Thanks For The Memories

It's tough to know where to start...

Some of my family members are truly interested in the stories I write and the discoveries I've made about the family. Others politely smile and nod and tell me what a great job I did. A few just pretend to listen. That's ok. My genealogy blog provided me with a way to not only share information with family and friends but it mainly served as an outlet for me to organize thoughts, facts and theories. I could ramble on past the point where most humans seem to lose interest and if I made a mistake, I could go back and fix it. I tend to have more of a visual memory so the organized format helped me remember where things were.

This blog has also served as a tool to connect with other bloggers and family members. Choosing Google to host my blog proved to be a good move...two cousins found me while searching on Google for our one famous cousin. The blog allowed me to keep important key words within reach of the search engines and The Carnival of Genealogy has given me great ideas for new posts.

I wish I could say that there could never be another blog like my genealogy blog but I can't...I'm hooked...I have to start another one. Just know that I wouldn't have gotten this far without the first blog.

for anyone reading this who did not find it through the Carnival of Genealogy, my blog isn't going anywhere...this was just a proposed topic for the Carnival...a blog obituary :-)

Catching the Travel Bug

We probably spent more summers at home than we did trekking in the brown station wagon. While the summers at home may sound boring to me as an adult, as kids we were very busy. This was back in the days before any decent video games and cable TV (I was born in 1964) so we spent most of our time outside. In our Massapequa backyard we had our little plastic pool and a swing set. There were a lot of kids on the street who were also out and about all day. Our parents only needed a general idea where we were because they knew if we were down the street, another parent was watching out for us. We had to come in for lunch, an afternoon snack, and dinner. After dinner, we could stay outside until the street lights came on.

In the pool, me at left and sister Judy
Standing l to r: family friend Hallie, me, Judy



When we were a little older, we had a family membership at Marjorie R. Post Community Park. We just called it "the pool". Mom would either drop us off or she would come also and spend the day playing mahjong with her friends. I even learned to play at one point. We were pretty much on our own until we needed money for lunch and then an afternoon snack. "The pool" is where we all had our swimming lessons. I remember one time my dad, my sisters, and I rode our bikes the 5 miles or so the "the pool" to play handball. My hands were so sore. The ride back was not fun. I think we were members through most of my high school years.

We travelled too, usually by car in our brown station wagon. The second seat was a split fold 2/3 and 1/3 across and there was a third seat too. All seats would fold down flat and we had blankets and pillows to sleep while my parents sat up front. My parents tried to come up with games to keep our minds occupied but we were more interested in fighting with each other. I think youngest sister Laura always got stuck in the middle to put a little distance between Judy and me. I don't know which trips took place in which years but here are the ones I remember:

• Florida - I remember the Everglades more than anything else...not sure why.
• Washington DC - visited the major sights of course.
• Hershey PA - back in the days when you could tour the actual Hershey factory vs the simulated ride they have now.
• Philadelphia - at the Franklin Institute, my sister Judy went up to that static electricity ball but her hair wouldn't stand on end.
• Colonial Williamsburg - I was interested in history even back then so this was a lot of fun.
• Howe Caverns - I remember the caverns but I also remember that we found a hotel on a hillside that had a bowling alley attached. As bowlers, we thought this was really cool.
• Niagara Falls - amazing. I also remember the wax museum and we thought it was cool that you could cross from the US to Canada and back right in the middle of a bridge and that the border guards knew my dad was telling the truth about being from NY simply by his accent.
• Puerto Rico - pictures below. I remember my dad got us really lost trying to drive down into Old San Juan and when we walked up the street to a restaurant, my sister was wearing really short shorts and all of the men driving by were hanging out of their cars whistling at her.
  

Sisters Judy & Laura with me (at right). I'm guessing this was 1979 or 1980. Judy and Laura would kill me if they knew I posted this but what they don't know won't hurt them.









Dad relaxing with a newspaper







It's funny the things I remember, or don't remember. My sisters and I fought a lot so I don't know how relaxing these trips were for my parents. Overall we had fun though. Some of the memories are blurred by my trips to these places as an adult. I'd like to go to Howe Caverns and Niagara Falls again now that I can appreciate them more.

My sisters haven't travelled much so my 4 nieces (2 per sister) haven't really been more than a couple of hours from home. I've already told the girls that when they graduate from high school, their gift from me will be a trip. The first one is in 2010 and I think that one will be Italy. Number two is the following year and I think that will be London. Not sure what 2012 will be and then I have a five year break before the youngest graduates. I caught the travel bug at a young age...now it's time for me to share the desire to see different places.

