Isser Elchonan b: Abt. 1940
.......................................................... +Marina Stolbova b: Abt. 1942 in Moscow, Russia
................................................................ 8 Maxim b: Abt. 1977
.................................................................... +Irina
...................................................... *2nd Wife of Gabriel Isser Elchonan:
.......................................................... +Polina Lubetsky b: Abt. 1945 in Vilnus, Lithuania
................................................................ 8 Anat Isser Elchonan b: Abt. 1977 in Jerusalem, Israel
................................................................ 8 Yael Elchonan b: Abt. 1980 in Jerusalem, Israel
............................................. 6 Miriam (Mira) b: 1904 d: 1943 in Stutthof Concentration Camp, Gdansk, Danzig
...................................................... 7 Israel Isser b: 1933 d: 1943 in Kovno
............................................. 6 Bella b: 1909 d: 1941 in Stutthof Concentration Camp, Gdansk, Danzig
................................................. +Selig Volvisky d: 1941 in Kovno, Poland (killed by partisans)
...................................................... 7 Daniel Volvisky d: 1941 in Staathof Concentration Camp, Germany
................................... 5 Yetyl Spektor d: in Kharkov, Russia
....................................... +Yacov Kahanov b: in Lubny, Ukraine
................................... 5 Blooma Spektor d: in Tel Aviv, Israel
....................................... +Louie Solomonson b: in Riga, Latvia
................................... 5 Moshe Spektor
....................................... +??Perling
................................... 5 Eliash David Spektor
................................... 5 Gershon Spektor
....................................... +Ita Fridlander
............................................. 6 Henritte Spektor
................................................. +Yacov Kahanov
................ *2nd Wife of Yitzhak Elchonan Spektor:
.................... +Hannah Meizlsz
................ 3 Moshe Joseph Spektor b: Abt. 1814
.......................... 4 Aryeh Spektor
.......................... 4 Meir Spektor
.............................. +Esther
................................... 5 Jacob Spektor
................................... 5 Emanuel Spektor
................................... 5 Rachel Spektor
.......................... 4 Shifra Spektor
.............................. +Aryeh Spektor
................................... 5 Chiam Shmuel Spektor
................................... 5 Simcha Spektor
................ 3 Abraham Aaron Spektor b: Abt. 1816
................ 3 Jacob David Spektor b: 1827
.................... +Sheindel Klein b: 1858
.......................... 4 Abraham Aaron Spektor
................................... 5 Jacob David Spektor b: 1904
................................... 5 Shoshona Spektor
....................................... +Sholom Yoval
................................... 5 Rachel Spektor b: 1886
....................................... +Israel Kahn
................................... 5 Tzpora Spektor
....................................... +Yacov Mendelson
................................... 5 Leah
....................................... +Munie Meridor

Meet Rezekne expert Dave Howard

In my researches into the Tulbowitz family, I came across the well-documented work by Dave Howard, a descendant of the Gurwitz family of Rezekne who has done a great deal to discover and publish information on our ancestral town. The photo shows Dave on one of the residential streets in the old Jewish part of Rezekne.

We've been in touch several times in the last few weeks, with the result that he plans to include our Tulbowitz information in the JewishGen ShtetLink for Rezekne that he is currently compiling. Until that is ready, here is Dave's Rezekne page on his FamRoots.org site. Much of what we will see when we visit Latvia next year is already available for view on these pages. Thanks, Dave.

First LDS document arrives

I'm very far behind in blogging. A lot has happened that I will try to fill in while I begin to catch up. One angle is that I have begun to order facsimile documents of existing vital records where available. The first of these has arrived: It is the Polish language document from 1854 that records the birth in Krakow of Feigla Kaufler, the mother of our grandfather Hermann Ringel.

I'll do my best to display the document in the confines of this blog. Here is a view of an entire ledger page that includes three birth records. Feigla's is the second entry, number 188.



Most of the text is indecipherable (to me, and so far), but this close up highlights some of the interesting parts.



Here are the four detail sections. The first is the name of Feigla's father Abraham Mojzesa Kaugler. Then her mother's maiden name, Chaya Esther Grunberg. Then her given name, Feigla.





Finally, I have included the Hebrew transcription that appears at the bottom of the record, beneath the official signature. Any of our Hebrew speakers want to take a crack at translating that?



Our next step is to get a full translation and I have begun to investigate Polish document translation services. I plan to send in a scan and ask for an estimate. I hope it is not too much because it is very likely that I'll soon have similar birth records for all of Feigla's siblings and other family members. These are all on order from the LDS research center in Salt Lake City, and should be available to me soon at the Oakland branch.

