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.

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...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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