Dad's Garden

For as long as I can remember, my dad had a garden. I don't know if he tried to grow things when he was growing up but I can close my eyes and picture him in the back of the yard at the Massapequa (if you can't pronounce it you've probably never been to Long Island) house I grew up in. It wasn't the prettiest garden but who cares as long as the vegetables/fruits are good. He grew tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and maybe a few other things. The family had a good laugh every year when he'd come into the house with some giant vegetable. Dad was a contractor so he used leftover building supplies to string up his vines and to try to create a wall that would keep the rabbits out.

One year, we started a second garden. I planted green beans...my favorite. The beans never made it into the house...I ate them right off the vines.

Also in the backyard we had a cherry tree, an apple tree, and a pear tree. I don't remember the cherries but I do remember that one year dad pruned the tree back to far and it died. The pears were small but wonderful...very hard. When you would take a bite, a chunk would break off...just the way I like them. Somehow the apples always stayed on the tree too long. When they fell to the ground, they would ferment and the birds eating them would get drunk. It was funny watching them fly around crazy. Unfortunately there would be one or two that had trouble avoiding the side of the house or a window.

The picture above was taken in 2004. My dad has been building a house in central Florida for about 6 years. Before the house was even framed, dad had a garden. The house is located in the National Forest so he will have a lot of critters to contend with. I'm sure he'll figure it out. One reason he loves to grow his own vegetables is because he's very thrifty with his money but I think he'd do it even if he was rich. He enjoys it too much.

The Genealogy Shuffle

Over the past 10 years or so since I first started my research, I'm had several occasions to kick up my feet. In a couple of cases I did actually jump up from my chair at the sight of a missing link record or an e-mail from someone. In other instances, my butt would be dancing around in my chair as I typed an e-mail to a new found connection.

The first time I felt this excitement was on my very first trip to a cemetery to visit grave sites. Early on in my research, I went with my dad and 2 nieces to Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, NY. I had the death certificates of my gg-grandparents Solomon and Rebecca Lutsky which showed them buried there in the early 1940s. First we found Solomon and there was a picture on the headstone. Wow! I didn't expect it and this was before I got my hands on my grandmothers photos so it was the first time I was seeing his face. Next we found Rebecca's headstone. Unfortunately her picture was missing. There were 2 unexpected burials in the same section, my g-grandfather Louis Lutsky and also Rebecca's mother Rachel Kantorowitz. Louis's picture was in good condition...my grandmother certainly did not get her good looks from him but the family resemblance was obvious. Rachel's face had been broken/chipped away from her picture. Solomon and Rebecca's headstones had large bushes growing in front of them. These must have been cute little shrubs when they were first planted but now my dad had to sit on them so I could photograph the stones. I went back again the following year armed with pruning shears and trash bags to cut the bushes back to stubs. Surprise number two...we found Rebecca's picture, the enameled porcelain plate, in perfect condition on the ground in front of the stone. I kept it with me for a year until I could go back with adhesive and caulk to re-attach it to her stone.

A couple of connections that came right on top of each other almost 2 years ago have greatly advanced my research and put me in regular contact with closely related cousins that I didn't know about. Thanks to the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF), I came into contact with my 2nd cousin once removed Shari Videlock Malkin. She hadn't touched her research in more than 2 years but she had so much information about the family of my grandma Irene's mother, Lena Belinsky. I knew Lena had 2 brothers but she committed suicide when my grandmother was a baby and I never expected to find out much about the family. I hovered excitedly over my e-mail waiting for new information. I was able to meet Shari's mother Enid last year when I was visiting my dad in Florida. While Shari and I were exchanging information, she decided to check the Pages of Testimony on the Yad Vashem website. She found a listing for a Sara Belinki Avrutzki, most likely the sister of Lena and Shari's grandfather Shlomo. A fellow genealogist in Israel made contact with the woman who submitted the PofT and it turned out we did have the right family. I now exchange letters with Sara's daughter Rita in Israel and I'm in contact with Rita's granddaughter, my 3rd cousin, Ella (also in Israel) via e-mail and Facebook.







The most recent reason to kick up my feet occurred recently. I found the 1897 Russian census listing for my g-grandmother Sara Zymburska and her family in Lomza, Poland. No one in my family can even remember where Sara is buried or when she died so this was big. Unfortunately I just hit another dead end but at least I pushed the brick wall back a few feet.