Abraham Ratner & Sons in Albany business directory

Walt, you should get a kick out of this because of the other entries under Bottlers—Carbonated Beverages, including Albany Coco-Cola Bottling Works and Orange Crush Bottling Co. This is interesting in light of the family story that Abe turned down the opportunity to become a Coca Cola franchise.

Rabinovich surname

Here's an excerpt from Beilen on the surname Rabinovich, which he treats as a special case of rabbinical surname. If you can't make it out in the image, go here for a full size version.

Katz name derivation

Oh boy, I have a lot to catch up on here. I visited the Mormon Family Research Center in Oakland, where I met Jeremy Frankel, the president of the SF Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society. More on that, and what I learned about ordering LDS records, in an upcoming post.

Also, I connected online with Dave Howard, who is the leading researching about the Jewish community in Rezekne. His FamRoots.org and HorwitzFam.org sites are a treasure trove of information. I will be posting highlights and links to the most relevant stuff in an upcoming post.

For now, I thought I would post this excerpt from Alexander Beider's Dictionary of Jewish Surnames From the Russian Empire. Howard has a few small parts of the work available to view on his Horwitz site. Here is a section dealing with the surname Katz.



Since it is hard to read, I will summarize. Katz originates from the name Kohen, which means priest in Hebrew, possibly the same as Goan. Kats or Katz is an acronym for Kohen Tsadek (Kohen of righteousness). The name was common throughout the Russian Empire. Of course, our great-grandmother was Bette Katz, the wife of Julius Wolgemuth of Koenigsberg.

By the way, Beider has another volume on Jewish surnames in Galicia, which are likely to contain informative entries for Ringel and Kaufler. The books are published by Avotainu and are very expensive. I will be looking for where I can find them in a library.

Cannold loose ends

From various U.S. census records from 1880 through 1930, I now have a better picture of the Cannold family. Most of this is only marginally of interest to us, since the only Cannolds that had any relation to us were Lester, who was married and divorced from our great aunt Meta, and their two children, Thad, who committed suicide in 1946, and Harrison, who appears to have lived until at least 1965 and could have had children. Should that be the case, those children would be our second cousins.

Lester was the second of five children of Samuel and Sarah Cannold, who were both born in Poland but met and married in New York. By 1910, Lester is 23 and working as a public school teacher. Three years later, he marries Meta Rabinowitz and they start a family.

We know the outlines of the sad story after that. Lester rises in his career as a administrator in the Newark school system, but emotional problems begin to have an impact. By the time of the 1930 census, he and Meta have divorced. In 1942, we have him registering for the WWII draft from his mailing address at a Connecticut sanitarium.

On his registration card, he lists his sister Harriet Klein as "Name of person who will always know your address." And his home is given at an address on Seabreeze Ave. in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

So to tie up loose ends I went back and looked at Lester's siblings. At some point the family had moved from Manhattan to Coney Island, the same address Lester would later use. Of the daughters, one stayed single and continued to live with her mother, and two others married. One of those was Harriet Klein, who did not appear to have children. The other was Pearl Gerst, who had two or three children.

So that's all on the Cannolds, a family we are related to only by marriage but one with some tragic twists that seem to echo events in our family. Only Harrison and Thaddeus Cannold are of direct interest to us, so the hunt for Harrison goes on.

Revisiting Cannold 1930 census record

In an earlier post I wondered about Harrison Cannold birth date and decided to take a new look at the 1930 census record I had previously found for our great aunt Meta Cannold nee Rabinowitz.

First, it was hard to locate the record on Ancestry.com because they have the name listed as Connold, not Cannold. But I persisted and found the right census document. On the age question, it shows that Harrison was 14 and Thaddeus 13 in April 1930. So on the earlier question, if living, Harrison would be 92 plus or minus.

There are some other interesting facts from the census record, which I will list here:

The family consisted of Meta (head of household) and her two sons. They lived in an apartment building at 236 Renner Ave. in Newark NJ. At the time 43 years old, Meta is indicated as having been married at age 26 but her "Marriage Condition" is listed a "D" for divorced. Under "Occupation" she is listed as "Teacher," and under "Industry" it says "Public School." Both boys are noted as having been born in New Jersey to parents born in New York. Meta is shown as born in New York to parents born in Russia.

Ruby family tree is posted on Geni

I signed up with a new genealogy social networking site called Geni and have uploaded a recent version of my Ruby Family GEDCOM file, which now includes 325 names of our ancestors and living relatives.

Geni appears to be a really cool system with loads of great features for displaying information about the family as well as connecting with living family members. To get it rolling, I invited immediate family members and so far Walter, Joanne and Twyla have now signed up. I hope they will be active users by updating their profiles and adding new information to the tree.

