A lovely thing caused by Covid-19

Like many people who do genealogical research, I have been poking away at my family history in dribs and drabs over the years. Little bits of family history have gotten uncovered as more and more information has been digitized.

Maybe one of the only nice things about being in the midst of a worldwide pandemic is that one has extra time to do research. The New York Public library has made the library edition of Ancestry.com available to library card holders at home. Before Passover I have been looking up databases that had been unavailable to me before.

This being a word-wide pandemic, I am not alone in using this time of social distancing to research my family. Just before Passover I got a message from Natasza. She had found my blog posts where I had mentioned my searches for my Weisglass family Natasza had asked if I had heard of or was related to either Hersch or Siegmunt Weisglass.

The synagogue in Zastavna, where Siegmunt Weisglass was elected mayor in 1904

Natasza was a direct descendant of my illustrious relatives. What I didn't know was exactly how I was related to Hersch the landowner and adviser to the Kaiser(that was his actual job description) or his son, Siegmunt, who was elected mayor of Zastavna in 1904. Natasza had located records in Polish which made both of us realize that we were indeed related.

On the old days, before 23and me, you could figure out if you were related to someone based on the array of first names. In the Ashkenazi world, a son would name his children after his deceased parents and grandparents. As I looked at the family tree that Natasza sent me names from my family tree kept appearing and in the same order they appear in my family.I am still not certain if my ancestor is the brother of the relative born in 1798 or the brother of

Hersch born in 1837.

I shared the family tree that Natasza had sent me with my cousin Susan. Susan then sent me this photo of her grandfather and our mutual great grandfather.

This photo was probably taken between 1901 and 1904, after young Leizer and his father had arrived in New York and before my great grandmother and the girls came to the States. This photo was probably taken to reassure the family left behind that Leizer and Chaim were doing OK. Leizer is holding a book probably to show that he was studying. Chaim is wearing a kippah to show that he had not forgotten Judaism and his large watch chain is prominently on display to show that he was doing OK. We own studio portraits of family members with pearl necklaces painted in to show non-existent wealth and a painted on kippah to reassure relatives back home that the sitter was still religious. I don't know the reason for Leizer's combination long tie and bow-tie. It seems to be the neck-wear version of wearing both a belt and suspenders.

It is so deeply powerful to have the missing pieces of my family history filled in bit by bit.

Seeing family features appear and reappear

is something that is beyond words.

A threat of violence caused my great grandfather and great uncle to escape to New York. Natasza's family stayed in Czernowitz. Life was good for them there.

Natasza's family,

with the exception of little barefoot Marcin pictured above, perished in the Holocaust.

The violence that threatened my great grandfather saved our family. Somehow, connecting during this crazy, crazy time makes perfect sense.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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