I wouldn't mind feeling the urge to kick my feet up more often but I'll take it where I can get it. Maybe it wouldn't mean as much if it happened more often.

Jewish Traditions

Tradition...when I hear that word I immediately picture Fiddler on the Roof's Tevye singing about the traditions being carried on by each papa, mama, son, and daughter in the town. Also when I hear the word tradition, I think of religious traditions above any other kind. I think my ancestors had more traditions than we do now but a few have stayed with us.

Being Jewish is so much about traditions and there are plenty of holidays. From what I understand of the holidays, two, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, are the only purely religious holidays. All of the other Jewish holidays commemorate historical events. Rosh Hashanah is a two day holiday, the first two days of the new year on the Hebrew calendar. Aside from wishing my Jewish family and friends a "Happy New Year" I don't do anything. Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the new year, is the day of atonement. I don't fast, never have, but I do light my Yizkor (remembrance) candle in honor of the members of the family who are no longer with us. Thanks to my genealogy research, that candle is in memory of more ancestors each year. I don't go to work on Yom Kippur and just spend a quiet day at home. These first ten days of the Jewish new year, referred to as the High Holy Days, are the most important days on the Hebrew calendar.

The two holidays that I most associate with family traditions are Hanukkah/Chanukah and Passover. Many non-Jews think that Hanukkah is a very important holiday because it happens to fall close to Christmas but it is actually a minor holiday. Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the temple, when one night's oil lasted for eight nights. The menorah candles are lit each night, one the first night, two the second night, etc., from right to left, until the eighth night when all of the candles are lit. This I do each year on the silver menorah I've had since my Grandma Irene passed away. It is common to hand out Hanukkah gelt, foil wrapped chocolate coins, and for children to play the dreidel game. When my sisters and I were young, Hanukkah was more about receiving gifts and who gets to light the most candles. The older I get, the more meaning it seems to have.

Passover commemorates the period when the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt and their escape from bondage. At the Seder table, the family takes turns reading from the Hagadah, re-telling the Exodus story. The Seder plate contains items symbolizing different parts of the story. We eat matzoh to remember the haste with which the Hebrews had to leave Egypt and a small piece of potato soaked in salt water to remember the sweat of hard labor. My Aunt Rochelle and Uncle Jerry have hosted the Seder for as long as I can remember. I missed the last couple of years for business reasons but that won't happen again (I hope). One tradition of our Seder meal is the matzoh ball soup. It's a large group so everyone gets one matzoh ball and one piece of carrot...a ball and a rod (yes, a dirty joke even at Passover) is what we call it.

I've always had an appreciation for the history and culture of the Jewish religion. It's the faith part that I just don't get. Since I've started researching my family history, I feel that I owe it to those ancestors who upended their lives to ensure that at least some of our traditions will be carried on to be more observant. I go through phases when I feel that I should join a synagogue but I have yet to do that.

I don't know if Tevye would approve of all of our traditions. He might be upset that we don't have more but I'm sure he'd enjoy his soup.

Questionable Cause of Death

The only death certificate in my records that shows "Alzheimer's Disease" as a cause of death is my mother's death certificate. Most of my ancestors lived into their mid 70s with a cause of death being heart or diabetes related. My mother barely made it past her 58th birthday.

My mom was first diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure when she was in her early 40s. I was away at college when she collapsed and was brought to the hospital. The story is that she had a doctor wearing a turban who said, with his Indian accent, "God has given you a second chance". She immediately quit smoking, changed her eating habits, began going for walks a couple of times a week, and lost a lot of weight. Unfortunately the bad habits (thankfully not the smoking) came back after a while.

In the spring of 1995, a few months after her 53rd birthday, she suffered a serious stroke. I got the call just as I was heading out the door to go the airport for a tax conference. My dad and I agreed that I should go to the conference since that first day or two was just a waiting game. I could get up to NY from San Antonio just as easily as I could from Ft. Lauderdale. A couple of days later I was at the hospital. When I walked into the ICU, she saw me from across the unit and waived to me. After being released from the hospital, she kept up with the rehab for a while but was getting depressed that she wouldn't be able to move down to Florida as she had planned. My sister in Orlando decided to take her in and her attitude, and therefore her physical condition, improved. After a while, she started going downhill again with what the doctor called "silent heart attacks", a side effect of the diabetes. My dad sold the house in NY and he and my mom moved in to the condo he owned where he cared for her until she died at a hospice in January 2000, 5 days after her 58th birthday.