If that happens, then let's start inviting various cousins to join in and see what kind of network we can create. If you want to get started on your own, go to www.geni.com and create a free account. Then do a search for any family member you can think of. Once you find the person, you should also be able to find yourself in the Ruby family tree. Link your account to that listing and you will become part of our social network.

Or here's a simpler solution: Write to me at druby@sprynet.com and I will sent you an email invitation to join.

To give you an idea how the program works, here is a sample screen shot:

Harrison Cannold's letter to the editor

Well, here's good news, a letter to the editor of the New York Times written by Harrison Cannold in November 1965. This is our first sighting of Harrison after WWII, and it opens up likely avenues for learning more about his life and possible descendents. It is even remotely possible that he is still living. I don't have his birth date handy, but will look for it on the 1920 or 1930 census record that we have.

That Harrison was interested in the political situation in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, is not surprising for a member of our politically attuned family. Here is the clipping:

Thad Cannold's obituary

Still following up the Cannold family, I decided to look in the NY Times article archive. Here are the two items I turned up for Thaddeus Cannold--his February 1939 graduation notice and his December 1946 obit notice.

A childhood friend checks in

Okay, so it has already been an amazing day, learning of 10 new direct ancestors and three times that many new relatives. Also, I didn't mention the general reading I did on the history of the Jewish community of Rzeszow, and the cursory reading on the same subject in Krakow. (This was to help gather resources for Walter's upcoming trip, in which by chance he will have two days in Krakow.)

So it was an amazing day and then an email arrives in my inbox from my long-lost childhood buddy Derek Jeffers. Now, I have been Googling Derek on and off for 15 years, or I should say I was Alta Vista-ing or Lycos-ing him. Remember those search engines from the pre-Google days?

Derek left very few tracks. The best lead I had found was an article about a French auto workers' strike from the early 1980s. That sounded like Derek, who had gone on from our youthful activism to become a committed Socialist. I had thought that since I hadn't found his biline in the Socialist Worker Party newspaper, that maybe he had fallen out with that group and taken another direction.

The idea of him as a strike leader in Paris was certainly romantic. If so, surely he was an international provocateur, riding closed trains across the continent. Such had Derek devolved into a mythic idea in my mind that I nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw the message arrive in my inbox.

Yes, it turns out he has been living in Paris for 30-plus years and he actually is an auto worker, though he mentioned the Peugeot plant is currently shut down waiting for parts from Portugal. He filled me in about his three children and wife Esther, an economics professor. They are coming next month to San Diego, where Derek's father had owned a condo before recently passing away.

(Digression: When I would sleep over at Derek's house when we were 11 and 12 years old, his dad would always start the day with a bang by playing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" at top volume on the living room stereo.)

Since they are French, they will have six weeks for the vacation, which means there is every likelihood that I will be able to meet up with my old buddy during his sojourn in California. Plus, he mentions that Esther has an upcoming sabbatical in New York, so there will be more meetings after that.

Earlier today, I expressed my delight at hearing from him but begged off from a lengthy reply because I was getting ready to take off on a festival trip. Well, neither Twyla or I were ready to leave at a reasonable hour this evening, so we decided to go in the morning instead.

Thus, I was able to spend the last few hours updating this blog. Perhaps Derek will check it again before I get back. If so, he can enjoy this post until I have a chance to write to him directly.

One last thing and I am off to bed. Unlike Derek, I'm fairly easy to find on the Internet, though you have to avoid the red herrings like the legislator in Fargo and the sportswriter in San Jose. Walter the prolific author is even more discoverable. Now, with this blog, both of us are popping up even more.

I find it interesting that this blog lands high up on the first Google results page for searches on terms like "rabbi spektor" and "ruby family." After this item posts and Google spiders have taken note, we'll also show up among the first hits on "Derek Jeffers."

Adding our two cents

After absorbing the news about the four new generations of Kauflers, I felt I should communicate what we knew about Feigla's descendants to the Hirschberg knowledge base. So I found Dan Hirschberg's email address at University of California at Irvine, where he is a mathematician.

I sent him details of Feigla's marraige to Schija, their child Hermann, his wife Elly, their child Helga, her husband Stanley, and their three children, us. He wrote back within 15 minutes, having already added all the info to his listing.

Here is the updated family tree, where you will now see much of that information in place. Note that he does not include people born after 1945. Also note that a few of the dates I gave him were off the top of my head and still need to be corrected. I will do that when I contact Hirschberg again next week, also with information on Hermann's siblings Rosa and Bette.