My mom wasn't always the easiest person to get along with before the stroke. There were times when you could have a nice conversation with her and joke around and other times when her short fuse blew and you could tell just by looking at her that she was steaming. Looking back there were also signs of depression which, combined with her suppressed anger, only compounded her existing medical conditions. I have her drivers license which was renewed a few months before the stroke. Those pictures always suck anyway but, looking back now, she did not look healthy.

Believe it or not, it was easier to get along with her after the stroke. I remember one time I was visiting my sister. I was in the kitchen with my mom and she showed me that she could reach her bad arm up to a high shelf and grab a glass bowl. I said that was really good and joked that she might want to practice with plastic instead of glass. The laughed and called me a wise ass. Before the stroke, she would have taken offense to that same joke. Unfortunately this didn't last long. Her mind started to go as her body was withering away. By the time she died, she would just mumble on about nothing and she looked like one of the skeletons liberated from the WWII concentration camps. I give my dad a lot of credit for caring for her. They weren't getting along well when she had the stroke. He chose to step up. He's a better person than I am...I couldn't do it. It's just not in me.

The cause of death on her death certificate is Alzheimer's Disease. With the diabetes, heart problems, stroke, and all of other problems related to these ailments, as well as the fact that she was still young, it's unlikely that Alzheimer's was the culprit. My guess is that the doctor was part of some Alzheimer's study and needed another subject. Just a guess, no way to know for sure.

You would think after all my mom went through I'd learn my lesson. I don't smoke, I exercise, and I go for all of my annual physical exams but I do have my bad eating habits and need to get my weight down. Maybe after writing this I'll be motivated to drop my bad habits...at least some of them :-)

1907 Strolling Pose

A few years ago, when I was just beginning my family research, I asked my Aunt Rochelle for copies of any documents she could send me. She asked me what I wanted. I told her to send me the things that she would want her great-grandchildren to see. In addition to the birth announcements and wedding invitations, she sent me a photocopy of this newspaper photo. It is a picture of my gg-grandparents Solomon (Shlomo) and Rebecca (Rivka) Lutzky/Lutsky.

The text is in both Yiddish and English so I assume it was published in a Yiddish newspaper sometime in the mid to late 1930s. I wish I knew which newspaper so I could get the entire article and understand better the context in which the photo was published. There's also no way to know if this was a photo taken by the newspaper back in 1907 that was kept on file or if my family submitted it for this story. One of Solomon and Rebecca's sons was C. Israel Lutsky who was becoming famous during the 1930s on Yiddish radio so, if the photo was submitted in the 1930s, it might be related to Uncle Israel somehow.

What did I learn from this photo? Solomon arrived in the US in March 1905 and Rebecca arrived in December 1906 so this may have been the first photo they had taken in the US. They would have been in their late 30s at the time of the photo but they look closer to 50. I believe this is the earliest photo anyone in the family has of them. The one thing I did learn is that an unidentified photo I have in my album is definitely NOT Solomon & Rebecca. The only other photos I had of them were much later and it's sometimes hard to compare older faces to younger faces in an attempt to make a match. I still can't identify that unidentified photo...maybe I will someday by process of elimination.

C. Israel Lutsky, The Jewish Philosopher

Known to everyone in the family as Uncle Israel, he is the only celebrity in the family (there is another celebrity, actress Carol Eve Rossen but she's a distant cousin...her father is actor Hal Holbrook). Uncle Israel is my great-grand uncle, the younger brother of my great grandfather. He was a staple on Yiddish radio from 1931 until the 1960s. I have no personal memories of him even though I was 20 years old when he died in 1985. He had moved to Florida in the 1960s and lived in Ohio after that, rarely coming back to New York. I always heard about Uncle Israel from my dad and his siblings and also from my grandmother.

Israel came to America from Ukraine in 1906, at the age of 8, with his mother, 3 older sisters, and younger brother. His father and 2 older brothers were already in Brooklyn. As a boy, he was a cantor, which is what the "C" refers to in his name. He took a shot at amateur boxing and vaudeville, as well as being a reporter and salesman. Even though he was one of the youngest children in the family, he became the unofficial head of the family. According to his 1920 US passport application, he was only 22 years old and his employer was trusting him to travel around war torn Europe to see if there was a market for hosiery yet.

In 2002, National Public Radio aired a special series, Yiddish Radio Project. One episode was dedicated to Uncle Israel...actor Carl Reiner did the English translation. I don't understand Yiddish but it sounds like he was very animated as he was dishing out advice to his listeners. He was just as enthusiastic when plugging his longtime sponsor, Carnation Milk. They were so pleased with his promotions they awarded him a pension when he retired. See http://yiddishradioproject.org/ for more information about Uncle Israel and other Yiddish radio stars.

From the stories I've heard, it was difficult to find a larger ego than Uncle Israel's. I firmly believe that before he died, he told his wife to make sure to put his age as 90 on his headstone so it would look like he lived longer than everyone else in the family plot. He was actually 87 when he died. Turns out cousin Ethel beat him...she died in 2006 at the age of 93. He was strict with the boys. My dad remembers that he had to look directly at Uncle Israel while he was speaking to you or he'd grab your chin and turn your head back towards him. He doted on the girls though, especially my dad's sister Linda. He was just a big softie around those blond curls. Linda gets very emotional when we talk about him. Being a big shot did have its advantages. My dad remembers when, as a teenager, he was in the hospital with appendicitis. The hospital wouldn't operate because they didn't have insurance. Uncle Israel stepped in and made sure things were taken care of.

Our Four-Legged Family Members

I grew up with Shep, a full-breed German Sheppard. To this day, my dad and sisters call her Sheppy. My parents bought her when I was only a few months old and she died when she (and I) was 12. I can still see her on the living room floor. My sisters and I were upstairs and my parents were telling us not to come down.

I have no photos or memories of her as a puppy but there are other images in my mind. I don't know when the above photo was taken but here is Shep with my Dad at the Massapequa, NY house. I remember when there was a thunderstorm, my grandma Bessie would come in from her room to sit with us. Shep didn't like thunderstorms either so she would go to sit next to Bessie. I still see them sitting there together trembling. I remember the hairy indentation on the sofa...Shep would sneak up there when we weren't home.

Here is Shep with my sister Judy (I think that's the top of my head on the left). I can remember one time Shep was lying in the same position and my cousin Lance fell asleep on her. You could see on her face that she wanted to stand up but she wouldn't because it would disturb him. I also remember a time when my parents were out and my sisters and I were home alone. We were taking turns jumping off the stairs and there must have been a loose wire somewhere because, on one of my sister Judy's jumps, the power went out. We left a note for my parents and went next door to a neighbors' house. My mom said that when they got home, she saw Shep was ok so she knew we were ok because she would have given her life to protect us.

Sometime in the mid-1970s we brought Whiskers home. Yes, I know, it's a cat name but my mom's friend selected it. Whiskers was a light brown terrier mix. I remember a time when we looked out in the backyard and Shep had Whisker's head in her mouth. Shep thought she'd caught herself a cat. Whiskers was small so she was carried around a lot. Being young girls, we also used her for dress-up. I can still picture her dressed in our undershirts or with a plastic barrette on top of her head (poor dog). Whiskers didn't like thunder, fireworks, etc. If she was scared while she was outside and couldn't get our attention scratching at the back door, she would squeeze through the space between the gate and the fence and try scratching on the front door. She loved grapes, which you had to break in half for her to eat, and somehow she could eat the yolk out of a hard boiled egg without breaking it apart.

Shep had one litter (fathered by some stray dog) of 3 puppies. She gave birth in the hall closet which my dad had cleaned out to give her an enclosed space to make her feel safe. We kept one female and, being a creative group, called her Puppy. When we were out of the house, Puppy would stay in the laundry room except for the times when she was able to open the door by turning the doorknob. She had 2 litters. We kept the one black male in the group. He grew into his name...Porky. My dad kept Puppy in Brooklyn in a store he used for storage. One time someone broke in and cut the side of her face open. Another time someone broke in, she disappeared. We never found out what happened to her.

Here is a photo of Porky and Whiskers in our lovely 1980s decor. I can still see Porky as a pup learning to climb stairs and his first time out in the backyard when he chased after my sister Judy and tackled her. He could eat an entire bag of bagels without getting sick and did a pretty good job on a bag of dry food he managed to open. He didn't have the patience of his mother when trying to get out of the laundry room...she worked the doorknob and he just tried to eat through the door. My dad used to take Porky into work with him in Brooklyn to keep on eye on the equipment in his van. When they would get home, Porky loved to splash around in his little plastic kiddie pool.

After my sisters and I moved out of the house, my mom bought Baby, a Pekingese with a lot of attitude. My dad always said that she wasn't a real dog but you could often find him on the floor behind the sofa playing with her. He kept her after my mom died.

I attempted puppy ownership 5 or 6 years ago. Unfortunately I found the training too stressful and gave her back to the friends I bought her from. She was a Sheltie that I named Kelsey. I think she was too smart for her own good. She knew I was calling her but she preferred to sit outside chewing on pine bark nuggets. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with visiting my sister and her new puppy Sophie and with memories of our long gone four-legged family members. I'd add them to the family tree but that might confuse future generations.

Common Threads

I guess the easiest similarities to identify are the physical ones. Lots of blue eyes and curly tops (fuzzheads as we call it) in my family. Some faces can be easily traced to one branch of the family or another (not by me though...I've never been good at that). One trait that started to appear in my dad's generation is height. We have no idea where it came from. All of those early 20th century immigrants were 5'6" at the most. My dad and his brother were just under 6' and their sisters are both above average height. I'm about 5'9". The only explanation for my height was one little grandma on top of the other.

Beyond the physical traits it gets a little tougher because my family hasn't been in the US for long and most of the older relatives my dad grew up knowing had that stuffy "old country" demeanor. On my dad's side of the family, we're all a bunch of wiseguys and love to laugh. We also all pop vitamins and other supplements. I know how that got started...my grandma Irene. According to my uncle Len, she started the whole vitamin craze when she and my grandfather got married in 1931. She wanted to make sure he was well taken care of and healthy. As kids we hated taking the pills, especially those uncoated vitamin C tablets. It stuck with us though.

Working with our hands seems to be a common thread whether it was to earn a living or as a hobby. Most of the immigrant ancestors worked doing laundry or in the textile industry. I have 2 distant cousins I just learned about who were in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire(one survived, one died). My grandfather Saul Schneider was head presser at a textile factory, a member of the ILGWU. My other grandfather, Harvey Klein, and his twin brother Joseph were both plumbers, also union men (Local One in Brooklyn). My dad, son of Harvey, is a licensed contractor and Joseph's son Marty owned his own sprinkler company. I'm a little nervous around power tools but I can install a ceiling fan by myself. Now my dad is building a house by himself. More recent generations had more choices. I'm a CPA and both of my sisters are teachers. When I found the 1930 census page for my grandma Irene, I discovered that she worked as a bookkeeper in a laundry after graduating from high school. I wonder if that's from whom I inherited my love of putting numbers in little boxes.

My mom was big into needlework. She cranked out sweaters and afghans like she was a machine. I wish I had kept those ponchos she crocheted for us...they're back in style now. I learned to knit and crochet when I was younger but it didn't stick. I prefer needlepoint and cross stitch. Maybe this is the transition from the laundry & textile working ancestors to creative hobbies with fabric and yarn.

Maybe I need to call up some more ancestors for another dinner party.

A Tribute to Immigrant Women

I couldn't choose just one female ancestor to write about so I thought a tribute to all immigrant women would be nice. Each of these women left behind a familiar life and headed into the unknown in hopes of a better life for their families. In most cases they did find a better life, for others, life was just as difficult. I'm grateful that my ancestors chose to make their journeys because, if they hadn't, most probably would have ended their lives in a ditch or a pile of ashes and I wouldn't be sitting here today.

When I hear the word immigrant, I picture those late 19th century and early 20th century photos we've all seen on the Ellis Island website. Crowds of people aboard a ship or being hustled through the processing center before being allowed to enter the US. I always scan the faces in those photos looking for familiar faces. I've never found one. Some of these women were young ladies traveling with their parents or maybe with cousins, helping out with younger children. Others were young adults, like my grandmother Peshe Bergzon at 19, who travelled with her brother to meet up with their father in New Jersey. Of course there were the mothers with small children in tow coming to meet their husbands who had already found a place for them to live. Also, there were the older women, like my ggg-grandmother Rachel Kantorowitz at 55, a widow travelling with her daughter and grandchildren.

Their journey wasn't finished just because they arrived in the US. Even though they were reunited with husbands, fathers, or other family, they now had to navigate the assimilation maze. It wasn't always easy to hold on to religious and cultural customs in this strange land. Most of my ancestors came from small towns that were predominantly Jewish so it was easy to keep Kosher and close businesses on Saturdays. The US is a predominantly Christian nation and, with the exception of certain cultural neighborhoods, businesses had to be open on Saturday and closed on Sunday.

It was the job of the husband/father to earn a living and provide a place to live. It was the mothers job to hold the family together, teach the children to be good people and pass along family traditions. For some families, the entire household was uprooted every few years as they needed more space for new babies or less space as older children married and left home. Usually the move was only a few blocks away but it was still an upheaval, especially if young children were involved.

How much a woman was "Americanized" depended on her age and where she lived. In the cultural ghettos in the big cities, it was easier not to learn English and to maintain family traditions. The older immigrant women in my family had no need to learn more than a few words of English because their lives revolved around their Yiddish homes. This resulted in bilingual children who spoke Yiddish at home and English in the outside world. With each generation, the use of Yiddish diminished. I only know a few of the mainstream words like bagel and schmuck. In the small towns, being different meant you stood out so immigrants were more likely to assimilate into their surroundings. Some Jews even went to far as to go to church and celebrate Christmas (without formally converting) just to fit in.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to these women.

These are the immigrant women in my direct bloodline (at least the ones I know about):

>Rachel Kantorowitz nee Lutzki, ggg-gm, arrived 1906 widowed at age 55
>Rebecca/Rivka Lutzki, nee Kantorowitz, gg-gm, arrived 1906 married at age 39
>Lena Belinki, g-gm, arrived 1906 unmarried at age of 19
>Dora/Dobrusha Bergzon nee Jablon, g-gm, arrived 1931 married at age 51
>Peshe Bergzon, gm, arrived 1929 unmarried at age 19
>Sara Zembovsky/Zambursky?, g-gm, arrived 1904-1905 unmarried at age 19-20
>Sheine/Jenny Schneider, g-gm, arrived 1928 married at age 40

Invaluable Gen Tech Tools

I can't imagine what genealogy research was like before computers and the internet. Thank goodness I'll never have to find out.

For my most important piece of hardware, I'd have to choose the large format scanner I purchased a few years ago. It has more bells and whistles than I'll ever use and cost $1100 but I made my money back fast. This scanner has a scan bed that could handle my 12"x12" photo album pages. I have 3 family photo albums with pages this size. I wanted to make digital copies of the albums to put online and to burn to CDs so everyone in the family could have copies. Kinko's charges $1 per sq ft to scan them...that's $1 a page! I was able to scan these albums myself and the money I didn't have to pay Kinko's almost covered the full cost of the scanner. Scanning the albums was also important so I could have backups in case something happened to the original albums.

The most important software I use cost a lot less than the scanner. I believe I only paid about $20 for Family Trees Quick and Easy. The name describes the software perfectly. I didn't need the more expensive programs with links to websites and other fancy features. I needed a program that would let me enter the information for my family tree and run reports. That's exactly what it does. Some of the input fields have some different options. For example, a field that defaulted to "christening" date doesn't apply to my family. For some ancestors, I chose "naturalization" date instead. I like that it shows me the relationship to the person I'm working with. If I want to, I can import documents to link to events. My only complaint is that I can't seem to generate a gedcom file for only part of the database (I wanted to upload portions of the family tree to FamilyTreeDNA). I highly recommend this program to everyone who needs a quick and easy organizer. I did buy it 7-8 years ago so I don't know if it's still out there.

There are several websites that have played a major role in my research but the one that has had the most impact has got to be JewishGen at http://www.jewishgen.org/ because this is my link to the old country. I have one great-grandfather who came to the US in 1896 and some more distantly "removed" relatives who came in the 1870s but most of my family immigrants arrived between 1904 and 1931. That means most of my family's history is in present day Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus. Thinking back to when I first started on this quest for knowledge about my family, I can't remember how much I actually expected to find out about my family. Thinking about it now, I feel that I've found out more than I ever expected. In addition to the records I've been able to locate, there's a wonderful community of expert and amateur researchers around the world who are happy to lend a hand with a translation or share an experience they had. There's also a wonderful feature called JewishGen Family Finder or JGFF. Members can enter information about who they are looking for (e.g. JABLON from Lozdzieje (Lazdijai), Lithuania) and can see if anyone else is researching the same surnames or towns. Thanks to the JGFF, I'm now in touch with branches of the BELINSKY family tree in the US and Israel that I never knew existed (my dad and his siblings didn't know about them either). One JewishGen member in Israel was good enough to make phone calls for me (after helping with a tranlsation from Russian to English) and put me in touch with my cousins there. I didn't even have to ask him to do it. Next year I might be able to make the trip to Israel to meet them.

Without hardware and software, we wouldn't be able to connect the internet. Without the hardware and software, we wouldn't be able to save what we find on the internet. Who knows what future technological advances will bring.

Dinner with four ancestors, who and why?

The four ancestors I would choose are:
1) Lena Belinsky Lutsky, my ggm (born mid 1880s, died 1912)
2) Irene Lutsky Klein, my gm (born 1911, died 1986)
3) Sara Zembovsky(?) Klein, my ggm (born mid 1880s, died 1950s)
4) Bessie Berger Schneider, my gm (born ca 1910, died 1985)

These first two were easy to choose. Lena Lutsky, born Lea Belinki (Belinsky in the US) in Ukraine came to America in 1906 with some Kusinski cousins. Her future husband, my ggf Eliezer/Louis Lutsky had already come to the US from the same small town of Lysianka. Her younger brother Leib/Louis Belinki arrived in NYC in 1908. Lena married Louis Lutsky ca 1909. When the 1910 census was taken, Lena was probably very pregnant with her first child Israel/Irving. Her second child, my gm Ida/Irene was born Sept. 1911. The next official record I have for Lena in the US is her death certificate, dated Sept. 1912. She committed suicide the day after Irene's first birthday. I'd like to have dinner with Lena and Irene together. First I'd ask Lena the questions Irene always wanted answers to...why she jumped? Was she really walking up to roof with baby Irene until a neighbor offered to babysit? The story is that Lena was pregnant again, was exhausted and overwrought, no one to talk to, hormones probably raging from popping out one baby after another. I'd like to hear her story. I'd also like to know how she felt being the first member of her immediate family to come to US. Next I'd ask her about her parents, grandparents, siblings. I would also tell her that, even though her life was so short, her legacy continued and Irene and I would tell her what she missed.

After speaking to Lena, I'd tell Irene all about her legacy. I'd update her on my research so she could fill in the gaps and show her those unidentified pictures that were in her albums. I'd ask her about her name change from Ida to Irene and why she preferred to call my gf Harvey instead of Harry (actually born Aaron but that's another story). I'd get out my laptop and show her the internet. She loved learning new things and I think she would have loved the internet. She died in Jan. 1986 (I was only 21) when home computers looked like something made in someone's garage (and some were). I'd ask her how the connection to the Belinskys started to get lost sometime in the 1960s but let her know that we've reconnected in the past couple of years. I'd tell her that a few months ago we discovered cousins in Israel that we didn't know existed, and they didn't know about us.

I'd like to meet Sarah because I think she may have gotten a bad rap. This might not be a fun chat...she had a reputation for having a gruff voice and scary to children. She's referred to as a "whore" by my family when she's the one who divorced my ggf Abraham for cheating on her. I'd ask her about the 1931 divorce, was she scared divorcing her husband when her oldest children were already out on their own and she didn't have any work experience outside the home? I'd ask her when she died and where she's buried since nobody seems to remember. She lived with a man, a family friend Mr. Mendel, out of wedlock I believe so I'd ask about that. Did she love him or was it more of a financial/survival decision? I know nothing about her family so I'd ask for details about them and where they're from. When she married in 1905, she couldn't sign her name so I'd want to know if she eventually learned to read and write. I'd let her know that my Hebrew name is Sara Lea, the Sara for her, so she couldn't have been as bad as her reputation implies.

My grandma Bessie, born Peshe Bergzon in Lozdzieje (Lazdijai), Lithuania, lived with us for the last few years of her life. The first thing I'd do is apologize for those nasty teenager cracks, one I can remember made her leave the room in tears. She may not remember it but I do. She was known as a very good cook so I'd ask her to share some of her recipes. I'd let how know about my research, especially all of the information I have for her mother's branch of the family (the most populated branch of my family tree). I'd ask her about being a little girl during WWI. The area she lived in in Lithuania was evacuated by the Russians. They lived in Mogilev, Belarus until the war ended...her younger brother was born there. From the pictures I have of her family, I think they were comfortable financially so I'd ask about her life in Lithuania, school, Zionist activities. Why did they emigrate so late? Did she want to go with her brother David to Israel? Did she brag about David's being in the Palestinian army and fighting for the new nation? I'd want to know which family members didn't leave Europe before WWII and were killed in the Holocaust. I'd ask her about all of the friends and family in the pictures I have from Lozdzieje in the late 1920s.

Hopefully the crate of Kleenex I bought for these meetings will hold out (I doubt it)!